Summer Has Arrived!

And along with summer the heat and the mosquitoes have arrived too. Today is the first day of summer holidays for the five youngest. Their brother was finished on Thursday as he had no exams during exam week this semester, but rather in class exams and culminary projects. Peach writes her last exam tomorrow. She has a couple days off before she starts babysitting. Bub is life guarding this year. His hard work and the Engineer's hard earned money for classes have paid off and he has landed a job at our local pool where he has been swimming since he was three years old. His best friend is working there too. I do hope they behave and continue to commit to being responsible. On top of life guarding, he still works at our local library and does some farming (mostly haying). He won't have any time to get into trouble this summer!:o)

It's been a busy few weeks! I had some photography deadlines to meet, as well as other commitments that I was responsible for,  and there was lots of taxi--ing of children around from one thing to another.

Here are some of the last weeks of school in photographs in no particular order:

Accidentally overfilling the pool.

Beans and Squirt participated in the big track meet. This meet was a little warmer than the one two weeks earlier, but still not warm. They usually had on their sweats between events.

Safety day promoted by the Engineer's company. We had six of our children and four of our friend's children. They're discovering how heavy it is to carry an oxygen tank.

After learning to be safe we went to the animal farm and there was a LOT of lovin' on the baby goats.

All ten kids managed to fit in a workout too at the outdoor exercise center. :o)

Being dangerous! Thankfully Beans didn't follow him for once.

First dip in the still ice cold pool. They didn't last too long.

Speeches of thanks at the farewell tea for the girls' remedial teacher. She will be missed, but we'll still get to see her regularly.



Enjoying a class trip with the grade 3/4 classes at one of our nearby Provincial Parks.

Philippines Independence Day celebrations with family and friends and year two (already) home with our girls!

Top: 2011 in Borcay, Bottom: 2012 Home on the front porch



2013

Ube (purple yam root) cupcakes decorated to look like the Philippine flag. I made the cupcakes, the two oldest girls decorated them.

 

Some of our friends and family even learned tinikling. They were happy to try it until they realized that the bamboo poles don't just sit nicely on the ground.

Baseball tournament against some other Christian schools in our district. We won the pennant in the B division. The kids were all very pleased and surprised.

There was also a graduation ceremony that all the children sang at for their oldest schoolmates, but I didn't get any photos because Peanut was too tired to cooperate anymore. However, the next day there was lots of fun at the water park.

 Squirt finally got brave enough to try the slides.

 Bella

 Bright Eyes

 These two love to race each other. This was about the closest race. Guess who always won?

These two on the other hand are total clowns and were seeing who could go the slowest.

Everyone was exhausted that night (me included as I never pass up a good fast ride, but those stairs to get to the top get longer every year!!) Thankfully the next day was the very last day of school!

This is what the two oldest girls and I made today:

So much fun!

Happy Monday, Dear Readers!