neil young...

The same weekend of Clara's dance recital, Alex was in the tribute to Neil Young show...

I couldn't go on Saturday since I was at Clara's ballet presentation, but Jeff was there... along with FIVE teachers/staff members from Alex's school and my parents!!!  Thankfully, they did the same show again the next day and I was able to attend. 

I took a few photos, but lighting was tough...

And Jeff took some video for me on Saturday.  Here's Mr. Soul...

Alex played guitar on This Note's for You, played and sang on Sedan Delivery, sang only on Tonight's the Night and played and sang backup vocals on Time Fades Away.  He's totally hooked on being up on stage now :-)

dance recital...

The first weekend in June was a flurry of activity in our house!  Clara had a dance recital and her ballet final presentation and Alex had two days of shows for School of Rock.  Here are some the dance recital photos (Alex's photos to follow... I totally forgot my camera in the car for the ballet presentation).

For the look they wanted for the tap portion of the recital, Clara needed long hair.  Here she is with her hair extensions in...

 Their first song was "Heartbreaker" by Pat Benatar...

The long hair was pretty fun to flip around (but on a couple of occasions she got a little caught in it!)...

 And finally, tap to "Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy"...

It's funny how small Chicago can be sometimes!  One of the girls in her dance classes is homeschooled.  I had seen her mom's name through the homeschooling email loops for years, but we had never met.  Now, we no longer homeschool, but we crossed paths at this random small dance class!  Over the course of the year, Clara and the girl have become really good friends and enjoy swim-dates and sleepovers!  It's just funny that we had the chance to meet years ago, but it just actually happened this year.  There were two other moms from the class (and there were only four girls total in the original class) that I also had connections to as well!  One through scrapbooking and another who works with the children's choir director at church!  It's always fun to connect the dots!  Chicago can be such a small town... I actually really enjoy that!

kamp time!

Yes.... it's kamp time already!  I have to say that we were least prepared for kamp this year than we have EVER been.  It was insane how we were scrambling right up until putting them on the bus!

Look at these two...

You would think neither of them owned a brush!  Oh yeah... that's right... we TOTALLY forgot to pack brushes and combs!  We had to make a quick stop at Walgreens on our way to the bus to pick up all of the things we had forgotten to pack (brushes were only part of what we had forgotten).

The week leading up to kamp was crazy though.  They both had school until Friday and that was the day we needed to leave to get them to St. Louis.  Clara just had one hour of school (9-10) but Alex had a full day.  That meant we couldn't leave until after 3:30.  To complicate things further... Jeff was rear ended in our car on the way to take Alex to school.... so our one car had to go to the shop and we had to get a rental car big enough to carry two kids and two footlockers for our trip.

Clara had a great week with friends though.  An end of the year sleepover with school friends over the weekend, a playdate with one of her best friends and then a full day of swimming and sleepover with her friend from dance (in addition to only having one hour of school on Friday, she also had no school on Thursday).  We crammed in one last pre-kamp orthodontist appointment too.  Craziness.

Alex had a fantastic last week of school.  The last week was "boss level" which culminated in the CQ Olympics on Friday.  His homebase passed boss level and unlocked a new uniform shirt color for fall (purple!).  He also received a special award in the school awards ceremony... Best Minecraft Gamer!  He was pretty proud of that.  :-)

So, now they're gone and I have a million and one projects to fill my days without them here.  One of which is to finally get caught up with photos on here!

backing-up...

So, I finally got around to working on the pics I took on our weekend away in Michigan back in May.  Nothing too exciting though :-)

Jeff and the kids started out Saturday morning by going for a run.  The kids did a short loop around the resort and Jeff did a longer one.  At some point in the day, Jeff and Clara also went mountain biking (this is why I need to blog things right away... I forget details!).

Probably one of Alex's favorite things of the weekend was putting together our new grill...

The boy LIVES to assemble things.

Mango thoroughly enjoyed hanging out on the screened in porch.  Here is her royal highness, sitting on her pretty princess pillow, surveying her kingdom...

When Clara wasn't running or biking, she was playing Draw Something...

... not sure why she has my phone here.

Oh... also at some point, the kids went geocaching.  They wanted to go without us to see if they could make it back without getting lost... and they did!

Alex and I spent some time bird watching.  Birds were finally visiting the feeder I put up over Christmas break.  We went outside and observed for a bit.  As a reminder to myself.... I need to take one of our bird identification guides up there.

As you know from my instagram post, we went to the drive-in that night.

Here are the kids getting comfortable...

They really had it rough back there!

Getting their speaker set up...

I mentioned this in my post after we went the last time, that we thought we would try bringing a portable radio next time.  Well... we bought a cheap one to try out and it worked great!  We set it on the tailgate and we put our chairs right next to it.  We could hear perfectly!  Unlike last time when we went, when we couldn't hear a thing outside of the car and just watched Cars 2.

The kids have a great time while we're there.  They played on the playground for a while, then played a round of miniature golf.  They also won a soda in the raffle, which they split.

It was a quick trip, so on Sunday morning we got up and started cleaning so we could close everything up again.

While we were busy, Mango relaxed out on the porch some more...

 

We are slowly, but surely, making the place more "ours".  Back in February, I found one king Martha Stewart quilt on clearance at Macy's.  I thought it looked "cabin-y", so I got it for our bedroom...

 Then, when I checked the clearance table again in May, I found more quilts.

Two twins...

(I strongly dislike that lamp thingy... but until I find something better, it stays... I'm also getting over my dislike of the wicker headboards, but we just need to find a way to make them sturdier)

and a queen...

(not officially on the bed yet... no one used the queen this trip so there wasn't any reason to unmake the bed)

I didn't set out to have matching quilts on all of our beds... but with good sales and good fortune... it just turned out that way :-)