Little Honey Homestead: End of School and Start of Summer

The end of school was a rush with field trips, parent teacher conferences, and end of year testing. And now it is so nice to be on Summer break!We love heading out to california every year to visit family, play at the beach, and make some good memories! Back at home the work continues with our growing season finally starting, summer school going full swing, and trying to get caught up on all the house and farm chores that piled up with us gone for over a week. But here is our trip report and end of year activities!

Blain End of Year Performance: It was so cute seeing Blain up there singing with his classmates. He got a special part in the raindrop song getting to hold a big blue raindrop which he loved:)

Blain on his last day of school

millions of raindrops

Blain and his kindergarten teacher Mrs. Jimenez

Chloe's Award: We got a suprise email from Chloe's teacher saying she would be receiving an award in their end of year assembly. She got the award for Top Academic Girl in her class! She was so happy when her name was called and ran up to the front to get her certificate! She was so smiley and suprised to see me there. Good work Chloe Rose!

Chloe on her last day of school - quickly becoming her "signature" pose, silly girl

rushing up to receive her award

Chloe standing with the other kids in her class

We are so proud of you Chloe! You work so hard in school and always try your best. Her teachers always tell us how impressed they are with her reading and participation in both english and spanish.

Goblin Valley: We left for our big California trip the friday that school was out and took a detour to Goblin Valley (thinking it would cut our drive down the next day). We met up with Molly and Jonny and baby Phillip for camping and exploring together. It was really fun to climb around on all the hudoos and rock formations, drinking lots of water and eating hiking snacks. We found a dispersement site right outside the park which was hot, super windy, bug ridden, and shadeless. We decided to forgo the second night of camping and drove all night to arrive in California at Grandma's house around 5 am.

View from the overlook

My cute kiddos all geared up for a day of exploring!

Blain and Avenlea finding a shady spot to crawl through the rocks. Blain came up with some pretty silly names for the rocks like triple but and the white orc rock

Chloe was fearless climbing all over the place! I had to call out to her a bumch making sure she was within ear shot because it was hard to keep an eye on that little adventurer.

Chloe helping Zeyta stand on a rock

water break with daddy - all the kids still like drinking from the camel packs and with Nate and I both sporting a pack this year we had plenty of water.

A cool bowl shaped alcove perfectly sized for our family

Avenlea had a lot of fun crawling around on the rocks and finding little caves to fit inside. She was also really into making "stairs" with the small rocks she would find, lining them up to look like miniature stairs.

Blain finally holding still long enough for a picture with Daddy and Zeyta. Notice the sweat on his little head, he was go go go for the first half of the valley!

"the Room" as it was referred to. There was a little ledge perfect for sitting on near the spot where we took a snack break

Love these two!

Cool little dude!

And some fun jumping pictures up on a big flat rock where I wasn't too nervous they would topple off

tuck jump

Family shot - those kiddos were pretty hot and tired by this point (about noon, starting around 9) so we ate lunch in the covered picnic area back up top near the parking lot. They started out wishing we could move to Goblin Valley to vowing they would never return because of the heat. It really wasn't unbearably hot and there was a nice wind that kept things reasonably pleasant. I would say the earlier you get out there the better, or go earlier in the season because it was warm and everybody was a little sweaty by the end. But it was totally worth the drive and I loved the experience and seeing these amazing creations of nature!

Hiking Little Wild Horse slot canyon: right around the corner from Goblin Valley was a really neat hike through a slot canyon. We mostly hiked through a dry river bed, stopping at every available shady spot on the way. There were some tricky spots where the kiddos needed help and Nate was bent over trying not to bonk Zeyta in Philip's carrier, but overall it was really cool. I've always wanted to hike a slot canyon and was unsure if the kids could make it but it was reasonably easy (flat!) and had tons of neat things to see!

break number 4? 5?

The big "snack break" where Chloe declared she was too tired to carry the camel pack anymore. She had been doing really well carrying my little bag, but passed it off to uncle jonny for the last leg of the hike

Molly was so nice to let us use Phillip's nice new baby carrier as she wanted him in his little carrier so he could nap better. Zeyta was perfectly content to be in there and take in the view.

Avenlea holding Philip's hand to help him hike

Group shot in the coolest part of the slot canyon. It got really narrow and the walls up the side were amazing and really smooth!

We went an extra 20 miles past goblin valley to fill up on gas, ice and some yummy frozen treats after a long day of hiking in the heat!

Grandma and PopPop: We got to spend a day with just us and the grandparents which is unusual because there are so many cousins and aunts and uncles close by. We went swimming, played on the swing and read lots of books.

Cuties getting swung and tickled

Shadow love

Blain learned to swim in about the first 5 minutes of being in Grandma's pool. He asked me to teach him and he swam across the shallow end, then got really brave letting daddy throw him and Grandma took turns too! He would come up from getting thrown in the deep end, tread water and then usually someone would help him swim to the shallow end. He was jumping off the side, doing flips, and swiming under the water.

Grandma giving Blain a boost in his dive

Zeyta and Mommy by the pool side. Mom got stairs put in the pool and the kids loved them, being able to walk along the stair and splash on the steps

Ripe Blue Berries!

I wish the picture was better but this is Blain jumping to reach the pool noodle PopPop was holding out for him

Chloe going for "8 feet"

Los Angeles Zoo: Mom took us all to the Zoo! It was a big zoo and the animals were really spread out which is good for them but we had a hard time finding the animals. We looked and looked for the elephants and never found them. We did have awesome views of the gorillas, giraffe's and there were lots of snakes and reptiles.

Blain and Tanner looking at a big lizard

Zeyta by the turtle enclosure

This big gorilla was so cool to see up close!

This gorilla gave Avenlea a little scare when he rushed right at the glass where she was standing!

We spend a lot of time looking at the gorillas and chimps. They were climbing all over and swinging on the ledges.

The girls loved the zebra, which you can almost see in the back between Marie and Zeyta

They had fun collecting those leaves throughout the park

Zeyta peeking at the giraffe's

The giraffe's water was right by where we were standing so we got to see them really up close!

My monkey's by the chimp exhibit

The instigator of the monkey pose

Avenlea and Ruby by the flamingos

Auntie Em was so nice to buy all the kids ice cream cones!

The group that spend the day at the zoo!! We all missed Chels but we did get to be with little Matilda all day so that was nice! And Wendy was still down in San Diego but we met up with her at the beach the next day!

Leo Carillo Camping: What a great camping trip by the beach! All the family made it so special and it was awesome to see how well they all played together. They played in the tent, scooter gang, fire sticks, and all loved story time each night put on by PopPop and Uncle Mitch. It was nice to sit and talk with my sisters and hear all about people's work and daily life.

PopPop showing the kiddos how to light a fire

Boys and fire...

Zeyta loving Uncle Ted

This cutie girl lined up all the scooters in a pretty strait line! She didn't scooter much but she still found ways to play :)

First night hot dogs!

Two cute girls eating yummy smores

yum!!

Zeyta and Daddy making smores

We went down to explore the beach after dinner the first night. it was really overcast but they had fun playing in the sand and looking for shells

Getting a little sandier than I had anticipated

Those boys running from the waves

Digging with the fun shovels that Grandma brought

Auntie Shum was so nice helping to take care of all the little kids. Zeyta can take a while to get used to people but she went pretty willingly to Auntie shum, who usually had a treat for her waiting!

Looking at the giant dead crab in the water

That night before bed Uncle Mitch told the story of the purple gorilla! All the kids were loving the story and Blain was especially concerned about different parts of the story and kept interrupting to ask questions, typical Blain

The next day we went to the cove for a day of swimming, boogie boarding and sand castle building. The waves were perfect for boogie boarding and everyone had a good time splashing in the waves and playing in the sand.

Avenlea was so brave this year! She went in the water a lot with mommy, daddy, uncle Ted, and grandma! She loved when the water would bury her toes and would tell me every time the water was coming!!

Beach snacks! We had little buckets of water for the kids to rinse their hands in before getting a snack.

When I saw Blain sitting in his towel all wrapped up with a bag of snacks I knew I had to take a picture! We have a very similar picture of him when he was about 2 sitting in a beach chair all wrapped up and eating snacks. Not much has changed, lol.

Of course Chloe was in the water from the first minute we arrived at the beach. She was diving into the waves, boogie boarding, surfing in the whitewater on her boogie board and just loving the ocean!

These cute girls played in the water like this for a long time!!

Grandma and Pop Pop getting some quality baby time!

Nate spent hours building this amazing sand castle into the rock. He had lots of little helpers along the way and the finished project was so cool!

Queen of the castle

A rare sight of Chloe out of the water

Zeyta and Daddy by the ocean

We took a short hike up over a couple more coves to a rock where the sea lions were sun bathing!

It was SUPER windy and a little cold at the top where we could look down and see the sea lions so I let Avenlea wear my fleece. Ponies flying she still looks cute!

Nate ventured down the steep rocks to get a closer look!

Nate helped Blain start the fire the second night and he was so proud of himself!

Blain with his fire!

After breakfast and packing up all morning we headed out to Zuma beach for a BEAUTIFUL day! The sun was shining all day and it was nice and warm. We all kind of stayed in stages, Mom leaving first, then Chels, then Aunt Julie and her boys joined us, then we all finally packed up and headed to El Pollo Loco for some dinner!

Blain may still love his snacks but he was also in the water alot! He was jumping over waves and running through the surf with his cousins.

Aunt Julie and I had a nice long talk before leaving! She told me about her scrapbook get aways that she goes on yearly and I'm hoping to go sometime in the future for a week of scrapbooking!

Cousins building castles in the sand

Blain showing me the giant sand crab he caught! I remember loving it when we went to beaches with sand crabs when I was growing up!

Chloe and Zeyta showing off the rocks and sea shells they found

Back to Santa Clarita: We enjoyed one more day at mom's house with all the sisters. We had more pool fun, had a mini birthday celebration for the June birthdays and had a little dance party with all of Uncle David's kidventures music :)