First of all, Elena had her Sweet 16! The driving school had her file in the wrong pile and never called to arrange behind the wheel so no license yet, but she's getting close!
It's probably a good thing she'll have the extra time to drive as she recently had a minor car crash. We have much to be thankful for, though! Namely, that it happened on our property, no one was hurt and Seth was able to repair the damage fairly quickly. As Elena was pulling into the garage, she accidentally hit the gas instead of the brakes and drove into the back wall. She pushed the wall out quite a bit, but fortunately didn't go all the way through. And there were just a few minor scratches to the vehicle. Here's the back of the garage afterwards.
Two of our neighbors heard the crash and came running in a panic. The youngest 3 kids were in the car and completely unfazed. Olivia was just mad that she dropped her toy, and Charlie was fixated on a car sticker he was trying to attach to the back of our car. Our neighbor was in a panic, asking if we're ok and then he sees the kids just walk all "la-dee-da" into the house - with the exception of Charlie who was not to be distracted by the state of our garage or car. The whole time I was trying to check out the damage and attempting to get ahold of Seth (who was out of town), Charlie was chirping in the background, "Mom! Mom! Mom! How do I put this sticker on the car?" (The sticker did not get put on the car, for the record.)
Sam kept busy with baseball - he had a great season and has started up with summer rec baseball right on the heels of the school season ending. Below is a picture of his team after taking first place at a tournament. Also pictured: Sam's winnings in a poker match while up in the cities for state basketball. They used plastic silverware for chips.
Olivia has been busy this spring stacking towers out of cups, playing hide-and-seek (in which she will ask for your help in hiding her and then tell you to go look for her) and taking care of her dolls & animals. Our big goal for now is to get her to stop taking naps. She still can't quite make it through the day without a nap, but if she naps at all she can easily stay awake until 11:00 or 12:00 at night. And I really mean at all. Today she fell asleep in the 1 minute it took me to go upstairs for her pajamas. I immediately woke her up and that 1.5 minute nap kept her going long past bedtime. All of our kids went through this phase, but she's holding on way longer than the rest.
Charlie stays very busy running around the the pack of local boys. One of the big highlights of this spring for him was going to a graduation party featuring several very nice cars. Charlie is a car guy. I can't tell you anything about these cars, but he made sure to get several pictures of all of them and was excited the rest of the night.
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Frank finished up a successful year as a first grader. He was the first of our kids to ever be genuinely sad on the last day of school! He loves learning and spending time with his classmates every day. Below are a few pictures from his Spanish/Science teacher. One is of Frank and Sam on "Market Day" in Spanish class. The others are from when his class released a butterflies. Frank was deemed the "Butterfly Whisperer" as one butterfly seemed to really like Frank.
