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The girls expressed interest learning to sew this summer. So, I have started “Mommy Sewing Lessons” with them. I created a seven week lesson plan, gathering ideas and printables from several blogs. Since the girls' new machine was still on the way, our first lesson was with my Bernina.

To introduce the basics of the sewing machine, we started with sewing straight lines on paper.

Molly is doing a great job of keeping her eyes on her project.

After the girls mastered the straight lines, they moved on to practicing turning corners and angles.

The finale of their first lesson was completing a Connect the Dots, sewing version!

They then requested more Connect the Dots to practice with. Looks like they've caught the sewing bug!

It’s been almost 10 months since Molly headed off for her first day of second grade, and the end has finally come. School ran until June 19th this year, which seemed late though it was actually one day earlier than last year. Molly loved the school year, but she was definitely ready for summer vacation.

Here’s Molly ready to head off for her last day of school (in the new dress Mommy made her, of course).

For good measure, here’s a flashback to the first day of school this year.

As usual, we took a picture of a bunch of the neighborhood kids on the walk home from school.

Hooray for summer vacation!

Leah recently requested a watermelon dress. So, in true Mommy form, I delivered. A Blue Ribbon dress for the win!

Once Leah’s request was made, Molly echoed it too. I had just enough fabric to oblige and make her a Too Cute Tank dress.

There is a lot of sisterly love for watermelons because who doesn’t love watermelon, right?! Oh yeah, Daddy, that’s who. (The girls love to show him anything watermelon to get a reaction!)

You may have also noticed that the girls' hair is shorter. The house rule was that we'd go get hair cuts after Molly's ballet recital (her hair had to be long enough for a bun!), so Thursday was the day. :)

These dresses are perfect for the start of our summer!

Molly had her ballet recital last week. She has moved up to the Ballet II/III class this year, where she is one of the smallest of the group. That didn’t stop her from being a star.

Here’s the video of her fantastic dance.

And here are a few pictures of her throughout the performance.

Molly loves getting flowers. She starts anticipating getting them well in advance of the recital, wondering what she’ll get.

Leah dropped ballet this year so she could try other things (soccer, tennis), but she was very excited to come see Molly. She usually doesn’t get to see her live since she is backstage preparing for her own dance.

Here’s the whole crew that attended the performance, including us, Grams, Aunt Caroline, and Almost Uncle Charles.

And one final pose.

To celebrate the end of preschool, Jen organized a party at Leah’s friend Norah’s house. They have a creek in their backyard, so all the kids spent most of their time there.

Squirt guns brought smiles.

Both Molly and Leah have this little boy in their crosshairs.

Playing in water can be such fun.

Towards the end, after many people had already left, the kids finally got out of the creek to play in a dry place.

Thanks so much to our hosts for such a great time!

For some time, I’ve wanted to get the girls some Snap Circuits. So, when we saw a deal on this set, I snapped it up. Snap Circuits are educational toys where kids can build circuits by snapping together resistors, capacitors, diodes, transistors, etc. The girls immediately started building some of the examples in the book. This one includes a speaker and a spinning fan, which you can see spinning right here.

Oh, and the fan spinner can also launch it into the air. Up it flies.

The girls have built lots of different circuits. They love being able to build lots of different stuff, and I enjoy getting to explain a bit of the basics of electronics to them. Fun and learning for the win!

I’ve already written about lots of big fun with grandparents during their visit, but there was smaller fun as well. For instance, there was book reading.

There are a lot of voices in the girls’ usual night time stories. G’Mom and Grampa didn’t know what they were in for when they agreed to read to the girls. Skippyjon Jones is a Siamese cat who wishes he was a Chihuahua, and the books include a lot of Spanish words. It’s a great book, but requires you to really get into the characters.

Leah played some Crazy 8’s with G’Mom and Grampa while Molly was at school on Tuesday.

G’Mom and Grampa went along with Leah to tennis lessons as well.

And there were some presents along the way as well. Here are the girls with their grandparents and their new journals.

Thanks for coming to visit, G’Mom and Grampa!

After a morning picking strawberries, the girls still had plenty of energy. So, we broke out the bikes to show G’Mom and Grampa the girls’ bike riding skills.

Leah is a determined rider, focused on what’s in front of her.

Here’s a bit of video showing off Leah’s skills as well as her brand new bike.

After riding bikes and scooters for an hour, the girls took a short playground break. I love how fun Leah’s personality has become.

Oh, and there was also some bike chasing.

On Memorial Day, Larriland Farm opened their strawberry fields. All of us (G’Mom, Grampa, Jen, Molly, Leah, and I) made the trip to pick a few pounds of them.

It’s important to sample the fruit your picking to make sure it is up to your standards.

The girls frequently showed the interesting-looking ones to us.

You’ve got to get down low to pick strawberries. Consequently, I mostly let everyone else do the picking while I took the pictures.

Here we all are with our haul. We ended up with 16 pounds which is a lot. Next time, we’ll get more though, as you get a discount if you go over 20 pounds.

After picking the strawberries, we headed to the Red Barn on the farm to see what else they had for sale. The girls got some fudge, and sampled it quickly.

Outside the barn, they had some goats and alpacas that the girls fed. This little alpaca was just the right height for them.

It was a fun (and delicious) morning outing.

Saturday afternoon, we walked two doors down to a neighborhood Memorial Day party. Molly and Leah spent a good bit of time swinging around.

Leah put her gymnastics skills to work.

Molly wanted to have me take a picture of her jumping off the swing. She does this all the time, but apparently trying to show off for the camera pushed her to over-rotate. She landed face first on her arm, which was thankfully OK after a little ice.

Thanks to our hosts for putting this on!