May

The girls have been loving doing a once a month baking class with Grandma Miller. Their last lesson was macaroons!! They were so excited to have Makenzie come too!

Makenzie made cake batter, Sophie salted caramel, and Lydia snickerdoodle. They were so delicious!

William has been enjoying playing and hanging out with Skywalker while the kids were at school. He is a little sad now that the kids are home all day haha.

Lydia learned about how plants grow at school and planted a morning glory to bring home. She did such a great job and we got to enjoy it blooming before we realized they were illegal in Arizona......how random! So sadly we had to get rid of it.

The last week of school the kindergartners got to have a drive in movie. They got to make their own box cars and Easton knew immediately he needed a red truck.

Then before we knew it the school year was over. And Easton graduated from Kindergarten.

He is so excited to be a first grader and even more excited Lydia's 2nd grade teacher moved to the 1st grade and he gets to have her!

Sophie's San Diego Field Trip

The fourth grade field trip is a 3 day trip to San Diego. It was pretty pricey at $400 a person and we told Sophie if she wanted to go she would have to earn half of the money herself. So she has been working a whole year on furniture and other random jobs and earned her money just in time!

The first day was traveling on the tour bus. Our tour guide Ali was so much fun and entertained the kids. Her previous job was a dolphin, sea lion, and orca  trainer on the East coast and she also rescued and treated wild sea life for release so she had so much cool info to tell the kids about! 

We stopped in Seaport Village for dinner and there was a cupcake shop that was on Cupcake Wars!

The next morning we got to play on the beach for a bit.

Then we headed to SeaWorld! One of our favorite parts was the cleaner fish. You stick your hand in and they swarm you and start eating off all of the dead skin off of your hand. It was like a fancy manicure!

We loved all of the shows and Sophie and her friend were splashed by the dolphins. Thank goodness for ponchos!

The roller coasters were so much fun. Sophie loved the Electric Eel so much we rode on that several times.

Then we all loaded up onto a fishing boat for a floating lab on the ocean! The kids got to throw a net in to see what they could catch on the bay floor.

They all had to work together to pull in the net. They caught lobster, crabs, a sting ray, shrimp, flat fish, sea slugs, a sea star, and some sea sponges. 

They put them into touch tanks for the kids to touch all of them. It was pretty cold when we got out to the open ocean but we did see a glimpse of a wild dolphin!

The next morning we went to seal beach. It was a special enclosed beach originally made for children but the seals proceeded to take over!

 

Our last stop before heading home was Scripps Aquarium. The kids had the opportunity to dissect a mackerel fish. Which Sophie wanted absolutely nothing to do with.

 

So we checked out the aquarium instead!

We had such a fun trip and I asked Sophie if she thought all the hard work was worth the trip.....she said absolutely! Now Lydia is looking forward to going in a couple of years!

April

Grumpa Miller passed away on April 5th. It was so nice to be able to visit him every week the past 2 years. And I am happy to know he is Dancing with my Grandma again. William loved his visits so much he keeps a picture of Grumpa on his dresser.

Thanks to Grandma and Grandpa Clayton and some awesome friends for taking our kids, Chad and I headed to California. We were able to visit Beach Boardwalk where my Grandma and Grumpa used to take us as kids.

It was so nice to see family and have all of the siblings together.

An accidental photo taken 10 years ago at my Grandma Miller's funeral turned into a tradition every time we were together for a funeral. 2009, 2017, and 2019. We will never understand why Scott was cut out of the first picture......

Easton turned 6 years old on April 18th! My favorite birthday tradition is having the kids decorate their own cake. Easton made a ocean side hotel complete with parking lot.

For his birthday present Chad worked hard to transform this old dresser into......

A birdcage for a parakeet he has been begging for since his last birthday!

We took him to the pet store and he picked out a beautiful blue parakeet. It is a baby so we are not sure if it is a boy or girl yet but he named the parakeet SkyWalker.

After a week of training, SkyWalker will hang out on Easton's shoulder! Easton just loves to walk around the house and hang out with his new friend.

For his birthday he also wanted to go camping. So we headed up to Mt Lemon. We had fun climbing rocks.

We also went hiking through a creek...

Then before we knew it it was Easter! The kids got new flip flops and goggles for the summer.

After church the family all came over for dinner and an egg hunt!