Memorial Day Weekend

This had to be the best Memorial Day Weekend we have had, or at least that I can remember.  It was absolutely jam-packed.  We squeezed as much goodness into it that we could.
Saturday morning Joseph  & his Scout Den & Pack placed/replaced flags on the Veteran's tombstones at our town's cemetary.  Saturday afternoon we celebrated Joseph & Olivia's birthdays.  They are both winter babies but they wanted an outdoor party, so they had to wait months!

They wanted a bounce house/slide jumpy thing, so that's what we got.  Here they are before the parties began with some of their cousins.  Just before this pic,  a couple of our neighbors came over and got to enjoy the bounce house as well.  The wife is 61 years old and you should have seen her on this thing.  She even went down the slide!  Wish I had a picture of that!

My sweet 13 year old niece (above all the way to the right wearing black) out-did herself baking Olivia's birthday cake.  Would you look at this thing?  Too bad the pic is blurry, but it's still awesome.  It was 3 layers of chocolate goodness.

 
Joseph's cake:

Sunday morning bright and early we drove to Blue Hills for a hike.  We went with Peter's family & some friends.  It was the BEST hike.  We did part of the blue trail.  It took 2 hours --there were 14 of us, plus 2 dogs- for all of us to complete the hike.  It was CHALLENGING.  At least 3 times some of us had to go down on our bums because the side was so steep.  I can't wait to do it again!
 You can see Boston from the observation tower:

Monday morning between light rain showers we squeezed in our town's Memorial Day parade.  Every year the kids participate, every year they love it.

This year Joseph was granted the honor of holding the American Flag for his den.  We are so proud of him!

After the parade we went to a nice cook-out at the house of some good friends.  This ended our best weekend.  This morning was back to the real world.

Olivia's First Holy Communion

Yesterday was Olivia's First Communion.  

It was a beautiful day even though it rained the entire day.

Olivia with Father Chris.  He does the best kids mass.  The 930am at St. Mary's on Sundays is always packed because of him.  He loves kids.

We also celebrated our amazing godson Jamie on his First Communion.  

Cousins:  

Olivia and her godparents:

We celebrated the day with our very good friend Angie & her kids. Angie is Jamie's mom.  How lucky are we?  It was a great day!

I highly recommend having a 13 year old niece that bakes for you. She made that rockin pink chocolate cake (HUGE hit with all the kids--there are m&m's in the middle), brownies, and sugar cookies.  We are going to keep her.

God Bless Olivia and Jameson.

The Question Form

 Every single year my kids bring home the same form from school.  Same questions every year.  Drives me crazy.  Why can't they just refer to the previous year's answers?  Why don't they just write, "If there is anything else you would like to say that you haven't already, please write it down."  That way if something changed from year to year, your kid would be covered.

 Do they even look at these?

Dear School, Do you see these kids?  They are the nicest, sweetest kids EVER.  They function best in a kind, friendly environment.  They do like math, but just get to the point of it already!  40+ 48= 88, NOT 4 +10+ 40 + 8.  For God's sake!  

They ARE good in writing.  However, if you ask my son to write some paragraphs on fairy tales his eyes will glaze over and his hand will cramp and his brain will empty.  But have him write about cars, especially FORD F-150s or Land Rovers, and you will know more about those cars and their companies than you ever thought possible.  

And this girl?  She likes glitter.  And EOS lip balms, and class parties.   She also likes playing sports, but she's not in it to win a game, it's really more social hour for her.  She'll do her homework, but she will just give you the answer.  Ask her to DRAW out her answer and she will give you a dirty look.  I can't change that because I agree with her on that one. She has very little patience with redundancy.  So my advice? She will just give you the facts, and if you don't know how she got the answer, oh well.  God help her teacher with the MCAS next year.  Maybe I should write that on her form.

My house is not perfect, but that's just fine.

You know, my house is not perfect, (who's is???) but there are some really nice parts of it.   Half the time it's a disaster, but we still have friends over.  If I waited for my house to be perfect before we had anyone over, our friends would still be waiting 8 years later.  When they come over and use the pool with us in the summer, they would need to pee outside because I wouldn't be able to let them in.  They could use a tree.  We actually do have plenty of those…but we're not like that.  You're welcome.  

 Sure there is dust and our rugs could use another go with the vacuum right now, but some rooms have really good natural light!  And I really love my fireplace mantel we had done a few years ago.  Yes, our bathrooms are still original 1950s brown and pink tile (really???), but they're clean (usually) and only 2 of the 4 sides of our house have new cedar siding and you can't use our front door steps because they're breaking, use the side porch!  It's way nicer and more inviting anyway.  Plus our dog is always ready to attack our guests from that door.  In a nice way. Ahem.

My house will never be important enough to be in a magazine, and I'm OK with that.  It is important enough to have my friends and family in it though, and that makes it way better in my opinion.

Yes, that is a piece of green sea glass there…

See? Pink tiles.  I wasn't lying.  Great light though...

So, if you are one of those (and you know who you are!!!!) that doesn't think your house will measure up, just stop.  Have your friends over anyway!  They are your friends.  What are they gonna do?  Bite you?  They don't care what your house looks like.  They just want to be WITH YOU.

***If you do have a magazine worthy house, that is AWESOME, and I really want to see it, but I'm not talking to you.  I'm talking to the regular peeps who might be a little shy about their digs.  So, when can I come over?