Kids’ Open House

Lucia and her best friend Deirdre getting ready for the band concert.She got a new outfit for the occasionIn Sylvia’s classroom. She made so many friends this year! I was so worried about kids not accepting her, but they love her!  She’s been invited to numerous birthday parties this year. She’s made a lot of progress academically as well. She got into all of her Kindergarten 5 clubs. She really liked memorizing and reciting the nursery rhymes this year.  She loves her teacher Mrs. Fitzpatrick. She’s an excellent teacher. She also had lots of support from her two wonderful aides-Mrs. Guarducci and Mrs. Johnson and her OT and Speech Therapist. It’s amazing what kindergartners are expected to learn these days-reading multi-word books, adding and subtracting, counting by 2’s, 5’s, 10’s, writing complete sentences. They are pretty advanced. She’s ready for 1st grade!

Lucia and Mrs. Blake. It was so hot in her classroom, we didn’t linger very long in there. Lucia was a quiet student, but Mrs. Blake said, when she had something important to say, she would raise her hand and it was always very insightful. She doesn’t socialize much, but she has her best friend and a few other that are in her “comfort zone”. She enjoys playing tether ball at recess.  Lucia excelled to an 8th grade reading level this year. She enjoyed the Lemony Snickett series and finished all 13 books in 5 weeks! She is a reading machine! She still really enjoys art, but I think it’s taking a back seat to reading.  Another project she enjoyed this year was her mission report. We actually visited San Juan Bautista and so she had first hand experience.  I did art docent in her class this year and she had a wonderful group of kids. I really enjoyed spending time with them.

 Grandma and Grandpa came too.

Marco and Mrs. Komar (he was embarrassed about taking a picture, so she was talking him through it and bribing him). She is one enthusiastic teacher and she really loves kids! She really helped Marco to excell in reading this year as well. He went from a level J to a level N-right at grade level. Marco loves math and he loves to RUN! He runs at recess and every chance he gets outside. He’s not the most social kid either-but he has his running buddies. His class was almost all boys this year. Marco learned a lot about non-fictional texts and he did a research report on beavers-they actually typed it up on the computer, illustrated it and printed it out in book form! They are becoming techies at this school too!His life timeline.Marco was the 4th highest lap runner in the school and he got a medal for it at the assembly.Lucia and the band playing their last concert together.

I really enjoyed subbing at Trajan the last couple of months. I finally got my foot in the door there, so hopefully I will be able to sub there a lot more next year. I really love the students and staff there. It makes a huge difference! I might be biased, but the kids at Trajan are so much better than at other schools.

Tessa’s birthday

Tessa had her 3rd birthday on May 12th.  We went to Grandma’s house and the kids swam for the first time this year. It was cold! None of the adults got in the pool, but the kids had a great time!She’s not a baby anymore! She’s getting to be such a sassy little “three-nager”. She is quite bossy too. But, she’s so cute, it’s ok. And she knows it!  She is very picky about what she eats and wears. She hardly eats anything these days. She has to wear stretch pants every day. She still comes into our bed every morning around 5 am to snuggle with us and goes back to sleep until 8:30ish. She doesn’t nap though and likes to stay up late-past the time her siblings go to bed. She enjoys her time with me when it’s just the two of us in the mornings and the other kids are at school. She likes to go to Target and shop with me.  Here are some of her favorites (she’s telling me as I type it):

Color: purple

Animal: tiger

Food: ice cream

Book: Sofia the First

Toy: Dolls/Barbies

TV show: Minnie Mouse’s Christmas

Favorite place to go: Grandma’s house

Best friend: Cousin Riley

Eggs, candy, baskets, and more candy

Saturday-Easter egg hunt at Sun River Church. Marco got the most candy! It was free and we were in and out in an hour.

Easter morning-discovering their baskets-more candy.

In their Sunday best. They were not cooperating very well in the group shots.

Finally, Easter dinner with Grandma, Grandpa and Uncle B. They had ANOTHER egg hunt and MORE candy.

It was a great weekend.

Spring Break

Spring Break was just the thing we all needed! No schedule, no homework, sleeping in, playing, relaxing, spring cleaning-it was a good mix of them all!  We started off the weekend with two dinner parties-one with the missionaries and our new babysitter Sister Myers (she’s a widow in her 70s) and then we had a new family from our ward-our fellow Salvadorans, the Castillo’s on Sunday. It was a little bit stressful-I can’t have people over without stressing out, but it was nice.

Monday we slept in and did chores, then I took the kids to the mall to see the Easter Bunny-as seen in the earlier post-Sylvie was the only one who would sit on his lap. The kids had a sleepover at Grandma’s one night, played at the neighbor kids’ house one day, we went to the park with some friends another day. Went to the library and Costco another day.

Julio had a busy week traveling for work-Fresno, Stockton, Redding-so he took Thursday off and we went to Six Flags. It wasn’t crowded, the weather was good and we had a great time. Marco was disappointed because he couldn’t go on all the rollercoasters. Lucia went on a big rollercoaster by herself! Sylvia loved the spinning rides, and Tessa loved the carousel. Julio lost his keys some time during the day, but luckily, someone turned them in to the lost and found.

spinning!He barely fit!

They almost touched the giraffe!

After the white water rafting ride-they were soaked! I was glad I didn’t get on it!

The end-Sylvie was wet and cold, we were all tired and ready to go! But, we will be back. We got season passes so we can go all summer long!