seven for the first summer saturday

#1 breakfast at Hippity Hop (IHop)

#2 buying women's size 7 rollerblades

where did those feet come from?

#3 facebook games #4 baking #5 Wii racing . #6 Carly cooking supper

. pigs-in-the-blanket and cheese grits #7 teaching Carly how to play gin rummy

. losing the bet of who got to take the picture

melty art

baseball...it's a family thing

{Kenny's coaching debut...

we had a really good team full of great kids

which made it a wonderful experience}

{Carly played short stop all season.

She got really good at catching fly balls}

{Batting was up and down but overall she hit the ball really well - she had lots of hits and even one homerun}

{Coach Kenny would be proud of that perfect fielding form}

{One last end of game huddle. It was really fun getting to know some of the boys better. They were all good kids.}

{What better way to wrap it all up....

ice cream at the Sonic}

{Carly agreed that it was a great season and

she was a little sad that it was over already!}

awards' day

Great Work Carly!

we are proud of all the work

that you put in this year

to earn all those A's!

field day

A couple of weeks ago, Carly came home and told me that they had been "practicing" field day events in PE. She talked about how well she did in this event and that. Then she came home a couple of days before field day and said "guess what I'm doing in field day?" Tug-of-war and Hippity Hop? "How did you know?" Because that is what you have done the last 2 years!

{hippity hop relay team}

A couple of years ago, after the first hippity hop race, Carly asked Santa for a hippity hop ball. Specifically she wanted a BIG hippity hop ball like the one at field day. Santa came through and Carly got her very own hippity hop ball which was a huge hit.

Having your very own hippity hop ball to practice on might be stacking the deck? Carly was the first leg. She was cracking me up. The other teams had not made the turn when she finished her leg! Forget baseball or tennis or basketball, we seriously need a school hippity hop relay team. We would ROCK! Needless to say, the team finished strong and won first!

I love to watch the tug-of-war. The kids are great but the parents & teachers cheering are even more fun! Carly's team won another blue ribbon.

**thanks Ginny for letting me hijack your camera

since I left mine at home and then

making me a disk...you're the best!

summer must be here

1st stop cherry

2nd stop lemon-lime

good bye 3rd grade

Wow, third grade is almost over!

Although they have to go back to school next week,

Friday was the end-of-school party.

We met up with the other 2 third grad classes at Skate Odyssey.

Skating rinks have not changed much since I was a kid.

What has changed is the surprising number of kids who

do not know how to skate.

Carly brought her own skates so she was the first one out.

She was one of only about a half dozen that brought her own roller blades. She was also one of the best skaters probably with the most skating experience. Carly has been skating since she was 3. I heard several kids say this was their first time to go skating.

Carly even commented that the arcade seemed to be more popular than skating. She said, "I wonder how much money they made in the arcade? I bet it was a lot." So we did some math and decided that the owners probably made more money in the arcade than what we paid to rent the skating rink. They probably also made as much in the concession stand.

add it to the list

I have a unwritten rule that you do not go to the zoo in May. It is over-run with end of the year field trips and can be miserably crowded. ....

Today, I have added another place to the list. I WILL not be going to CiCi's pizza in May again. We went for lunch before our end of the year party at the skating rink - along with 6 other groups! I was so overwhelmed that I didn't think about taking my camera out. It would have made a good picture with 6 different groups in their matching class t-shirts. It was like field day, inside! ....

Beside our table was an older man, probably in his 70's, sitting by himself. I asked him "I bet you didn't know you were getting into all of this did you?". He kind of laughed, shaking his head, and said "no, I would have kept driving!" Kinda the way I felt!

crawfish boil

{D and Josh - the guest of honor}

.

Josh has made it back to Clarksdale. We haven't seen him in about 2 years. The navy has been keeping him busy. He has done his time in Japan and is ready for a move to Korea. D and Celeste threw a party to welcome him back. There was family, some family friends and some of Josh's friends from college. There was lots of crawfish and fixin's as well as lots of ice cold beer. The rain held off for most of the day while we enjoyed eating and hanging out catching up with each other.

{dinner's cooking - it smells fabulous}

.

{co-cooker....the one with the heavy hand with the spices}

.

{D, Beege, Kenny, and Josh}

.

{dig in - the first pot is ready}

{Carly making friends}

muddigush*

Carly's class took their final field trip for this year to Memphis Botanic Gardens for a program about plants around the world.

MBG had 5 tents set up - Americas, Europe, Asia, Africa, and India - with activities for each.

{learning about sassafras tree and making root beer}

{stamping rice paper with vegetable dye to make hats}

{having a traditional Japanese tea ceremony}

{getting the run down of the Africa area which included snacks, making masks with coffee grinds, digging for diamonds, and taking a tour of the rainforest's green house"

{goofing around in India's tent}

*It had been raining for days and we went prepared for mud. MBG had done a good job trying to guide kids to concrete or well drained, grassy areas, but there was still lots of mucky areas. I kept thinking of a kids' book that Carly loved when she was little. It was called Muddigush by Kimberly Knutson. It was a poem with the refrain...

smucky mush, smaky mush

squooshy slooshy muddingush

wordless wednesday

april's books

• The Associate by John Grisham.....This was handed down to me after the girls' beach trip by my mom. She and a friend were reading it while we were there and finished it up about the same time. Both of their review were NOT glowing. I basically read it because I have read everything else he has written and had the book in my possession. Their reviews definitely did not convince me to read it. I don't think it was that bad. What I do think, and what I have said about the last several Grisham books is, it was over before it got started good. It needed another 100 pages. Grisham does such a great job introducing characters and background and then wraps the whole story up in a couple of pages. I keep thinking the next one he writes will return to his early works.
• Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer..... hmmmm? I ran across this at my favorite used book store. I was interested because of numerous glowing reviews by other bloggers. I'm still scratching my head. I don't know if I got it, but it did have lots of good quotes like - "I'm sorry for my inability to let unimportant things go, for my inability to hold on to the important things."
• Brass Verdict by Michael Connelly.....The Lincoln Lawyer is back and meets up with Detective Harry Bosch. I really like Michael Connelly. I think I am going to have to go back and read some of the early books in this series.
• Smoke Screen by Sandra Brown.....An easy read mystery with lots of twists and turns. A story about corruption and betrayal and of course a budding romance. The kind of book that I want to read when I have any down time and tends to get in the way of things like laundry and paperwork
• Lost Light by Michael Connelly.....After reading Brass Verdict at the first of the month, I knew that I would have to go back and check out another Connelly, and I don't think I have it out of my system yet. In this one, Detective Bosch has recently retired and becomes interested in an old, unsolved case.