Big congratulations to Jake and Beth!! They graduated from 5th grade and now are officially middle-schoolers. Yay!! They had a great recognition ceremony and I was so proud that both of them were awarded citizenship awards from their classmates.

Ahhhh! It finally feels like summer weather. We had fun swimming this afternoon and then chilling out by the pool. I’m so happy the hot days are finally here!!

Jake and Beth did the Nashville Kids Triathlon today. They both did awesome and had a great time. Beth got 3rd (of 47) and Jake got 14th (of 49) for their age groups!! Amazing you two! But what really matters is that they had fun and got some good exercise.

This will be the last weekend we have everyone together before Lauren’s birthday, so we made a huge, from-scratch, chocolate and vanilla cake to celebrate with her. Even Rosie showed up. Happy birthday, Lauren!!

There were all kinds of booths and festivities at Centennial Park today in anticipation of the Kids Triathlon tomorrow. We had a great time just playing and hanging out there today.

Great job Lauren and all the other members of the BMS Seventh Grade Band. You guys had a great show tonight. I hope you had as much fun doing it as we did listening to it.

Beth had her music recital tonight. Jake and Lauren insisted that they “weren’t ready” and so they somehow got out of performing. Beth did awesome, though. Here are a few pictures:

Jake and Beth did the Country Music Kids’ Marathon again this year. They both did awesome and they were so proud that for the second year in a row their school had more runners than any other school. Great job, guys!!

The girls had to go on some bogus shopping trip, so we broke out the airsofts and worked on our target shooting. It was a great day to shoot stuff.

The Schwabbie’s friend and former babysitter came by for dinner and to hang out with us on movie night. We learned that she is going to be moving away and there was great sadness among the Schwabbies.

Here’s a picture of me at the Embassy of Italy. The Italian and EU flags are flying at half mast for the Boston Marathon Bombing. 2013 is also the year of Italian Culture.

We had another beautiful day of weather today. We had the heater in the pool going and everyone was outside having the best time. Even the jumpy thing got a big work-out.

Beth had her first volleyball game of the year today. Sabrina is on her team again. Their team was really great today. It was fun to watch them play so well (the first time I think they’ve ever won all three games), especially when they’ve only had one practice. It was also really neat that Beth and Sabrina got to be the captains of the team today. Here are some pictures of the action:

It was the nicest day we’ve had in a long time, so we got Sabrina then went to go watch Christine play in her soccer game. She did really great and it was fun to watch:

We had the Schwabbies over for a huge Easter feast and used the formal dining room for the first time since we got the furniture. It was an awesome, fun, old fashioned holiday meal. Lauren topped the night off by being in charge of desserts, and she both made a cake and got Graeter’s ice cream.

We just saw the real Easter bunny in our yard, and he can fly!!

Fun Easter morning hunting for eggs!

We decorated eggs for Easter this afternoon. Three dozen seemed like a lot, but they were gone before we knew it.

Great but brief visit from my brother. We got to hear a nice jam session between him and Jake.