June means the end of school.
The month is always jam-packed with all sorts of year-end activities.
The first weekend in June, I went away for an overnight with some girlfriends.
They took me to Spokane.
Never been there.
We ate dinner and wandered around.
We were accosted by some drunk Russians ("Hey! Hey you! You are beautiful. I am strong! I vill protect you! I am RUSSIAN!") and eventually found and ate Ben and Jerry's ice cream.
If you have never tried fried avocado, then you must.
Mmmmmm.
We stayed across from Riverfront Park.
The Spokane Falls makes its way wildly through the middle of the park.
It's pretty cool.
We stopped at this awesome little brunch place before heading home the next day.
They had Monte Cristo French Toast.
The picture says it all.
My friends found out that I had never stopped at an official truck stop. Ever.
So, they made a special detour.
Yay.
Back home to normal.
This is how Ralph spends the majority of his days.
He likes to stuff himself under my chair when I'm sitting at the computer.
It's pretty ridiculous because he can't get out of there without wiggling and squirming along the floor.
Very unbecoming for a dog his size.
Really, I don't get it.
His fuzzies feel nice on my feet though.
The second week of June, Katie took a field trip to middle school.
I also took a trip to middle school for a Parent Info Night......or two.
You see, the 2017-2018 middle school PTSA presidents had to make a presentation those evenings.
Yep, you guessed it.
Myself and a good pal of mine volunteered to lead the PTSA next year.
Ha! I'm such a sucker.
The end of that week brought Crazy Hat/Hair/Sock Day at the kids elementary school.
Katie chose this doozy from our varied hat collection.
She hates hats, but actually wore this ALL day.
That same day was Mikey's year-end field trip to the zoo.
I was able to be a chaperone and ride the bus with him.
It turned out that there were so many chaperones that I didn't actually have a group of kids to watch. I was assigned to Mikey and Mikey alone.
I asked if he wanted to hang with another group, but he told me that he wanted to just hang with me.
So, we went off and did our own thing.
Mikey grabbed a map (the kid LOVES maps) and we were on our way.
We stopped to watch a raptor show and we were able to take a picture with their new star, Annabelle, the pig.
She was super cute.
We actually saw her training for this role when we visited the zoo back in February.
This time the bird feeding room was open.
Mikey wasn't too sure about the birds....I think he was afraid of getting pecked.
Or pooped on.
But, he was sure about climbing in the kids play area.
We had a really good time on the zoo field trip.
I enjoy these one on one moments with Mikey.
We don't get to have very many.
He's getting older and most likely will NOT want to hold my hand much longer.
Gotta take advantage while I still can.
That Saturday was our last YMCA soccer game of the season.
We lost. Again.
The Blue Jays did not win one game this season.
But, I think, they all had fun.
That's what's most important, right?
RIGHT????
Next up was the Crohn's and Colitis Foundation's Take Steps walk.
Always a good time.
This time they had a picnic before the walk for kids who would be attending Camp Oasis.
At the walk they always have music, activities and fun stuff for the kids.
This year, we had some teammates!
Forever Friends - Logan and Sienna - and my co-PTSA-president pal, Kerri.
Oh and Ralph's BFF, Wicki.
Katie made a new friend at the Camp Oasis picnic and walked most of the route with him.
I wonder what they were talking about.....they were laughing a lot.
At this point in the month, there were two weeks left of school.
The official last day was June 26th because of a few snow-days we had this year.
This year, since the 5th graders would be leaving elementary and moving on to middle school, they got to have an End-of-Year/Moving-On party of their own.
It was held at a local park and included many super-fun activities, food and music.
I think Katie had the most fun just hanging out with her best friends.
Here she is with one.
And here she is with a few others.
Just silly.
I was able to volunteer to help out at the party.
My main job was to help with the obstacle course, but I soon found myself acting as DJ when the kids decided to try to mess with the speaker.
These 5th grade girls know how to party....
On Father's Day, Ralph tried to eat a baby bird.
Really, he did.
It was learning how to fly and was stuck on the ground.
He found it and pounced on it.
I was able to break it up before the bird was made into second breakfast.
He wasn't dead, but he was hurt.
I'm pretty sure Ralph broke its leg.
I picked it up and put it in a box to take to our local wild animal rescue.
When I came home from the animal rescue place, as punishment, I cleaned Ralph's ears and teeth.
He'll lay still, likes the attention and, of course, the taste of the toothpaste, but still is not exactly happy about the whole "cleaning" part.
Katie was able to get one strawberry from our plants in the backyard.
She hid this one under a leaf so Ralph couldn't find it/eat it.
Even though it was SO small, she was happy.
Mikey began consistently working out with Huzbend this month.
He was very proud that he could do pull ups with no help.
We had a parents-night-out that weekend.
We got together with our neighbors for another murder mystery dinner thingie.
Each person gets a character and over the course of the dinner you act out your part and try to figure out who the murderer is.
This one was set in 1984 at a ski resort.
Huzbend was a private eye and I was his daughter. Ew.
The picture speaks for itself.
The last full week of school was upon us.
This meant LOTS of goodbye assemblies.
First, there was a general good-bye assembly for the whole school.
Goodbye to the 5th and 6th graders moving on to middle school, goodbye to the teachers retiring or moving to new schools, goodbye to the Hi-Cap program moving to another school and goodbye to all the kids that have to move to new schools due to boundary changes.
PHEW!
That evening was a goodbye Potluck event.
My children were once again PTA orphans as I helped to organize the potluck tables, restock pizza slices and help answer questions on a tour of the school for incoming families.
After everyone left for the evening, the kids and I took a hike in the woods behind the school.
There were some nice trails back there.
The next day was the 5th Grade Moving On Assembly.
Each kid took a minute to read a paragraph that they had written about their time at the school, a memory they had or a thank you.
After everyone had made their speeches, the teachers from the school lined up and all the kids got hugs/high fives.
Katie hugging one of her favorite teachers.
Friday, the 23rd, was Katie's last day of elementary school.
It was also Field Day.
The first event I was in charge of was Frisbee toss.
My first group of the day included Mikey and his 1st/2nd grade classmates (he was in a split class).
He was happy and so was I.
I really like Field Day.
After the first half of the day, I was released to find myself some lunch and relax my voice.
(There's a lot of yelling at Field Day - directions and such.)
I headed to Mikey's classroom to eat with him.
He had face paint on. He was an otter.
Which, incidentally, was the subject of his year-end "Animal Report".
We also took that opportunity to pass out treats for his summer birthday.
This is what happened when you give kazoos to a bunch of 1st/2nd graders....
It was time to head back out to the field for the big kids session.
But, first, a pic of Mikey with service-dog-in-training, Rhoda, asleep on her bed.
For the afternoon, I was in charge of Shoe Kick.
You can get an idea of what it entails from the picture below.
That's Katie's shoe right there in the middle of the screen.
Her group was all girls. Which was really weird.
I called them "The Amazons of Themiscyra".
They seemed to think that was funny.
After Field Day, I rushed home so that I could take this picture.
Katie and Mikey getting off the bus together for the last time (at least until maybe high school).
Sniff-sniff.
She was so excited to be done with elementary school that she did an impromptu run through the sprinklers.
SO HAPPY!
Continuing with the happy vibe, on the way to Camp Oasis the next day, I spotted this from the car.
A super-rare "rainbow cloud" (aka irridescent cloud).
Drop off time!
Katie LOVES Camp Oasis, a camp for kids with Crohn's and Colitis.
Katie was just a little excited.
She practically ran to get to her cabin.
"Okay, Mom, you can go now."
I was summarily dismissed after helping her set up her bed.
I asked, "Um...don't you want to say goodbye to Daddy and Mikey?"
"Oh! Ooops. Yeah."
A quick hug goodbye and then.....
...she sprinted back to the cabin to hang with her Camp Oasis friends.
It was a bummer for Mikey, but he still had the last day of school to attend that Monday, the 26th.
It was only a two hour day, so no biggie.
But, because I was going to pick Mikey up from school that afternoon, this was the last time at the bus stop.
Next year, our neighborhood will attend a new elementary school due to boundary changes.
There's no word if we'll have bus service.
So, this was Mikey's last bus stop and also Ralph's last bus stop.
I think Ralph will miss it more than Mikey.
Ralph always gets love at the bus stop.
The official END OF SCHOOL.
Before the bell rang, I walked around saying goodbye to all the teachers and staff that I got to know so well over these 6 years.
Lots of tears and hugs.
It was pretty overwhelming.
The bell rang and Mikey gave a big goodbye hug to his favorite teacher, Mrs. T and favorite service-dog-in-training, Rhoda.
School was officially over.
The rest of the week, it was just me and Mikey.
The afternoon of the last day of school, I took him to see the Capt. Underpants movie.
It was really funny and we both enjoyed it.
We spent time doing errands (when aren't there errands to do?) and having fun.
We took a hike at a local park.
We brought Ralph along as well.
He had fun "swimming" in streams and barking at baby ducks.
Mikey made me climb this humongous hill.
I looked just like Ralph in this picture by the time we got to the top.....
We also had nerf gun fights and sword battles galore.
The day before we had to pick up Katie, we went to the movies to see Cars 3 and then I took him to lunch at Panera.
We don't get to eat at Panera anymore due to celiac.
I'm totally fine with this as I am NOT a big fan of Panera.
BUT, Mikey LOVES their mac n' cheese.
He asked me to get him an adult sized portion.
For the record, he did NOT finish the whole bowl.
Kinda shocking.
