May Day

Henry remembered it was May Day at 8:30 this morning. Since we leave at 8:45, that was plenty of time to make May baskets and pick flowers from the garden for their teachers, right?

Yesterday, Mitch chaperoned Henry's class on a trip to the Science Center in Seattle. And when I say "chaperoned", I mean that in the loosest possible way, because according to Henry, his Dad pretty much broke every chaperoning rule in the book. He bought his group candy, bought them some kind of space ride, let them play video games on the ferry, broke off from the classes so they could "do fun stuff by themselves" and was late returning to the bus. According to Henry, it was a great time.

Jack had a track meet in Skagit Valley, so I thought I'd pick up the girls from school and we would go see the tulip fields before watching Jack. Just when I turned on the road to Nature's Glory, Grace wondered aloud if we shouldn't go shoe shopping at the mall instead.

SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEECH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! went my tires as I flipped a u-turn. We have five or six tulips in our yard, anyway. Well, not anymore after this morning, but that is beside the point. Thanks to a little thing involving pigs and pandemics, along with a sinking economy, we pretty much had the whole mall to ourselves. I realized that I had never actually been in a mall with the girls (that they could remember, anyway). Anything we need, I order online since we're so far from civilization. I plan to rectify that immediately, because we had a great day. Grace was very close to getting her ears pierced, until she saw the actual piercing implement. She settled for pink and purple hair extensions instead. They both picked out uncomfortable, fancy sandals and HIDEOUS light up fake Crocs for collecting eggs in (they can be hosed off and stay outside all the time, mom!)

Here they are, wearing their shoes and hobbling strutting down the mall.

Olivia got yet another large-headed stuffed animal baby, because no one needs to be able to actually sleep in their bed when there's stuffed animals to arrange on it. Also, shoe boxes make great stuffed animal baby beds.

Poor Grace, her shoes had a little wedge and she tripped so many times that skin was hanging off her feet in chunks by the end of the day. Here she is after a particularly un-Grace-full moment, trying to keep her shit together so I didn't say, "I told you so" and make her wear her sturdy, ugly, Keens.

She spent most of the track meet taking pictures of her new shoes and complaining about how she should have painted her toenails. I KNOW! Who takes pictures of their shoes, right?

Jack made his fastest time yet in the mile run. This isn't the race, he's just trying to get to the food stand to get the last grain of rice. Jack had a difficult time keeping his disengaged tween angst up with his sister falling all over the place and flipping her hair extensions back and forth.

This morning, the first words out of Grace's mouth were, "That was fun yesterday! Can we buy some more stuff today?" I told her to go ask the Bad Chaperone and she came tripping down the stairs with the same face you see in the fourth picture above.