Butterflies and Cars

In mid-April we went with some friends to the Natural History Muesum's Homeschool Day.  We spent some time looking at minerals and gems again, but the main event was the butterfly pavillion.  The kids took a ton of blurry pictures of the different butterflies they saw there, but I kept only these. 
   

This one was called a buckeye.

At home, we were finally ready to let our own butterflies go.  We had ordered them through somebody at park day, and it was fun to watch them grow and transform again.  The release was really cute - the butterflies climbed all over the kids, and one hung around our yard drinking from flowers for awhile.

   

  
Connor got to participate in his first Pinewood Derby at Cub Scouts.  He designed and built his car all by himself, although I don't know what assistance he had with the woodworking - they all did that at somebody else's house.  The green is supposed to be the Monster Soda symbol.  (I'm not sure why, but Connor thought that would be cool.)  His car did respectably well, and he had a great time!
  

  
Corinne started standing while holding on to things, and her siblings were very proud (so was she.)
   

  
Evan, Elise, and Connor did a couple weeks of swim lessons with some kids from our ward who run a swim school.  Connor learned some strokes, Evan just cried the whole time, and Elise had a major breakthrough!  She finally learned to put her face in the water and swim to the wall.  It was amazing how, once she got over the face-in-the-water thing, she just took off, and is now as pool safe as possible.  Yay Leesie!
  

  

  

For handwriting practice, I have Elise copy passages from her McGuffey Reader.  One day she picked this, so I had to send it to Grandma.
  

  
These were just cute.
   

Connor's Baptism, and the Murrays Visit!

This event really deserves more than one post, but I'm getting too far behind to be thorough!

Connor's baptism was in mid-April.  We talked about it a lot as he got older, and he felt like it was a choice he wanted to make, to follow Christ and "be a good man," as he cutely put it.  Kyle and Kelli very graciously offered to come down for the event, and I'm SO glad, since I think I would have gone nuts planning it on my own.  Here are the baptism pictures Kelli took with their fancy camera.  We had to take more than fifty to get one frameable one.  I mean, I guess I could have gone with the accurate pictures, but I didn't want to ;-)
  

   

  

  
We invited several of Connor's friends from school, and I was really surprised that four of them came.  They were all very sweet and seemed to have a good experience.  Ryan and I both gave talks. They were good talks, I think, but Evan was in a super bad mood and wanted me to hold him the whole time.  At the end of my talk on baptism, I put him down for a moment to bear my testimony.  As I closed, I saw the Bishop suddenly move behind me, and and turned to find that Evan had climbed the glass panel in front of the baptismal font, and was about to fall in.  Everybody thought that was pretty awesome, but Evan just got mad and embarrassed.  Luckily, a friend had candy, so I was able to bring him back just in time to see the baptism!  (A different friend had already taken an equally loud and fussy Corinne away.)  Connor looked so genuinely happy as he came up out of the water.  It was a tender moment.
   

Conducting Music

We took family pictures outside after the baptism, even though Evan was still pretty grumpy.  At least he's cute when he's mad.
  

Connor got scriptures as a baptism gift.

   
After we changed clothes, we all indulged Felix's train obsession with a trip to Travel Town.  Kelli got so many cute pictures, it was hard to pick which ones to keep.  (In case I didn't mention this before, credit for most of the good pictures in this post goes to Kelli,)
  

Kyle entertained the kids for forever on this lawn.  It was nice.

Two days before, when the Murrays arrived, we got to spend the evening with them and Kelli's sister-in-law and niece at Disneyland.  My little ones were especially impressed with the Pixar Parade this time around - even Corinne thought it was mesmerizing.  We spent Friday just hanging out and swimming.  Despite the cold water, Lincoln seemed to be delighted with the pool, it was super cute.
  

Tram = Best Ride at Disneyland

Pixar Parade

Us with Kelli's niece, Kim

My Favorite Picture Ever

Felix and Wiley are Buddies

Watching Butterflies

Elise tried to make a flower necklace, but it wouldn't hold together.

We were all sad to see Kyle, Kelli, Felix and Lincoln go.  They were a huge help, and made Connor's special day even special-er.  Elise made this elaborately wrapped gift the day they left.  I forget what was inside, but the wrapping took her over an hour.