some beautiful butterflies . . .

Chantel's Kindergarten Graduation . . .

Chantel graduated kindergarten this week! The class put on a cute little program ~ sang some songs, received their diplomas, showed us one of their favorite action songs from the year ~ and then enjoyed snacks and popsicles after!

Grade one fieldtrips . . .

A week ago I went with Elayna's class on a fieldtrip to a dairy farm. Her favorite part was seeing the robotic milker (named "Robby") milk the cows. They also had a bit of petting zoo part, but I don't think my "brave" little girl actually did any petting . . .Then a week later the class got to go to the beach and look for seashells. It was an all-day trip and she came home with a bucket of her "treasures", and a bag of wet clothes that she held out to me and told me they smelled like dog poop - nice! Thankfully her runners survived the washing machine . . .

Sports Day . . .

So I'm a little behind in posting on all the end of year school activities going on over here, so I'll just play catch-up for the next few posts.

After postponing due to bad weather a couple times, we ended up with a beautiful day for Sports Day! The girls tried hard and had lots of fun participating in all the events. Chantel got to fill in for the relay last minute and I ran in the parent relay too. And Justin and Alyssa lasted the whole day there too!

a "tying up loose ends" kinda day . . .

Today was not a busy day, but lots of little things that had been undone got done today. Like my garden got planted (finally!) and the older girls did a great job helping with the planting. And thanks to my wonderful hubby for taking the old soil away and bringing in some new "good" soil, and some starter plants, it might actually be successful this year! I also finished up some sewing that was started a long time ago, got a present sewn up for a little girl's birthday tomorrow, and went through some emails and reviewed a couple samples that had been mailed to me (also long overdue!). In the midst of my productiveness, the girls enjoyed lots of backyard time and played well together (hopefully that will continue throught the Summer months). I snapped a couple pics of the youngest ones playing inside.

VOTING STILL OPEN and the other pics . . .

So, voting is still open on our photo that made it into the finals of the Fuzzibunz photo contest. All you got to do is "like" the fuzzibunz fan page and then "like" the photo. Anyone can vote, as long as you have a Facebook profile. THANKS so much for taking the time to vote for us!!

Here's some of the other pics from our photo shoot that day . . .

PLEASE VOTE!!!

This picture is a finalist in an online contest for Fuzzi Bunz diapers. The winner gets 12 fuzzi bunz diapers!! The babes in the picture are a friends's little one, my niece, Justin, and my nephew. Please vote for the pic by clicking on this link and "like" the picture. THANK-YOU!!!

yogurt making . . .

Well this is something I thought I'd never do, but I made yogurt this week! Since it seems that Justin has a cows milk allergy, and he's a big eater, I thought I should add goats milk yogurt to his diet. But it cost $5 for a small unflavored little tub. Then I came accross a blog of home cooking, and some simple instructions to make yogurt in a slow cooker. And it worked!

So, here's my math:

2 cups of store bought goats milk yogurt = $5

8 cups of homemade goats milk yogurt = $5

My girls all like yogurt too, but it gets eaten up so fast around here that I rarely buy it. So I thought, why not? and made a batch for them too.

3 cup tub of cows milk yogurt = $3

8 cups of homemade cows milk yogurt = $3

The goats milk yogurt didn't seem to set properly, but after being in the fridge for half a day, it changed consistency and gelled up. The cows milk yogurt gelled up in the slow cooker already. I still have to add fruit and/or sweeteners because this is just a plain yogurt that it makes, but it's still a huge savings (and you can only buy goats milk yogurt unflavored anyways). And I did use the tip of adding the unflavored gelatin - I didn't want to take a chance that it would be too runny. So my kids are all happy, they can have yogurt everyday now if they want!

a little JP update . . .

Our little guy is sitting on his own now! He's also really close to crawling - he does his own made-up crawl, using only one arm and the knee and leg on the same side to scoot forward, while he reaches with his other arm for what he's trying to get to. This kid LOVES to get at things, he'll be crying in his crib just because he can't reach a toy through the bars, and he knocks the DVD player off its' shelf daily. He's also broken his first tooth, and loves to chomp on all his toys now.