New Haircut.

Opening Day at Knoebel's.

Oh. My. Goodness.  The awards party for the swim team was held at Knoebel's on opening day.  "What a great idea!" I thought, not for a moment considering that they were giving away 2-for-1 handstamps.  The weather wasn't rainy (for a change) but not terribly warm.  What WAS terrible was the crowds, however.  I have never seen such crowds there and I hope I never do again.  We were averaging two rides an hour.  Theresa waited for an hour and twenty minutes to ride the Impulse, one of the newest attractions.  There's no fun in that - for me, anyway.  

Although there was a bit of disapointment about why we couldn't go on certain rides, the kids still had a good time.  We began as we always do, with Mom taking mug shots of everybody for "missing child" purposes.

One of the rides we didn't have to wait for was the carousel.

She went for the brass ring.  I caught it. Heh heh.

Phil was big enough to go on some more adventurous rides this year.  I didn't get many good pictures but he really did enjoy himself.

Scott & Scarlett.

Watercolors.

Clare started taking a watercolor class in March, and after her lessons I make her teach me what she's learning.  When Sarah's birthday approached, we came up with the idea of each painting her a small watercolor.  Sarah likes birds, and trees, so  we centered our works of art around those themes.  

Here are all three paintings, along with the floppy sun hat we also gave Sarah.

Theresa opted for a simple bird and branch silhouette on a sponged yellow background.

Clare's has a tree done in watercolor pencil in front of a moody, dramatic background.  She wished, afterward, that she hadn't put the bird in.

I (Michele) copied a really cool picture I found on the internet with a variety of multicolored birds in the branches.

And of course, we painted Philip.

Now Playing on the Big Screen.

When Sarah was in town, she took her little sibs to see Zootopia.  This was Philip's first experience at the movies, and he was entranced - for the first 30 minutes.  After that he wanted to go outside, like usual.  I had to ply him with a box of Sour Patch Kids and a soda to get him to stay in the theater for the duration of the movie.
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