Ballet recitals and camel rides - the joys of summer

Since school ended last Friday this was officially the first week of summer break. We spent the week swimming, going to the zoo, going to parks, eating ice cream, and reading at the library. Jenna has already read 6 hours of the 12 she needed to read for the summer reading program. 

Jenna and I also had our own little book club together. We read Ever by Gail Carson Levine. We enjoyed the book and had a good discussion about it. I'd really like to have more book club discussions with Jenna. She reads faster than my Coo* book club ;). We both read the book in a day.

Jenna had her ballet recital at the Capital theater downtown. It was a 3 hour show and her character was Hercules. She was happy since she knew Hercules from the Percy Jackson books. Even though she was Hercules she had a beautiful dress and her dance was graceful.

Sarah as a music box

 Sarah's ballet performance is tomorrow and she is a music box. Her costume is beautiful and the music is fun for her performance. This is her last year in the mini-show. Next year both girls will be in the big show. Hopefully they will be in the same big show - I don't want to be downtown all day!

Jenna (second from the right - wearing glasses)

Jenna at her ballet recital

 Sarah was drawing on her whiteboard when I walked by and saw this. I'm proud of her for spelling annoyed correctly, although I'm not sure why she is annoyed at Matthew.

Sarah's message to Matthew

 The Zoo opened its Africa exhibit and it is fantastic! I took Jenna, Sarah, Matthew and 3 of Jenna's friends (Abigail, Grace and Saatvika) to the zoo. We all rode the camel rides, saw the giraffes, cheetahs, and lions. Then we rode the boat ride. This is the ride in which Sarah screamed the entire ride. It is a dinosaur boat ride and the dinosaurs scared her. No more dinosaur rides!

Sarah, Grace and Abigail on the camel ride

Jenna and Saatvika on the camel ride

Matthew and Me on the camel

In other news:

• I'm reading Warbreaker by Brandon Sanderson. I've read Steelheart, the Emperor's soul, Shadows for silence (short story), The Rithmatist and Warbreaker is the last book in my list to read of his novels.He has several Alcatraz novels and while I like them - they are juvenile fiction and I don't love them.
• I'm in the middle of Outlander by Diana Gabaldon. This is an interesting historical fiction book set in Scotland. I'm enjoying it. 
• Next in my list is Divergent. I *finally* got it from the library. I was on the list for months!
• Dark chocolate almond milk is delicious. It's my new favorite thing. 
• 70 points on Quiddler today

Pioneer day

Every year the entire third grade takes a field trip back in time for Pioneer Day. All the kids dress up as pioneers. Girls in bonnets and aprons and boys in suspenders and straw hats. They all look adorable. I bought Jenna's dress on etsy and Erik's mom made my dress for Pioneer day. We had a blast. 

Jenna and me

 The kids rotated to several different stations like: candle making, pioneer chores (washing clothes with a washboard/shucking corn/cleaning up fake horse doodoo....), square dancing, tin punching, grave rubbing, scavenger hunts, general store, biscuit making, butter making, making lemonade, games (tug of war, etc), watermelon spitting, and all kinds of pioneer activities.

In the morning I was doing square dancing. I danced all the way up until lunch time (and learned how to do-si-do!). Then I helped make butter in the afternoon. Jenna's favorite activity was candle making. She was so excited to burn the candle she made too!

Jenna's class

 Some of the kids were able to spit their watermelon seeds pretty far. As far back as I took this picture I was almost in the line of fire...

Watermelon seed spitting

 I loved Pioneer day. I'm so glad Jenna got to experience this and the weather was perfect.

Making lemonade

In addition to today being Pioneer day it was also Sarah's last day of school. Matthew finished school on Wed, Sarah today and Jenna will finish school tomorrow. They are bouncing off the wall with excitement for summer. I brought in the snack for Sarah's party. I made yellow cupcakes with white buttercream frosting. Then I put graham cracker crumbs on the cupcakes and a drink umbrella to look like the beach. It was so cute! I didn't get a picture though - the kids ate them up so quickly. 

Sarah and Mrs. Lukach

We are all ready for summer here!

Tough Mudder 2014: The Cold never bothered me anyway...

Nope. The cold does bother me. On Saturday our team of 5 people ran the Tough Mudder in arctic temperatures. One might assume that we looked like this:

Sarah and Matthew playing with the neighbor kids 

 or this:

More Sarah and Matthew playing with the neighbor kids

In fact, we were muddier!

Erik, me, Tricia, Nate, and Tim

 The course was 10 1/2 miles with 21 obstacles. I loved the cooperative element especially since everyone helped me :).

Everyone helping Erik up the Berlin Walls

Me leaving the barbed wire trenches

 When I think about what the hardest obstacle of the event was, it was definitely the weather. None of the obstacles were as difficult as the cold temperatures. The temperature varied from 40° - 50° and overcast (sometimes raining). The cold sapped all my strength. I'm hard core though, obstacles, hypothermia, mud in my hair....no biggie.

I skipped 3 obstacles - the arctic enema, walk the plank and funky monkey. All of these required you to swim through really cold water. I was geared up to do all of the obstacles but at the time, I was way too cold. Last year Erik said he ran a lot more. This year we sludged through the mud almost the entire 10 1/2 miles.

Today every part of my body is sore. I'm glad my parents watched the kids yesterday. Although today it was hard to take care of them when we were both sore!

Would I do this again? Yes if it is warmer and only if it is warmer!

Toothetina made a visit

Every day, to every person, in every location Sarah has been showing her wiggly tooth. To anyone who will listen Sarah has wiggled her tooth for them. She has been anxiously waiting for her bottom tooth to fall out. In fact, we could see the tooth behind it peeking through so we knew it would be soon. At school last Friday 5/2 Jenna lost her tooth. Poor Sarah - she had been so excited to lose a tooth and Jenna lost one. 

However the long awaited event occurred. Sarah lost her first tooth on Friday 5/9 and was ecstatic! The tooth fairy left her laffy taffy (her favorite candy today) and some hard earned cash.

Sarah lost her first tooth!

 Our church hosted a conference for the Evangelical Covenant churches in our region. Pastors from New York, Michigan, etc were all at our church and I was hired to make 8 dozen cupcakes for them. I made:

1. Chocolate cupcakes with chocolate frosting - yummy, this is really the best combination
2. Lemon cupcakes with lemon frosting - Three lemons worth of zest and juice!
3. Vanilla cupcakes with cinnamon buttercream - yummy/slightly boring
4. Red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese frosting - I always make these and the reason they asked me. They like these cupcakes so much.
5. Peppermint mocha cupcakes with peppermint buttercream - AMAZING! These were the best cupcakes I've ever made. 

Actually all my cupcakes use buttercream. I generally use the same base recipe and just add a few things to modify it. The peppermint buttercream recipe on the site linked above uses twice the amount of butter I use in my buttercream. The flavor was noticeably less sweet and richer. I think I'll have to modify my base buttercream recipe. This was delicious!

Chocolate/chocolate

Peppermint mocha and cinnamon vanilla

Lemon drop

 We like to go camping on Mothers Day weekend since it is a good weekend to kick off camping season and the kids love it. Matthew talked so much about camping that his teachers were impressed. The campground had a Mothers Day craft involving lots of messy paint and decorating a Styrofoam cup as a flower pot. Jenna was so artistic with her flower pot that the volunteers were impressed. She wouldn't let me get a picture though (I will have to sneak a pic). The kids really had fun camping. Jenna said camping is her favorite part of summer. I read Steelheart by Brandon Sanderson on the trip, since at night we just sat by the fire and read books. I loved it! Sooo relaxing.

Decorating the flower pots

Sidewalk chalk by the camper

The Tough Mudder is next weekend and hopefully we are tough enough. I had fun doing the Warrior Dash - it is not a competition but a cooperative event. The Tough Mudder should be like this as well. I enjoy triathlons but I like the cooperative aspect of these events even more. It should be fun!

Summer Bucket List 2014

We have about 3 weeks left of school. The kids are crazy with anticipation for the end of the year. I am too.



On our family summer bucket list is the following:

1. Horseback riding
2. Roscoe Village
3. Going to the pool 
4. Going to the zoo
5. Camping
6. Renfest
7. Westerville Bike trail family ride
8. Anthony Thomas Candy tour
9. Swimming lessons
10. Watching Disney movies
11. Letterbox hunt at the library
12. Summer reading program
13. Go to the Worthington farmers market
14. Canning veggies and jam
15. Lots of scavenger hunts
16. Learn Geocaching (this is something I've always wanted to try)

In other news:

• My next session starts on Sunday. The easy session was wonderful while it lasted - back to the real world with difficult classes.
• This year in our garden we are going to try and plant peanuts. I've heard they are difficult to grow but I think it will be fun!
• I went from disliking Girl Scouts to now being the troop leader for both girls. AAAH! I am not sure how I have been roped into this. The leaders for Jenna's troop are quitting an no one else wants to step up. Since I'm already doing Sarah's I might as well do the other one. I've had all the leader training. Jenna is excited! At some point it will no longer be cool to have her mom be the troop leader.
• We are going camping in a week. It's our first camping trip of the year. We love to camp over Mothers Day since campgrounds usually have crafts and free breakfast for Mom (hey, that's me!)
• Erik has lost 15lbs using his bulletproof coffee recipe for breakfast (he doesn't eat anything - just drinks coffee). He is looking svelte! I have lost 1 lb. I'm losing this race.
• I ran 6 miles once. Just once. After that I had to ice my knee for 2 days since it hurt so bad. From my research I determined that I have runner's knee. This happens often in "mature females." What do they mean "mature"?