Living Museum Project

Ashlee has been working on her Living Museum Project since December.  Originally she was suppose to do her project on Mildred Taylor, the author of Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, but our county library did not have any books on her,;so she had to change her person to C.S. Lewis.  Ashlee did a great job on her project, she did everything on her own, with little help from me.  I just helped her assemble the final project.

John's 37th birthday

For the first time in John's life, he has a job that gives him a day off for his birthday, and he decided to go to work anyways!  The girls and I made dinner for him and the girls did a little bit of decorating.  His schedule is so unpredictable, that I never know when he is getting off work, one day it could be 6pm the next 9pm.  We had dinner done at 7:00ish and he did not get home until 8:15pm.  The kids and I were ready to celebrate his birthday without him, as wrong as that is.  The girls go to bed at 8:30pm, so it was somewhat of a rushed birthday celebration. While typing this post, I just realized that I didn't get any pictures of anything else besides the decorations, because it was too late at night! Oh well, it's the thought that counts!

Alcatraz

Mikayla had her 5th grade class field trip today to Alcatraz.  The traffic getting there was awful.  It took us 3 hours to get there.  We left at 6:45am and a friend of ours left an hour after us and they made it there 5 minutes after we did.  That's how bad it was!  Other than the traffic, the rest of the day was fine, we had a fun trip and on the way back we stopped at The Cheesecake Factory for a late lunch early dinner!

On the third floor of the boat.

Lining up to get on the boat to go out to Alcatraz Island

Jordan, Karah, Allison and Mikayla

Outside of Alcatraz looking towards San Francisco

The Golden Gate Bridge

Allison,Mikayla and Jordan

Allison, Mikayla and Jordan

On the boat, arriving to Alcatraz Island

Qualidra, Mikayla, Karah, Allison and Jordan

Qualidra, Jordan, Allison and Mikayla

Qualidra, Jordan, Allison, Mikala and Karah

The area were the inmates got to do sports like baseball.

Mikayla and Jordan behind bars!

I wonder what the true reasoning was behind shutting this place down.  Towards the end of the audio tour, it says something along the lines of, "Kennedy shut Alcatraz down, because they felt that prisoners needed to be rehabilitated instead of punished"!  That about sums up why we have the mess we have today, don't you think?  We are living in a society were right is wrong and wrong is right, and there are no consequences for ones actions, or respect for others and their property!

Love Turlock

Today the girls and I along with my brother, and my niece and nephew participated in a community service project called Love Turlock.  Hailee, my niece needed to complete some community service hours to graduate from 8th grade so Ashlee decided she would go with her, and then Mikayla and I decided to go too.  We were assigned to a group and our group was assigned to two senior citizen mobile home parks.  There was lots to do.  Window washing, pressure washing, weed pulling, yard clean-up, hauling off garbage, etc.  The service project ended up being about 5 hours long.  After that we went to help John and Adam do work at the rabbits.  Needless to say after 5 hours of Love Turlock and 4 hours at the rabbits, we were beat when we got home!

Ashlee, Hailee, Mikayla and Landon

Landon holding a bunny

Mikayla holding a bunny

Easter

After attending church we went to my Mom's house and had lunch with family followed by an egg hunt.  This year we had more eggs than places to hide them.  For the last three years we have hid a golden egg with money in it.  And every year Hailee is the one that finds it. John was a bit awnry (I know that's surprising) as he was hiding the eggs, he was eating the candy out of them and stuffing them with grass or leaving them empty.  So the kids were not too happy when they got grass filled eggs or empty eggs!

Mikayla, Ashlee, Hailee, Landon, Dylan

John stuffed eggs into a hole in the railroad tie.  Landon is digging them all out.

Landon basically filled his bucket with the eggs stuffed in the hole.

Easter Brunch and Egg Hunt

For one of Ashlee's 10 hour personal projects for Young Women's she decided to do an Easter Brunch and Egg Hunt for our ward.  She did a great job.  She spent well over a month and half organizing the activity, asking for donations, collecting donations, filling Easter eggs with candy, reminding people of what to bring, etc.  Thursday a couple of days before the activity, I took her to the Stake Center Pavilion and she hosed it down and wiped down the tables to get it all cleaned up for the event.  Friday night she made muffins, and put together a few guessing games, and I took her to do some last minute errands.  Saturday morning my mom, my brother and his kids, and a friend from church,went and set up everything for the event and hid over 950 eggs!  The event turned out well.  I think just about every family in the ward with kids showed up to the event, there was plenty of food, and everyone seemed to have a good time.  We have heard comments from various people in the ward, that they would like for this to be a yearly event!  The next day at church, one little girl came up to Ashlee and asked her if she was going to do another Easter Egg Hunt.

Cleaning off the tables

The food table, before the food arrived.  It was a windy day.

The drink table.  With a "drink" banner made by Ashlee

She had left over donated candy so she put it in bags and jars and they got to guess how many candies there were.  The winner got the bag or jar of candy.

People getting their food.  We kept it simple, muffins, fruit, doughnuts, build your own parfait, and there were a few hot dishes as well.

Kids ages 1-7 going after the eggs.  The older kids had a separate egg hunt.

Most of the kids had their buckets and bags full.  There were some that had hardly any eggs, because there were some older kids that got too greedy.  Mikayla was such a peace keeper.  She gave some of her eggs to those that had a few, and then she went and distributed left over candy to those that didn't have very many eggs.  It was a fun event, Ashlee did a great job.  I think she spent well over 10 hours on this project.  Too bad it cannot count as two projects!

Carnegie Arts Center

Today I went on a mini field trip with Mikayla's class to the Carnegie Art's Center here in Turlock.  They got to learn different art techniques and look at different types of art.  Then they got to learn about shading and  they drew a circle and shaded it, using the technique they learned.

Jordan,Karah, Allison and Mikayla