Natural Bridge, Virginia

Our next adventure we decided to go to Natural Bridge Virginia, to go to a Zoo there as well as the Natural Bridge.

Here is Sarah before we got very far on our journey. About an hour into our car ride she said "I am done", then she cried and cried for Daddy and screamed until we parked the car. It was such a fun experience!!!

At the Zoo we got to ACTUALLY RIDE A AFRICAN ELEPHANT!!!

Just in case you can not tell, I am very excited to ride this elephant...possibly more excited then my son! I just kept telling him...we are riding an elephant, we are riding an elephant....!

He thought he was on top of the world after doing that!

We saw a lot of other great animals too.

I will put up the photos from the Natural Bridge next!!

When the cats away the mice will play!!!

While Derick is away for training this time the kids and I decided to go back to see GG and Pops. It has been a great help while I am working and then on the weekends we have lots of plans to do fun things. We were here for 4th of July so we went to Nanny's pool and hung out with friends and family!!

Then Ryan and Jordan were able to pull a fast one on GG, Pops, and Katie.

The first few days with everyone we went swimming, enjoyed good food and dessert of course, and played with bubbles!!

My dad has this amazing garden that has been producing tons and tons of cucumbers so my mom and I decided to pickle some, it was fun but VERY stinky!

Dodgers-

We are not supporting the actual Dodgers, and we are all pretty upset with what is going on; however, we had to take advantage of the Friday night FIREWORKS!!! I remember as a child going to our local diamond and enjoying time with my siblings watching our local baseball team. Even with all of the issues going on withour local Dodger team we had to go and make memories with our family. It was fun, the kids were totally exhausted afterwards!!

End of the School Year!!

Kurtis ended the school year with a lot of projects. We had the international week, which we posted about a few posts ago. Then his teacher did a volcano lesson, and of course me being the mom that I am, said: "why don't we have a real exploding volcano Mrs. K?". Yes, so you know what that means, I went home and figured out how to make a paper mache volcano...I had a little help from wonderful family members and we got it done....and the class had a great experience having it explode not once, not twice, but thrice!! (**NOTE: Other out spoken mothers, if you need directions on how to make a volcano this is these are the directions I used http://www.ehow.com/how_2087490_make-papermache-volcano.html)

Finally for the end of the year we had a terrific Luau, the children performed a music stick number, we had a bridge that they crossed from T-K to Kindergarten, and we had a BUBBLEOLOGIST come and teach them about Bubbles!! Each child got to actually be in a HUGE bubble!! It was fascinating, I was even very interested in the details of how bubbles are made.

We appreciate the school and all the staff that helped Kurtis to grow, develop, and get ready for Kindergarten. We look forward to another great year next year!

What do you do when everyone has a vacation day???

We like to go bowling....but only in Los Angeles would you have a problem getting into the local bowling alley because they were filming a show of some sort. The children were very sad and then BRILLIANT Serene thought of this black light miniature golf place (can't remember the actual name right now...SERENE??). It was a lot of fun and we all had a great time!!

Past few Weeks...

The past few weeks have been very busy for all of us, we had Kurtis' International Week project at school, I was working in the office, Derick is wrapping up his school year at work, and it was Father and Sons campout as well. I don't have pictures of the camp out, although I heard they saw deer, poop, horse, and more poop. I also heard someone snored really loud, and men I can tell you it was Derick!! I do have pictures of us girls heading to the donut shop and park the morning before the boys got home!!!

The park was pretty empty so the little girls were very excited to actually get to rid the tire swing!

Here is Kurtis' Tongan Bulletin board for International Week (I know there are two pictures that look the same, but he kept making weird faces and I could not get a great photo. He never makes this pose either, but for some reason when I said pose like a Tongan this is what he thought of??). Kurtis' class chose part of his heritage and learned about the island of Tonga. Kurtis interviewed his Grandpa and we got lots of great stories about the Pikula Family that I was able to put onto a DVD! It was a lot of fun learning more about the cultures, food, and other exciting parts of Derick's family heritage. I am excited to hopefully learn more at the Pikula Family reunion this summer!!

Annual Trip to....

The car show....my favorite cars to go and see are cars like these

But mostly I love taking people with faces like these! They all loved the cars and had a great time!!

After the car time, Sarah had to have some dress up time. She not only can walk in these heels but can run in them. It is too funny!