Birthdays, End of School, and SUMMERTIME Travels!

Its nearly been a month since the last post and so much has happened! We ended the school year with a bang and about 1000 gallons of water! Some major water fights occurred at the Bird house as we celebrated the END of 11th, 9th, 6th, and 4th grade. First I need mention that all children did amazingly well for end of term grades! Jerica did straight A's, Zach had a good solid mixture of all letters, Jenner did A's and B's and Mck did all A's as well! So WAY TO GO BIRD BUNCH! Great job on ending the year! Now on to the party fun!

Zach started it out by inviting his ENTIRE 6th grade class to our home for Guitar Hero, Rock Band, Wii, and other challenges. Pizza, snacks, chips, brownies, crackers, cookies and even some vegies all made their way into 32 mouths! We did the M&M straw game (7-11-doubles) and then Jenner and his group of friends went outside to go to the park and lo and behold a HUGE water fight errupted from the front yard. This mushroomed into about 40 people ransaking the kitchen for cups, pitchers, bowls, any liquid container, and all faucets being used for water balloon filling. Every single towel in all three bathrooms were used as well as several back-up t-shirts and shorts of Zach and Jerica. And the good news? No one got hurt! And the better news? Everyone had a GREAT time! Soaked to the bone! Jenner and his friends were a hoot, dragging the hose all over and showering unsuspecting victims with their spray of cold water! Zach said it was the best end of school party ever!

Jerica, on June 2nd, aged into the double digit world. Ten. She invited over 6 girl friends for some water fun of her own. We started with slushies, then a slip and slide, then musical towels (chairs) then presents, water gun fight, lunch, ice cream cone sundaes, silly string fight and finger nail painting.....all in 3 hours!! talk about a fast paced adventure! She had a very wonderful birthday day with her friends. On Sunday we did her family party with gramma Champion, and Jerica picked out her dinner, which was kabobs and salad and ice cream sundaes (yes, she is an ice cream freak, not a cake freak!!) Gramma brought her a darling hand made purse that she used on her trip to ANNAPOLIS, which leads us right into summertime travels.

We are currently in Annapolis Maryland. Jerica had a second birthday party at Rampa Rick's house complete with cake and ice cream (THANK YOU ANN!!) and then Rampa took her to Art Town for a huge box of crayons and some color books which Jerica has been coloring in all week. Then we went to Great Great Great Uncle Harry's house to help him celebrate his 91st birthday! (photo at top) She did so many beautiful pages and drawings. Ann brought into work a Stained Glass Window craft that Jerica REALLY got off on, and so we will be coming back to Utah with some beautiful projects courtesy of Jerica and her crafty coloring skills.

Thursday we attended Mckenzie's graduation ceremony from Summer Seminar at the Naval Academy. It was an amazing event wherein she got her little Navy bum kicked, but she kicked RIGHT BACK! (2nd, 3rd and 5th photos) Mckenzie's company (Delta) won Company Color's at the graduation for showing the best team support and being the best overall company, so she was elated with all of her navy experiences. Their physical activities are quite rigorous and intense. She said they were awake at 5am and lights out at 11pm and she never slept so good nor accomplished so much! We visited with granddaddy at the hospital and had a nice visit with Grammy, Uncle Bob, Uncle Frank, Uncle Ricky and even Uncle Butch. We went to a musical and saw My Fair Lady and LOVED it! The actors were stellar and the songs were fun and catchy. Jerica spent the next day reliving the entire play as Rampa played the soundtrak on the stereo system and blared it through the whole house! We were all singing and dancing. Then we headed to Elkton to see Ricky, Ashleigh and Kaila. Lots of fun in the pool, playing great Dalmuti and enjoying time together!

We head back to Utah tomorrow and then this Friday it is off to the International Rotary Conference in Los Angeles California. More news next weekend!