Beach Day!

The first beach day of the summer! Every Thursday is beach day if anyone wants to join us. I haven't seen some of my girl peeps since we moved in November, so it was a fun reunion. Can't wait to get together with them every week! I have really missed them. My brother Joe's family are in town visiting from Utah this week. They all joined us today and burned their precious white, Utah skin. I just love the first burn of the summer. We all got pretty burned too. My kids have their grandma Merrill's skin and their burns are now gone and their tan has started...ok, and maybe cancer too! I know, I am bad, but you have to have a little color right?
This is our group today...

This is Spencer! He was getting too HOT and so he is hiding from the sun. Does that tell you what kind of day it was at the beach. It was so beautiful!!

This is Chelsea and her cute cousin Ashlyn. They are two peas in a pod!

Melanie was our body boarder today. She joined her older cousins in the freezing water. It is only June and still pretty cold out there.
But she had an absolute blast coming in with the waves.

Chelsea couldn't get enough of the water either. She doesn't know how to swim yet, so I won't let her do the whole body boarding thing yet. She goes in waist high though, which scares me sometimes. So glad we have lifeguards close by.

Be prepared to see more beach action in the future! Gotta love it!

4th Grade Top AR Reader

Back in April, Spencer received a HUGE award at his new school. It was for having the most AR Reading points for the month. What is AR? The kids read and complete a book; then they take a computerized comprehension test. Points are given based on the reading level and length of the book. This was out of all the 4th graders in the school. Pretty HUGE right? He got his picture taken and it was posted in the newsletter, library wall, and even in the yearbook.

Spencer LOVES to read, but he didn't always. A little background: In 1st grade, he was assessed and put into a reading resource class to help him develop his reading skills. In second grade, his teachers told us he wasn't fluent and he was suffering greatly. To get him to read, we told him that he could stay up later (past bedtime) if he was reading. We got him books he really enjoyed. It was the very funny series, 'Caption Underpants' that did it for him. He loved these books and loved staying up late reading. By the end of 2nd grade, he was re-assessed and they found that he no longer needed resource. He was excelling in reading and comprehension. Spencer just completed his 4th year of school this week and he is a total show off, reading on a junior high level.

Yesterday Spencer came home with a huge smile. He said he made the 100+ AR club in his class. Meaning all the kids in his class that got 100+ points for reading were going to have a special party. He was pretty excited! He had no idea how many points he made; he would find that out later.

Today at school Spencer's class had an AR reading awards ceremony. He was given an award for receiving the most AR points in his class for the year...250+. One of the boys in his class said, "He beat us all and he came to the school half way through the year."

We are very proud of Spencer today. It has been a good lesson for him, "If you want something bad enough, you have to practice".

Sky High Dance

Melanie has been taking a Hip Hop dance class with her friend Natalie after school for the past 7 weeks. She has loved it! Today was her BIG performance. I wasn't able to get a clear view of Melanie's face the entire time because she was in the back row. Their teacher couldn't be there for the show today, so they did the dance by memory. They did pretty well too. I also taped her practice performance last week, which I think is better. You can't see her at all in that video because she was in the front row, but at least you can see what the dance was like. This was the cutest thing ever! The MPR where they did their performance was just packed full with family and friends. What a great group!