Sweet girl
Juj and Mommy before the big show.
The whole gang is excited to watch her.
Here she goes!
Check out that footwork!
The routine was super cute and she did great.
Flowers for her great performance!
We actually had to leave the recital a few minutes early to get to her next performance! The girls had been rehearsing all spring for the play "The Lion King". Juliette was a lion cub and Abbey was a hyena.
Little lion cubs!
Abbey had some great lines in this play - silly hyena!
Both girls did awesome and it was really fun to watch them perform. They loved it!
In between all 3 kids playing soccer, we do get a little downtown to relax and read on the couch. These kids LOVE to read!
Ben is also into magic and he is training this little apprentice!
Ta-Da!
Matthew is quite the fan at the soccer games. You can often hear him cheering for his siblings on the sidelines. He has his own little chair and is often happiest watching the games when he has some food to eat while watching!
The girls walked in the Memorial Day parade with their Girl Scout troops.
One of the big parts of the parade is the village trucks that go by. The day after the parade I was out walking with Matthew and a village truck was driving by. Matthew was pointing at it showing it to me. Then the truck pulled over and this guy got out and gave this little replica of a village truck to Matthew! It was so sweet and Matthew was really enamored. What an awesome village we live in!
And spring time meant some summer hair cuts for the girls. Abbey had been growing her hair out and decided she wanted to chop it short, so she decided to donate her hair to Pantene, which collects hair to make wigs for kids with cancer. Here is her before picture...
Juliette also wanted a shorter cut, but her hair wasn't long enough to donate. But here is her before picture (with wet hair).
Cute!
Yikes! Look at all that hair Abbey donated!
Adorable.
And the start of summer meant our good friends, the O'Connors, came home from Singapore for the summer. One of the first things they did was their (now) annual lemonade stand! It was a highlight from last summer, so they decided to kick off this summer by doing it again.
I heard about a scavenger hunt around Arlington Heights that the local running store sponsored, so I got a sitter for Matthew (because it involved a lot of walking around the city) and the older 3 and I followed clues around the city, learned about the history of Arlington Heights, and had a really fun morning. Check out these guys being the statues by the library!
At North School Park.
In front of the statue of Dunton, who founded the city!
We then had lunch at the Irish restaurant in downtown.
And the scavenger hunt ended at Berry Yo with free frozen yogurt. It was a really fun adventure!
The start of summer also means our annual tradition of going strawberry picking. Matthew loved it, but most of his basket ended up being the tops of strawberries that he had eaten!
Ben and Matthew filling up their baskets.
Looking good Abbey!
Juliette and her strawberry load!
Check out our loot! We ended up having to freeze some of them (we use them in smoothies) because we left for vacation before we could finish them. But mostly, the kids just ate them up!
And of course we got apple donuts and frozen strawberry lemonade slushies for all our hard work picking!
Yum!
And to finish off the school year, we went out to a special dinner to Benihana (where they cook in front of you hibachi style) to celebrate an awesome school year these kids completed!
Matthew trying to use chop sticks.
The kids had a great school year and we were all excited for summer to start and to have some family downtime. I love when the kids are home for summer!
