At Ease.

It's the second week in to our summer vacation and we [or at least me] are feeling so much at ease. Waking up in the morning is nice and peaceful when you don't have four kids to hurry. I don't take this for granted I am aware of exactly how wonderful it is and I am savoring every easy morning. Our days are slower, more outdoors than in, with more freedom, more appreciating each other, well mostly. I'm still the referee more times than I would like to be, but it's all part of the show. We have been to the library several times already and all four of them are pretty happy self motivated little readers. They're getting in a whole lot of swimming too. I wish we had more time to fix up the side yard because I was dreaming of the perfect garden summer with vegetables and flowers and other good things but so far it's not to be. May was so busy and now we have a few other distractions that have been keeping our weekends all tied up.

We are looking forward to a couple of camping trips to our regular places and I just finished planning a Disneyland vacation for July. The last time we visited Disney was in 2005 when we had three kids and one on the way. It will be fun to see the biggest little princess ever meet the real fake princesses. The kids are especially excited about that trip because we added a few days to the end of it for a visit with my sister Alicia and her family. She lives about four hours south of us, close to the coast, in a beautiful part of our state with reputation for producing great California wine. Can't wait!

I never said May was bad, just extra extra busy in a way that made me [regrettably] dream of it being over. We kicked it all off May 1st with Tony's family reunion. This is just a tiny sampling, it was much much bigger than this little collage.



We celebrated Sarah's first communion. I love that she wore the same dress and crown that Emily wore, and that her Godmother Carmen gave her the hairdo. She's my first girl to get her ears pierced, she really wanted it done so we took her down to Claire's a few months ago. This is her with cousin Vicki on their special day.



That same day we watched our niece Caty get married to Wilson. Here we were as coordinated as we have ever been.



Sadly, I didn't get a photo of Caty and Wilson, it was just that kind of day.

Emily and Sarah both bridged up to the next level in scouting. After being a Daisy for one year a Brownie for three, Sarah is now a Junior Girl Scout. Emily is now a Cadette with seven years of Girl Scouts behind her!

Emily led her sister over the bridge!





I didn't think we would start anything new but Wyatt did start Boy Scouts last month. He brought home a flier way back in the fall and expressed a strong interest but I thought maybe he was too young and I also didn't want to add anything to our crowded plate at the time. I asked him to wait until he was seven and then maybe we could work it in. When he turned seven, my little elephant remembered this and kept asking about it. I soon found out that our little league coach was a leader and he gave us all the info we needed to get started. As luck would have it, Wyatt's den leader turns out to be someone that I have known for about six years through Girl Scouts [when I was leading Emily's troop] and also from my mom's club and also nursery school! So the whole Boy Scout thing, although foreign to me, seemed to fall into place in a way that seemed like it was meant to be. He really seems to like being part of the pack and so far it's not even taking that much of our time.

In my new role as Boy Scout mom I was pinned by my newly created Wolf Cub Scout [wow, the Girl Scouts don't do this!] I do kinda wish I wasn't looking so much like Cousin It.



Notice the little Wolf is now missing his top front teeth!



Bad news for me: my camera of only two years seems to have died for no good reason. I have been using Emily's camera, but this is devastating for me, I feel like I lost part of myself! I have desperately been wanting to order a laptop so this is really bad timing, what to do?

I hope your summer is off to a roaring start, or at least a warm sweet happy one. I'm going to post more to this neglected little space, especially if I ever get my laptop!