Normal with a Dash of Unusual

This week has been so  busy and it is only Wednesday, but the kids have had some fun things happening at school that I couldn't help but blog.  It will be nice to have this weekend for  family "getaway" time before heading into the last week of school. This will be a lengthy post since I have decided to combine all the events into one entry.  So hold on and enjoy the ride!

We started this week with the 86th birthday party of my father-in-law.  It was a nice family dinner with ALL of my hubby's siblings here to help celebrate.  It was nice to see his sister and her husband come from Utah for the weekend.  I also was finally able to see a niece and her new baby.  They live in Utah as well and the baby is already 6 months old.  She was named the same as my youngest, so K has always thought that was just way too cool.  I meant to get a picture of both K's together...good thing Em did.  Anyway, we had a nice time visiting and having the cousins play.

The 2 K's

J was chosen again this year to participate in the District 49 Track Meet.  It is for 4th and 5th grades from all the schools in the district.  The kids have to try out and then the PE teacher picks who will compete in which event.  It was a nice day for it considering that our weather has been a little on the crazy side these days.  It was held at the high school near our home so the kids walked to the track.  This year J did the 4X100 Relay again and tried her hand at the Long Jump.  She jumped 9 feet 3 inches. For the relay, we have some very fast girls in 5th grade, J being one of them.  They placed 1st in their heat and went on to the finals.  Their fastest girl hurt her ankle so another girl was put in her place to run in the final.  She is fast too and was quite bummed when she wasn't chosen to run in an event.  So she was very happy to run and they did fantastic, placing 2nd by a hair!!!  I was not at the finish line since I was taking pictures of J handing off to the last runner, but the teachers from our school were and they said it was pretty close to a tie but that our girl was first.  But the guy in charge (not from either 2 schools) gave it to the other school.  That is okay--the girls did so great.

Now let's throw in some "unusual"----this was spotted going over a wall in my neighborhood on Monday...

Yes, that is a BLACK BEAR and yes it ended up at the high school's soccer field around the time school started.  Not sure what happened to it cuz I can't seem to find anything in the news about it, but it was definitely a bear and it was not far from my house.  I didn't see it, but the secretary at the elementary saw it on her way to school and took this picture of it. Crazy!!

Monday night as we were having FHE, all of a sudden we saw flashes and heard thunder and then rain and then hail......

Can we stop already with the bad weather--when is summer going to come around?  It lasted only about 30 minutes, but still.

Also, as I was driving home from seminary on Tuesday I saw this flying by......

A HERON.....I have never seen one of these in this area before and it looked quite bizarre flying in the cloudy, foggy early morning hours.  It perched on a roof peak of a house and I so wish I had my camera to capture his "largeness".

Now, back to the normal.......Field Days!  Yes, that is plural.  They divide up the grades and split them into two days so it is more manageable.  And my girls just happen to be far enough apart in their grades that they fall on different days.  I have done it when they were on the same day and I had to keep going back and forth to see them in their events and take pictures.  That was back when K was a toddler and so I had to keep track of her as well, so it was much harder.  Now, I get to spend 2 mornings out in the beautiful sun and I can just walk with one class.  However, K's field day was foggy and the ground was wet from the rainstorm the night before.  But the kids still had a great time and it ended up burning off and getting a bit warmer as the morning wore on. Now the next day for J's field day it was nice and sunny and the rain held off until after lunch-thank goodness.

K's Field Day

J's Field Day

Also, T had his Track Banquet where he "lettered".  He was so totally thrilled that he finally did it after only 2 seasons.  You have to go to so many varsity meets and throw well to get enough points to letter.  Since he qualified for districts last weekend, that put him over---Hurray! He also was voted Most Improved and got a trophy.  He really did a fantastic job this season.   He now has a sports letter to go with his academic letter he earned last semester for a 3.5 GPA or higher.  I didn't post about that, but after that assembly, we bought him his lettermans jacket and surprised him with it later that night.  He was thrilled and couldn't wait to get everything sewn on to it and his name put on the back.  He loves it and I must say that he looks very sharp in it.  To go along with that letter, he got 2 pins.  Good Job T!

To end with.......I had to take a picture of Pikes Peak Tuesday morning as it looked like it was floating in the clouds.  I am sure this storm dumped a ton of snow in the mountains.  More storms to come this week too.