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Jen likes to take the girls strawberry picking each year. This year, it was a group effort.

Stacie and Zach were making grand plans for thier fresh strawberries, including a strawberry pie.

The girls filled their buckets, then added the strawberries to Mom’s box. The picking was much slower without Dad, G’mom and Grampa this year. Thank goodness we had friends to help out.

About 10 minutes after arriving, light rain started. Molly and Matilda found a unique way to cover up in the field.

Jen and the girls made a second stop at Woodbourne Creamery at Rock Hill Orchard. It is about 15 minutes from the strawberry field and the homemade ice cream was a perfect snack.

The girls had their Field Day at school, and it was a beautiful day. I volunteered during the younger grades, and was assigned the ring toss station (new station from last year).

Jen and I swapped out at lunch time, and Jen worked the bean bag tic-tac-toe for the older kids.

And the face painters this year really did a fantastic job, as you can tell from these happy girls.

The girls and I again had fun at the Legos with Dad event at their school, as we have the past couple of years.

Mother’s Day was a busy one. It started with going to the 9:30 service at church where the girls choirs were singing.

Leah sang with the Cherub Choir for the last time on Mother's Day. When choirs resume in the fall, she'll be moving up to join Molly and the other big kids. Apologies for losing her in the shot for much of the video. It’s tough to get a good angle on these.

Next up was Molly’s choir.

Then I led kid’s worship at 11:00 before heading to East Moon Asian Bistro for a fancy sushi lunch (the girls had Salmon Teriyaki) with the four of us and Grams.

Eventually, we made it home so Jen could open her presents.

Molly had her spring concert for both chorus and orchestra, and she did great. Here she is all dressed up for her spring concert.

Molly’s loved being in chorus this year. They do such fun songs, as you can see here.

I’m still so impressed with how well the Advanced Orchestra (4th and 5th graders) at school plays. They’ve come a long way, and are performing some complicated and long pieces now. Molly was excited that someone got to even play a solo this time, and she did a great job at the front of the viola section.

And pay attention to Molly’s feet in the second song. I think she needs to learn to sit forward enough so her feet touch the ground.

Great job, Molly!

Back in April, Molly tested for her purple belt in karate. Here she is doing a kata.

And sparring.

She did it! Congratulations, Molly!

Molly was done with her green belt.

For Staff Appreciation Week (way back in April) at the girls’ school, families were asked to “adopt” a staff member. The girls chose one of the GT teachers and worked together with Jen to make a poster for the classroom door.

Molly participated in the county-wide Rube Goldberg machine competition this school year. Her team was called the Mind Masters, and they had to build a complicated Rube Goldberg machine to raise a banner.

It took many weeks of work designing and building, and quite a few runs to get it to actually work, but they did it.

The before picture.

And the after picture.

The birthday celebrations continued at Cheeburger Cheeburger, where we got together with Grams, Uncle Scott, Aunt EA, and Charlie. Uncle Scott and Aunt EA included a fun musical card that was a hit.

They also gave her this awesome R2-D2 nightgown.

Thanks!

A couple days after her real birthday, the celebrations continued. Molly opened presents from G’Mom and Grampa, including a couple of games. The first was Otrio, a strategy game that is kind of a multidimensional tic-tac-toe. It’s lots of fun, and we play it a lot.

The other game G’Mom and Grampa gave Molly was Telestrations. It’s a cross between Pictionary and telephone, where you pass a word around the circle by alternating between writing it and drawing it. The results can be quite hilarious, as you’ll see from these few pictures of us playing it.

It’s important to stick out your tongue when you draw.

As I said, this game can lead to hilarity.

Jen’s lost it.

Here are a couple of examples of why Jen can’t keep it together. In the first example, I got the word “microscope” and passed that to Leah to draw.

Leah confused microscope and stethoscope, and drew this.

Which was interpreted to be “legs”.

A second example - Jen got the word “frog”.

Leah drew this, a frog on a lily pad.

I thought the frog on a lily pad looked like a cat on a surfboard. So, I wrote “surf cat” (the obvious answer, I know ;).

It’s a really fun game. I highly recommend it.