May, May, May, May part 2

The baby turned 7 on the 19th.  He's had an eventful year with his second go-around of Kindergarten.  He misses his friends from last year but his academic confidence is through the roof and he is reading really well.  He has been counting down the days until his birthday.  He is going to have a friend party later if I can get my act together.

Colter's birthday was on Sunday.  He helped dad plan the family Sunday lesson.  It was about the dudes in the scriptures who would memorize the scriptures and put the written word in a box on their head.  It became a status symbol, the bigger your box the closer to god.  Will had Colter dress up with a big box tied to his head to tell the story.  It was memorable for all the right reasons.

At school, Colter got to wear a crown and get a special prize from the prize box.  He had a good birthday.

Senior year is wrapping up for Lorien.  She still hasn't finished her electives to graduate...I am stressed out...she is not.  I keep telling people she started taking her Senior year off in July.  Please, please, please bless her to graduate.  Amen.

Lorien had her last art show at the high school.  She has done most of her art digitally on an iPad this year so I haven't been able to watch her process or see many of the end results.  It was lovely to attend the show and be surprised by all she had created.  She is so talented!

At the end of Lorien's freshman year, I dropped her off for school one morning and saw kids in a variety of bright colors.  Lorien explained a school tradition for the seniors called Greek Week.  The senior class is divided up into teams by color and get to participate in games every day.  I remember feeling like Lorien's senior year was really far away. 

Here we are at the last week of her senior year.  She is on the pink team and takes her team spirit very seriously.  She even freshened up her pink hair for the week.  She signed up to do the "find the flag in the sand" event.  The night before we had some friends, the Geertsens, over for dinner.  Their oldest son, Chase, had just returned from his mission in the Dominican Republic.  Will cooked a Dominican feast for us all to enjoy.  While we were visiting Greek Week came up.  Chase told the family about his senior year and how the person finding the flag for their team kind of blew the whole thing by taking too long to find the flag.  Lorien, who had been confident in her participation, was now fearing the worst.  Thankfully, she employed a tactic from her beachcombing days.  She figured the flag wouldn't be deep (since it was buried in the long jump pit on the track field) so she just used her hands as rakes and swished all over the sand.  She found the flag in seconds and won the game for her team.  Greek Week was a total success for Lorien.  She also made new friends and felt like her team was really unified and not snobby.  Win-win.

Will has been employing Colter to keep the back yard mowed.  He does a great job!