It's over!

Finally school is over. We can say good-bye to Professor Umbridge and bask in the glow that is a learning experience and an obstacle overcome by hard work, perseverance and maybe just a little eye rolling.

But as all of you out there know, the end of the school year also means crazy schedules and weird requests from the school (like the day my boys both had class picnics and signed me up to bring a green salad and chips n salsa). That combined with our sun setting at 11 PM and rising at 5 AM and never getting dark enough to see stars has lead to havoc and mayhem this week.

Oh and the 4 day camping extravaganza in Ninilchik this weekend to welcome the King Salmon Run. I tell ya, camping is ever-so-much more work than any other "vacation" on the planet. But that will be a post for next week.

And as a result of all this busy-ness I neglected the two HUGE events last Saturday. They would be Olivia's first ever ballet recital and Ethan's birthday party at the high school pool

She keeps asking to go back to the stage to do it again. She loves ballet and her teacher is fabulous. And I got to do little girl hair and dress her up in a tutu!

Then because I am brilliant I forgot about this ever important event in Olivia's little life when I signed up for the 2 PM time slot at the pool. See the recital was at 1 PM 15 miles south of us. The pool party was at 2 PM 8 miles North of us. See, brilliant! As in a brilliant way to stress a mother beyond all reason and rack her with guilt for not being at both important life events for her children.

But it worked out OK. I'd say a large part of this working out is due precisely to my ability to carefully plan stressful, overbooked days. It's a Moncur talent that you can even get when you marry into the family.

We got done dancing and were back on the road dressed in swimsuits by 2:10 and found the party running smoothly. A huge thanks to JaDee, The DeKays, Kim and Janet for being my hands, eyes and camera while I was out!

And I have to share you the pictures from my date last Friday! JaDee and I went on a short hike at The Nature Center and got to see this! This is practically my back yard!

No bears but we thought we saw some of these and I about crapped my pants.

But it was really only some of these.

Which is good because they didn't give us a Wolf Aware assembly.