There's Treasure Everywhere

Ellie had her half birthday party last week. She was SO excited that she made a paper chain to count down the days. Between her neighbor friends and school friends, we invited twelve girls. Our pool finally opened at the beginning on June, and they said they would be able to heat it starting on June 14th. Unfortunately that got changed to June 25, two days AFTER her party.

Even though the water was chilly, the girls all seemed to have a great time and stayed in the pool most of the time.

The day actually started out cold and rainy. I kept praying for sun, and the Lord was so gracious and gave us some beautiful sunshine.

The girls had a diving competition.

Ellie wanted cookies for dessert so we made chocolate-caramel-pretzel cookies and fudge crinkles. We also had gluten-free Oreos for Chloe.

Ellie had a great day celebrating with all of her friends!

To celebrate the beginning of summer, we had a beach day with our Double Peak friends.

We all have 8th graders, so it was a promotion celebration. We've been getting together at the park with these friends for the past few years. Usually we just do weekly park days during the summer, but during Covid, we did it all school year. It was so nice for the kids to get to see their friends and play outside even when they were stuck at home for school.

It's weird that they are officially highschoolers now.

Our school friends left the beach after a couple of hours, so we walked down the beach to the next lifeguard tower where our church friends meet every week. My friend took this picture of Ellie with her church friends. She was impressed with Ellie's perfect jump!

Joey and Ellie left the beach earlier than Hannah and me. They caught a ride home with some friends that live near us. Hannah and I stayed until dinner time. We grabbed In-N-Out and then headed home. It was a very long, fun day at the beach.

At the end of the school year, Hannah and Joey's education specialist, Mrs. Vaughn, and Ellie's teacher, Mrs. Pope, both contacted me to tell me that the kids had won awards and asked for pictures of them. I honestly didn't think much of it. I thought it was the kind of thing where every kid gets some kind of award. Later I found out that each teacher gives four awards a year. I was surprised that all three of the kids got one! The teachers sent out an online slideshow to present the awards. I took a screen shot of the kids' awards...

"Thinker Award"

"Achiever Award"

We were so blessed by The Classical Academy and the teachers in particular this year. Mrs. Vaughn was such a wonderful support, encouragement, and cheerleader for us as we started this homeschooling adventure. Since Joey and Hannah will be going to school in person next year, we won't have Mrs. Vaughn again, but we'll sure miss her. Ellie LOVED Mrs. Pope. She'll be on campus with her next year, so she's happy that she will still get to see her and say hi.

The end of school was very different this year. Since Hannah and Joey were 100% homeschooled, about six weeks before school ended, I told them that they could work really hard to get ahead and finish school early this year if they wanted to. Guess which one was all about that? It didn't surprise us at all that Hannah spent the next three weeks working extra hard and finished school three weeks early. Joey, on the other hand, decided to go mostly at the regular pace, and he just finished a few days early. Ellie, having school in person two days a week, wasn't able to completely finish early, but we worked hard to get her at-home assignments done a couple of weeks early. The girls' mornings looked like this starting towards the end of May.

They played a LOT of games.

Our pool was getting resurfaced, so we weren't able to have our annual "last day of school" pool party. It worked out though because Ellie's friend's mom ended up planning a big Classical Academy party at Sky Zone after their last day of in-person school. We had the whole place to ourselves, and it was so fun.

As you can see, the kids really enjoyed doing the big rock wall.

For Joey's 8th grade promotion, the school decided to do a "drive through" promotion in cars. Joey wasn't interested in that, so we just did our own celebration and went out to dinner.

He picked BJ's, and then we went home for ice cream and a movie night.

When Andy's dad was in 8th grade, his Gram gave him a really nice Cross pen with his name engraved on it. He still uses it to this day. He wanted to get Joey the same gift, so now Joey owns a beautiful pen and mechanical pencil with his name on them. Joey really loved the thoughtful gift.

Our good friends, the Spears, came down from LA to visit. They have five kids so there's no way we could have them stay overnight at our house, but we told them that if they came down to visit when Andy's parents were in Philadelphia, they could stay at their house. So that's what they did. It worked out so well! They got to our house Friday afternoon. We hung out and had dinner.

On Saturday they invited us over to Andy's parents house because they wanted to make us breakfast. I felt badly having them make us food on their mini vacation, but I'm so glad we let them because it was delicious. They made eggs, bacon, homemade scones and homemade clotted cream. We were in heaven! (I'm not sure why the lighting is so weird in this picture.)

After breakfast we headed down to Coronado for the day. Andy didn't come with us because his sprained ankle was still really sore and swollen.

It was supposed to be pretty cool and gloomy, but the first half of the day we actually had some beautiful sunny weather. That worked out well since we started the day at the Hotel del Coronado and beach. Once the clouds rolled in, we headed over to the other side of the island to the playground where you overlook downtown San Diego. We had a picnic lunch there, and then headed home.

Out of the eight girls, there were only three boys so they stuck together. They bonded over video games.

Andy even showed them the video game he's been working on. He showed them all the code that goes into a video game.

Then they tried playing it. Tucker's face lit up when he was playing. It was good feedback for the video game creator.

On Sunday, the Spears went to church with us, we went on a little hike after lunch, and then they pretty much hit the road. The weekend went by so fast, but it was so fun getting some good time with them!

I briefly mentioned Ellie's softball season in a previous post, but she had a blast playing softball this year. Her coach was really fun, she loved the other girls on the team, and she got to pitch. In fact, she was very proud of her bruises from pitching! Ellie has been wanting to pitch since she was in t-ball, so it was neat seeing her reach that longtime goal.

Her team wasn't great this season, and they finished in last place. However, once they got to the playoffs, they dominated. They ended up making it to the championship game and got second place. Ellie pitched in every game this season. In the championship game, she only let in two runs against a really, really good team, so she was very pleased. After the game we had a little end of the season pizza party.

Ellie was the youngest girl on the team and really loved getting to be friends with the older girls. They were all very sweet to her. It was definitely her favorite softball season ever.

Andy turned 42 this year. He took the day off of work so he started his day with two of his favorite activities...sleeping in and snuggling.

Ellie had school that morning so we had cinnamon rolls without her. I promised that I would bring her a warm, gooey cinnamon roll when I picked her up from school.