8th, 6th, and 2nd: Finished

Today (Thursday, June 15th) was the last day of school for Jay, Rose, and Amber! It seems like the entire country gets out of school before Washington State schools, haha. This year I didn't mind the late release day. Instead I savored the last few days in my quiet clean house while I could. Of course I was busy busy busy during each school day too, but the house stayed clean and quiet while I bustled around making phone calls, sending emails, doing housework, etc.

The last day of school always calls for pictures:

Jay is ready to say goodbye to middle school and hello to high school!

Rose finished her first year of middle school with kindness, patience, and style.

Last picture as a 6th grader.

Last picture as an 8th grader.

These are also the last "last day of school" pictures that we'll take on this front porch! CHANGE is a-brewing. It makes me nostalgic.

The last time we'll have two middle schoolers at once! I told them to act excited, haha.

Amber, ready to finish up 2nd grade with a school pool day, swimming at the public pool with her classmates. They sure know how to make the last week of school fun around here!

Amber's last day as a 2nd grader. My youngest child is now forming lifelong memories. I have very distinct memories from second grade. Wow.

And the end of school worksheets: We didn't fill last school year's pages out until August right before this school year started, so I was determined to get 'em done right away this time. They were all filled out with pictures stuck on by 8:15am on the last day of school. BOOM!

I love that all three kids want to be a teacher when they grow up. It's in their blood 3 generations deep!

Miscellaneous pictures from the week:

The beginning of the week was blazing hot, and then a windstorm cooled things off nicely.

My neighbor Jory bikes more intensely than I run. He is equally intense about documenting his bike rides. No runner is fast enough to slip past him without a selfie! Hahaha. When I appear in one of Jory's pictures, I call it being "Jory famous." 

I love how the kids still cluster around their Dad when he's looking at something.

The plumber plumbed up a storm at our new house this week!

What do you do with your leftover spaghetti noodles? I sauteed these beauties in sesame oil and added a splash of soy sauce, a squirt of sriracha sauce, and two eggs. Garnished with cilantro and a fresh cucumber and YUM, power lunch supreme! Not to mention that cool glass of my nourishing refreshing homemade strawberry lemon gingerade. Ginger is so kind to sensitive stomachs!

What does your Walmart sell? Sunnyside culture is so fun and funny all at once. I love it here.

Family art club weekly Zoom meetings are still going strong!

Since everyone else in my family had a summer haircut last week, I figured it was my turn. Nothing fancy, just a trim, but the lady sure blows and straightens my hair within an inch of its life! That's cute half-finished downtown Sunnyside behind me.

I went to cross country pre-season conditioning practice on Wednesday. I love running with these kids.

Jay gathered his hard-earned mowing money and purchased a Nintendo Switch Lite of his very own. It came in the mail on Wednesday. Our kids have very rarely purchased actual objects with their own money. Usually they buy a digital game or an e-book if they buy anything at all, so it was kind of fun to see Jay have tangible evidence of his HOURS and HOURS of mowing acres and acres of our new field-lawn.

The sisters had to hover and watch.

It is so nice to have a Pixel phone again. Nobody does cameras like the Google Pixel. This is one of my favorite scenes from our front porch: the rope swing lit up at the golden hour.

Warning: CUTE CAT PICTURE OVERLOAD AHEAD. On Sunday, Amber and Rose found two adorable orange kittens in our yard. It was the day after we saw a nasty mouse while weeding the blueberries at our new house. It was an easy decision--maybe a tad earlier than we wanted to get cats, but worth it for the cuteness! My heart of ice melted, and we decided to keep them (outdoor cats only for us due to mine and Jay's allergies, plus our current rental agreement says no pets). The kittens won all of our hearts over in about 30 seconds flat. On Monday, I bought them food and Jeff cut a hole in a box for their house on our front porch. On Tuesday morning, the kittens were gone! Before school, Amber and I searched all over the yard and beyond, but they were nowhere to be found. I texted our next door neighbors asking if they had seen two orange kittens, and they said "we are missing two orange kittens!" Turns out, the kittens belonged to our next door neighbors. Later that morning, they were found and returned. Amber was a little sad that we couldn't keep them, but very glad that they were home safe and sound. I told her we would get a cat when we move to our new house. Along with a bag of Meow Mix, our other souvenirs from our 36 hours of kitten ownership are several dozen adorable cat pictures:

Watching kittens explore and prowl in the grass is so cute.

Watching kids play with kittens is so cute.

Watching kittens play together is so cute.

Watching kittens drink milk is so cute.

Watching kittens eat food is so cute.

Everything they did was CUTE.

Cute Rose holding cute kittens?? Words fail me.