Ben

And what has Ben been doing?  Well baseball ended last Monday.  They ended the season with a win against the number one team that had beaten them twice.  

 Handing out end of season plaques to the coaches and balls for the players.

 Autographing balls.

And guess what?  Soccer never ends!  Started a new summer series of games tonight.  One game a week for six weeks.

 But below is what Ben has really been spending time on.  Creating stop motion races with his diecast cars.

Sewing and Park

 Cutting out the pattern for her first sewing project -- a dress for Rosie.

 I asked Mollie Grace what she wanted to do for her birthday and she chose lunch at Chickfila and playing at Shelby Farms. (These pics are taken with my phone because I forgot my camera.)

 Annie is only about six inches off the ground but she thinks she's doing something super big.

 Project number 2 -- A nightgown for Rosie.

She has also made Rosie a pair of pajama pants and two throw pillows for Ben.  We had some leftover M&M fabric from a Halloween costume a couple of years ago and we re-purposed a Kyle Busch t-shirt that he had outgrown but didn't want to get rid of.

Mollie Grace's Birthday

In the busyness of practicum last week, I failed to post Mollie Grace's birthday pics.  She turned seven on Tuesday, but we did most of our celebrating on the Saturday before.

 She found a picture of a My Little Pony cake online that she wanted to copy.  It required fondant decorations.  This was our first time using fondant and they ad a very good time with it.  Kind of like edible playdoh.  We actually used our playdoh tools to cut, shape, and roll it.

 Adding ponies to the decorated cake.

 We had one of Mollie Grace's favorite meals, fajitas, and she decorated the table with ponies, pony plates, and pony napkins.

 So excited!

 Opening her card from Ben.

 He got her a gift card to Wal-Mart.

 A doll dress from Annie.

 This is a snowcone machine from John and me.

And a REAL sewing machine from Nana and Grandaddy!

CC Practicum

For three days this week I had to attend CC Practicum, which is training for CC tutors all over northwest Mississippi.  While I was in class, there were classes for the kids as well.  

Annie was in the nursery with several of her friends.  Her favorite thing they did was draw in shaving cream. 

Mollie Grace was in GeoDraw Camp which focused on U.S. geography.  They had lots of fun playing games and doing puzzles.  Her teacher sent me this pic of her from a dress up relay game they did.

 

 Ben's teacher Hollie loves to take pictures as much as I do so I have lots of pics of their class.  They were studying Life Science.

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 Today they borrowed the costumes from Mollie Grace's teacher and did a dress up relay, too.

The best part of camp for Ben was that his friend Graham was there.  He has not seen Graham since our last day of CC in April.

Zoo

We've been to the zoo lots of times, but yesterday we went with a group of friends which makes going to the zoo different.  Also, parts of Memphis are still without electricity from a big storm last weekend including the zoo.  Some of the big animals (lions, tigers, bears, etc) were not on exhibit for safety reasons because they couldn't power the electric fences.  We looked at a lot of smaller animals that we usually pass by without even a glance.  We also saw lots of new babies -- hippo, giraffe, and warthogs.

This picture is missing the sound.  They were all lined up on the fence howling at the wolves -- "Ah-oooooo!"

You can't see them in the picture, but the baby hippo, Winnie, and her mama were floating nearby.

 Group pic.

 Brought the trusty wagon with us.

 Ended the day with a swim in the fountain.

Annie knows how to take a picture.