Renfrew Field Trip

Nolan got to go on his very first school field trip on Thursday, May 11th. He was very excited about it! Unfortunatley it rained the whole day, but they were all troopers and still enjoyed themselves. They went to Renfrew Park & Museum up in Pennsylvania and learned all about nature and old-fashioned farm life for the day.

Here is what his teacher Ms. Austin had to say about the day...

You have amazing kids,  we had a great time today at Renfrew!  Not a single complaint about the rain, or being wet, or cold. They all just loved the experience!   

It was not exactly what was planned but I know everyone learned a lot today about nature and how to use your five senses when out in the woods.   We used our ears and heard water, birds, rain...  more rain....  and a little bit more rain. We used our sense of touch and found all kinds of cool things that had different textures. We used our sense of smell and made mud sundaes  (oh that mud part was very easy). We even used our eyes to find things with cool "dentist" mirrors! We tasted a gift from the sun  (raisins).  

What an amazing morning!  

We then ate and spent the afternoon inside. We spent the afternoon learning about farms long ago.  We got to put on clothes from long ago, play with toys from long ago and even did some sewing!  It was a lot of fun!

Munchkins with Mom

Paramount Elementary held their annual "Munchkins with Mom" event on Wednesday, May 10th. I love going to these events and seeing the huge turnout of moms/grandmas/mother-like-figures there. This was my last time to go with Abby (sniff!) and my first time to go with Nolan! It has been so nice to have all three of the older kids at the same school this year. I will miss it!

I am so grateful for these wonderful children in my life (plus little Maylie at home too!) I feel blessed to be their mom. Our life isn't perfect, but it is good...very, very good!

T-Baller in the House!

We have our very first little T-Baller in our house this Spring...

He had to choose between soccer and T-Ball and decided to go with the latter. I think his love of Gatorade may have been the deciding factor in his choice. I let the kids have Gatorade during their sporting games and baseball has more actual games than soccer!

He really enjoys going to all of his practices and games. The weather hasn't cooperated for too many of his games lately but hopefully he'll get some more playing time in soon.

He came up with this particular pose all by himself!

Jason is his coach which makes it even more fun for Nolan. I'm not sure how much fun Jason is having with this level of coaching, but he endures it well!

With our crazy schedule lately, I was finally able to make it to his first T-Ball game on Tuesday, May 9th and got some pictures of our little baller in action! 

Go, Nolan, go!

This level is pretty much chaos the whole time but it sure is fun to watch!

Great Wolf Lodge

A few months ago, my sisters and I decided to do a weekend trip to Great Wolf Lodge in Williamsburg, Virginia with all of our families. I decided to keep it a surprise for our kids and they were pretty shocked when I pulled them out from school at 11:30 a.m. on Friday, May 5th. Truth be told, the surprise was kind of a bust. My kids are planners (like their Mom!) and were sad about the things they would be missing at school that afternoon. However, the closer we got to the Lodge over the 3-hour drive, the more excited they became. 

Especially when they saw this sight greeting us at the entry...

We checked right into our room which was a Kids Cabin Suite. It had a set of bunkbeds and a twin bed in a separate little area with its own TV. We put Maylie's pack-n-play in there too so all four kids had their own space which was really nice.

We got there at the exact same time as my sister Tasha and her family and an hour later Lara arrived with her family. We immediately changed into our swimsuits and played for several hours in the indoor water park. 

This place was a blast and all the kids went down multiple water slides during our stay. We also enjoyed that floating river seen below and the wave pool too.

After a few hours of swimming, we headed to the onsite restaurant called "The Loose Moose Bar & Grill" where we enjoyed a yummy buffet dinner.

As we were leaving the restaurant, we caught their nightly show in the lobby. To be honest, it was a bit creepy with some pretty interesting looking animatronics. They sang this one song with the chorus saying "There's nothing to be scare of here." I think they were talking about their creepy puppets!

The next morning we got to the water park right when it opened and enjoyed lots more time swimming, sliding and splashing around with cousins. Some of the cousins decided they were done around lunch and went around to other things but our little family ended up staying at the water park until 3 p.m. and then changed to get ready for souvenir shopping and dinner.

After another nice family meal at the restaurant across the street called "The Huntsman's Grill" we started our drive back home. It was such a fun way to spend the weekend and Great Wolf Lodge is definitely a place we would love to visit again!

Chorus Concert

Right after Abby finished the 24 Competition at Hagerstown Community College, we headed straight over to Paramount Elementary for her last Chorus concert. She has really enjoyed singing in Chorus these last two years and it is hard to believe that she is done with that for now.

She even had a solo that night which she did amazing on!

Here are all the 5th grade chorus students. I will sure miss hearing all of these wonderfully talented singers next year. 

Here is Abby with her chorus teacher, Mrs. Sullivan. She has done an amazing job with these kids and they really shine with their singing talents. I am so grateful for these wonderful teachers who are great at what they do and inspire their students to do amazing things!

24 Competition

If you haven't heard of the game "24," you really should! It is a fun math game where you are presented a card with four different whole numbers or fractions and have to figure out a way to make the number 24 using addition, subtraction, multiplication, or division. Abby has loved this game for a long time and is really good at it.

All that work paid off when she was invited to be one of four 5th graders to represent Paramount Elementary at the Washington County 24 competition held on Thursday, May 4th. 

Here is the whole team from Paramount Elementary. The 5th graders are on the bottom row and four 4th graders on the top row.

There were about 200 participants total from all of the different Elementary schools and the competition was pretty intense!

Each table had four competitors for the first two rounds which lasted 10 minutes each. There is Abby in the back corner...

After the first two rounds, they announced who the top 16 students were from each grade. And Abby made it!! Not only Abby but her entire team from Paramount made the top 16. Pretty impressive!!

That was as far as she went, although one student from Paramount made the top 4 cutoff for the next round. 

What a great group of kids and teachers who have worked with them this year, including our favorite principal, Mrs. Wolford in the back left.

Great job Paramount Panthers!

Kindergarten Fun!

Nolan has been busy in lots of different Kindergarten activities lately. He got to paint his very own "USA" shirt this week...

Practiced his batting skills during indoor recess...

And even perfected his gymnastics skills during P.E.!

Nolan doesn't love school the way that Landon and Abby do, but he has found his groove and enjoys his teacher and classmates a lot. Let's just hope he still wants to go back after summer vacation!