Happy Birthday Irene and Ezra!

My goodness time flies! 

Ezra turned 8 this year. This kid is something else... He's active, outgoing, adventurous and passionate. Sometimes that passion, though, can go the other way. He gets so worked up when things don't work or if he fails at something. Usually, with some gentle coaxing, we can get him to calm down and try again or fix what went wrong the first time. He has a huge sense of right and wrong and gets very upset when he thinks something isn't fair. He's gotten to where he's a little taller than Gabe ("Only an inch!!" Gabe would shout), so they still wear the same clothes. They very much like twins, with Gabe being a more bookish boy while Ezra is the athletic one.

Not to be outdone in the energy department, Irene turned 5! This kid is bot the light as well as the bane of my day. She is so sweet and funny, but also so mischievous that if I'm not careful, she'll drink a full bottle of maple syrup while I'm not looking. (That's not an exaggeration. She really did drink almost a hole bottle of maple syrup...) She climbs the cabinets and counters looking for sweets, steals Emma's toys, and stays up all hours of the night gigging and laughing when she's supposed to be asleep. At the same time, she loves to snuggle and be with Mama every chance she gets.

In the past, I've been the one to make elaborate (at least for me) cakes for the various birthdays based on the whims of the child, but this year, Olivia wanted to put her cake decorating skills to the test and make cupcakes for each of them, Irene chose flowers and Ezra chose spider webs like from  Spiderman.

Speaking of Spiderman, Ezra wanted to get a Spiderman comic book, so I took him to Acme Comics and picked up the Epic Collection that had the first 18 Spiderman comics all in one. I'm thinking this is going to be the new tradition for the boys for the next few years.

Celebration Station

The Greensboro Home Educators group organized a homeschool day at Celebration Station to celebrate the end of the school year and the start of summer. For $10 each, we got to come in and go on the rides as much as we wanted for 3 hours. Seeing as how the littles are too small for any of the rides, I took the older three for the morning.

Being so warm, the first thing they all wanted to do was hit the bumper boats. If they were learning physics (which technically, Olivia is...), it would be a great study in Newton's Laws of Motion. The boats can take a bit of getting used to to operate. They found out that they don't turn as quickly as a car or speed up or slow down very easily either.

Certainly didn't stop them from enjoying them. :)

After the boats, it was on to go karts. CS has two tracks: one for bigger folks and one for younger. Gabe and Ezra weren't old enough to drive the big karts yet, but they could ride the smaller ones. Gabe tried them once and enjoyed them, but Ezra got a real kick out of driving.

I love the tongue out in concentration. 

While he drove his laps, I was recruited to drive Gabe, as well as other younger kids, around in the big karts. Because it was a Wednesday, there were hardly any other people there, so I was able to stay on the go karts and just take various younger kids as passengers.

Olivia tried out the karts since she was big enough, but she found a few friends and they all gravitated towards the boats where they could spray each other and get wet.

AHG Spring Awards

Olivia and Emma have finished their first year in American Heritage Girls!

Emma started out in the youngest group, the Pathfinders. This is the youngest of the AHG squads. She spent this year learning about AHG's values and purpose along with the creed and oath, which basically is teaching the girls to be respectful, obedient, humble, and compassionate while being a good citizen of our country and a good steward of God's creation.

She got to participate in some outreach activities like bringing cookies to fire fighters. With Rebecca as one of her leaders, she got to do all kinds of crafts and activities geared towards setting her up for her first year as a Tenderheart, where she will have to do more work and earn badges in different categories.

We are very proud of our Emma for all her hard work!

Olivia spent year as a Pioneer, which is the next-to-highest age group in AHG. These girls do a lot of heavy lifting throughout the year! They did a lot of badge work that had all kinds of requirements and electives, some of which were hands-on and some that involved doing research on a topic and teaching it to the younger squads. They had to organize different outreach events and projects, go on overnight backpacking trips, plan campouts and lots of other things. They even took turns leading the troop opening ceremonies each week and took on various leadership roles like being the Troop Photographer, writing the weekly newsletter, and sending out the weekly squad email updates.

Olivia has one more year as a Pioneer before she moves up to be a Patriot, where she will have even more responsibility, but we know she'll be amazing at it!We could not be more proud of both girls for putting in a ton of work this year and achieving so much!

Mountain Top Youth Camp

This is one of the kids' favorite times of the year: Mountain Top Youth Camp!

It was still just the three older kids this year. Poor Emma will have to wait for a couple more years before she can go.

 They all were super happy to see friends that they hadn't seen since last year.

 Olivia is now in the oldest girls cabin.

 Gabe has moved up to the middle boys cabin.

 and Ezra was on his own this year in the younger boys cabin.

Well, not entirely on his own. His good friend Grayson came this year and was in the same cabin!

As always, they had an absolute blast hiking, playing games, doing bible studies and eating great food from the Snack Shack and are already making plans for next year.

Lake Brandt Hike

With the older kids away at MTYC, we spent some quality time with the littles. 

 And a little with each other... :)

 We took one day to go on a walk along Lake Brandt, which is always a beautiful hike.

 And any time spent with these two is certainly time well spent.

 They're so cute, sweet, loving...

 and goofy!

It's great to get some time with them when they don't have to fight for our attention with the older kids. 

Strawberry Picking

Some years we make it out in time to pick strawberries. The growing season is very short and is often made shorter by bad weather in the spring. This year, however, we made it out and got a whole ton of berries!

 All the kids got in on the act and we picked 5 full buckets; enough for almost 40 pints of jam! 

Stone Mountain Hike

Mama was craving a hike, so she took the boys for a day up at Stone Mountain.

 They hiked and explored around the bottom and gradually worked their way to the top.

 The day was beautiful!

 The boys managed to find every possible nook and cranny to climb into for a picture!

 The did eventually make it to the top for that amazing view.

 Of course, all that hard work should be followed by a dip in the pool, right?

 It's amazing how cold the water can be and kids still get in it! BRRRR!!!