The Early Summer Days

Things at the Day house have been busy! We came home from Grandma Annie's house and hit the road sprinting into the last week of school and a million activities! I missed the lazy days of just sitting around talking with my sister, Eliza, and mom and cousins. Eleanor missed her cousin, Ammon, who she played with non-stop for a week! It was good to come home and see my boys, though! We missed them, but I think they REALLY missed us!
So now we are in summer! We have slowed down just a little. Does it ever slow down with four children, two home businesses and church callings? But summer is here and Summertime is all about being in your pajamas for days..... Dad and Eleanor and Savannah on the last day of Flint Hill....Dad got to be a parent, not a teacher that day and watch Xander graduate from the lower school and Garrett get promoted to third grade! Painting...painting....and more painting...we switched the rooms around and got rid of the "playroom" and now Xander and Garrett will have their own rooms and the girls get the biggest room...can you tell how happy Dad is about my crazy idea?

The room situation was horrendous! We could never keep the playroom clean, because 1. It is small and 2. We had too many toys and things. Here's the stuff we got rid of from the playroom. It ended up being 12 contractor sized bags of clothes and toys and STUFF~I finally had to come to the decision to just get rid of most of the toys. We had too many and I kept saving toys for the next little one. So, here's my rationale...I will buy a new one if I miss it soooooo much that I am mad I got rid of it. It was therapeutic and exhilarating to purge! Amazingly enough, we have not missed ANY of the toys we got rid of! Eleanor and Savannah have some toys and Garrett has the boy toys in his room. We will see how it all works out when everyone is moved in. We are still painting....painting.....painting....whew~!

Summertime is all about sitting outside watching the clouds go by - and in my children's case, drawing~

Eleanor had her first violin recital! She did awesome! She got up, great posture, good bow hold and smiled just like a princess at the audience! She played the entire song and bowed like she'd been on stage forever! We were so proud of her! She even got a bouquet of flowers from mom for doing so well! Good job Eleanor!

Savannah turned 9 months old on June 5th - the last day of school. She is a funny little thing! She knows how to turn on the charm for everyone and the kids love her! She gets so excited when she sees them. She is, however, a momma's girl and lets everyone know how much she hates to be taken away from her mom! Here she is sporting some of Eleanors sunglasses and jewels....

When did she get to be so big? She is so grown up!

Here is Garrett with Mrs. Hoff, his teacher. He loves her and had a great year~ can he really be going into third grade? Xander graduated from the Lower School and will be going into 5th grade/middle school this fall. Talk about growing up! He is almost as tall as I am and getting to be a young man, not a boy anymore. It really was just yesterday when I held him in my arms! Now he's in middle school!

Eleanor also graduated from Preschool. Here she is with her teachers, Mrs. Grudi....

And Mrs. Skopowski.....

When we went to Utah to visit Grandma Annie, every night we would listen to her tell a story about Willie the Billy Goat. Eleanor, Savannah and I went to the farm the other day and Eleanor was thrilled to see Willie's cousins, Millie, Billy and Trilly. She told them all about Willie, though all they wanted to do was eat her clothes. It was hysterical to see how much she talked about Willie to these goats!

Part of the fourth grade tradition is to put on a concert complete with drumming and singing and dancing. Xander was really good at it and loved it.

We also celebrated Garrett's 8th birthday with a swimming party. He had a great time and the kids loved being able to jump on Mr. Day in the water! The buffalo cake turned out quite nicely, if I do say so myself!

Big sister and little sister...they love each other!

So...that's what has been keeping us busy! I also spent time doing a lot of flowers...weddings, a funeral, stake conference, school boutonnieres, recital bouquets, etc. We are looking forward to summer days at the pool!