Family Reunion at the Cabin

3rd new post of the day-Some cousins from CA, Dan and Judy Lewis, were coming on a road trip in their motorhome so Uncle Wayne and Aunt Boo made a visit with them into a lovely family reunion!!!!!  Dan's grandmother and Greg's great grandmother were sisters.  Dan and Judy have four kids around our (Greg, Jodi, and Emily's) ages and grandkids in CA and Texas.  Greg has seen them a couple of times in CA when he has been there on business but I had not seen them since we were newly married and took a trip to CA.  We began at the clubhouse in Boo and Wayne's adorable neighborhood in Blue Ridge which had a great place to play out back. 

 Though things kept ending up in the gutters!

 We had a fun place to visit, catch up, and share great food.  Boo spent hours organizing us all and we had a table of fun family pictures to look at and talk about which grandkids looked like which relatives when they were children.  Bev came and both of Larry and Wayne's sisters-Nancy, Gretchen and her husband Russ.  Our family of 5, the Gregorys minus Katie who was in Disney with her school band, the Gross family joined later, and Wayne's daughter Helen's family.  It was a great fun day of enjoying family!  Thanks SO much to Uncle Wayne and Boo for hosting us!  We all had a great time!

 Maggie and Ashley deep in conversation about something!

Dan and Greg catching up

 enjoying Judy's amazing pound cakes that she brought us complete with already printed recipes!

 After we ate lunch we went over to the cabin to play outside.

 The Gregorys brought Daisy with them.  We were spending the night so decided to leave Max at the kennel at home to play with his dog buddies!

 Nancy, Gretchen, Russ and Dan

 Judy, Greg, and Bev

 Greeting cousins coming from soccer

 Maggie enjoying Aunt Boo's trail mix before the boys discovered it!

 Jodi, Helen, Don, Melissa and Greg

 Ashley checking out the baby birds in the nest

 Back to the clubhouse for dinner and a little more visiting before going home

 Chris, Jodi, Jake and Emily

 Our cousins all love playing hide and seek but usually no one fits in a mailbox! 

 Hugs and tickles from Uncle Greg for an armload of 7 year olds!  We are blessed with special family and so glad we got to see them-thanks for coming to visit Dan and Judy!  We spent Saturday night at the cabin and visited their church with Wayne, Boo, Dan and Judy and got to have lunch together one more time before driving home.

Ryan and the Bass

 Strings had an end of the year concert at school that was just great-amazing to hear how far the 6th graders come in the year-since many of them had not played before 6th grade.  Ryan has REALLY enjoyed doing strings and is excited to continue next year.  Below is his 1/4 size bass.

 After this concert we switched to get a half size one for him to practice with and get used to over the summer.  Here are Greg and Scott messing around with it.

 I enjoy anything that puts this big grin on his face!!!  Though it does make for a really full car when you have to drive the bass and the tuba somewhere together!

Scott played his tuba

in a concert at the Peace Center for the last concert of the year of Greenville County Youth Orchestra.  Grammy wanted to hear him play sometime this spring so she came for the concert.  We had to drop him off for practice and he got to eat dinner there.  We walked around downtown and had a fun dinner at Nose Job restaurant and went to the concert.

 They played wonderfully and the concert was great-GCYO has several levels of musicians that want to do more than what there is time for in band or strings class at school.  Since this concert Scott has auditioned and moved up to the next level in difficulty of music they play and Ryan auditioned and will be in one of the beginner levels next year.  There are no pictures of the concert because Scott was in the WAY back and we could not see him at all!  We had great seats-could reach out and touch the stage and thought we may have seen his shoes through the crowd of feet.  We COULD hear him though!  Thankful for fun opportunities through our public schools and a Grammy who wants to come listen to Scott play!

Ashley's Plays

 In Challenge class they have studied about Shakespeare this year and to end the year they performed the play Twelfth Night.  They had a great time working on it and did a really good job.  They had the script on the screen and were using a script from a group that adapts Shakespeare for kids.

 With some of her favorite friends and their sweet teacher Mrs. Dillard-I loved Ashley's hat-looked very much like those pointy ones ladies wore in that time and it was made of a sheet of craft foam and had pink netting coming out of the top.  This play was in April.

3rd graders study SC history in Social Studies and went on a fabulous field trip to Columbia to the State House and State Museum and even got to meet our new governor, Henry McMaster-with her class in the picture below

 The 3rd graders always do a big play at the end of the year to show all they have learned about our state.  They tell about the history, state symbols, and famous people of our state.  Ashley was movie star Andie McDowell

 There wasn't room for all of them on stage at once so they switched places halfway through.  They also sang several songs like "Nothin' could be finer than to live in Carolina" and the song that lists all the counties in our state to the tune of "Yankee Doodle."

 Ashley's friend Claire in the black dress was our former governor, now UN ambassador, Nikki Haley

 There were kids who talked about peaches, milk, sweet tea, fish, our state dog, bbq

 and MANY more-including my favorite costume-collard greens made out of layers and layers of green tissue paper!

 The grand finale was a group of students doing the shag!  It was a great play and you could tell how much hard work the kids and teachers had put into practicing for it!

Then we got to go visit classrooms to see their Cooking Carolina projects-in groups they had to create a restaurant with a menu and cookbook and then create a container for carry out to keep food at the right temperature.  Theirs was Big Bites BBQ

 Ashley with 2 of her sweet classmates!  They have had a fun year together in 3rd grade!

 Me and Andie McDowell