May

May brought lots of end of year activities at school for the kids.  The elementary school does a field day every year where the students spend time rotating through different athletic/physical activities.  Tanja got to help out with Derek's class and follow him around as he threw bean bags and other events.

 

Karina went with her friends to a school dance and Karina had fun with Mabel, Maeve, and Emily beforehand getting ready, eating dinner, and doing hair.

Of particular excitement to Derek, our resident herpetologist in training had collected several sticks from the yard in preparation for me to mow (great) and piled them up at the entrance to our garage at the front of the driveway (less great) to make a snake habitat.  Amazingly enough, a DeKay's brown snake appreciated his efforts so much that it moved in, at least for an afternoon.

 

Here's the small snake sunning itself wrapped around the sticks.

 

 

Every year, all the fifth graders in the county spend months in their social studies class as they are learning about the Constitution, American History, and other topics to become experts in preparation for the culminating event of Simulated Congressional Hearings where they take on the role of expert witnesses before a Congressional committee to give testimony about important concepts from our nation's history and founding documents.  Their testimony consists of their own words that they memorize ahead of time in response to questions that they know the simulated Congresspeople (volunteers from the community along the lines of attorneys, and state and county level politicians and staff) will ask them.  They work together as a group to decide the order that they will speak so multiple students in their group end up giving testimony in response to a single question.  It's a really big deal.

Lydia did fantastic in preparation and in giving her testimony - much of which focused on the history of the women's suffrage movement and the injustices of slavery.  She spoke clearly, passionately, and confidently.  I'm very glad I was able to leave work for an hour to come watch her and her group (and now regretting I didn't see Karina when she did it as a fifth grader as I didn't really understand how big of a deal it was).

 

Tanja and the kids explored Rockburn park one morning.  They wandered through a less visited section where it is easy to spot deer and other wildlife.  It's a pretty park with many nice streams flowing through it.

 

Underneath a walkway we found a hidden tunnel that mitigates floods during heavy rains.  It was tall enough for Derek to walk through without bending over.  

After dog sitting a few times, we learned a neighbor is involved with fostering dogs with a local rescue  organization.  We decided to give it a shot too, and agreed to foster an approximately 8-month-old  beagle mix puppy dubbed Harley by the organization until someone adopted him.  It was nice to have a beagle again after Snoopy.  We figured a handsome housebroken puppy like Harley wouldn't take long for someone to adopt since there are lots of people looking for puppies to grow up in their family and have for a long time.

Harley was very much a hound dog, always following his nose to interesting sniffs on our walks.  We took him to the section of Rockburn park where the girls ride their bikes.

We saw lots of these beautiful blossoms on the trail as we were walking, but couldn't find where they were coming from.  We researched and learned they were from the tulip poplar tree and were likely flowering high up in the tree where we couldn't see them before falling down.

Harley was very popular with the kids (at least initially).

He wasn't a retriever so didn't really play fetch, but he did like chasing balls if someone would throw them.

 

Harley was an energetic boy, but he did get a little irritating since he was still in a chewing phase.  We liked having him around but were also happy when he was adopted after a week with us by a couple with a 15-month-old toddler.  They sent a few updates to us and we learned that Harley has been renamed Latke (not really an issue since Harley/Latke didn't really respond to being called Harley as he got that name from the rescue organization).  We also found out that Latke had tapeworms per the vet the couple took him to.  We found that strange since it seems like something the rescue vet would have screened for and found, but Latke seems happy with his new family and I envision he and the toddler growing up together as good friends.

Karina got to go on a field trip to Camden Yards and watch a Baltimore Orioles baseball game (it was field trip day at the park, so there were lots of students from lots of different schools there).  Tanja was selected to chaperone, and since I have become an Orioles fan now that they are playing well, I was jealous of both of them.  They were supposed to be there before the game to ostensibly learn about weather and how the grounds crew cares for the field.  Morning commute traffic patterns delayed their bus's arrival so they missed much of the presentation (which because of sound system difficulties, they wouldn't have been able to understand much of anyway).  Ironically, it was raining that day as they were supposed to be learning about the weather and caring for a baseball field.

 

They wound up with seats at the top right behind home plate.  As luck would have it, Adley Rutschman, the Orioles star catcher who apparently one of Karina's teachers had joked about being married to, wound up hitting a walk off home run in the bottom of the 9th inning to win the game.  I'm glad Tanja and Karina stayed to watch the end.

 

 

Lydia took a field trip to Fort McHenry, famous for being the source of inspiration for the Star Spangled Banner national anthem during the war of 1812.  Tanja joined as a chaperone.  Looking across the Baltimore Harbor you can see the remains of the Francis Scott Key Bridge that the Dali container ship crashed into a month prior causing it to collapse.  That bridge collapse still is featured in the local news as officials try and sort out funding for building a new bridge (that will take years and is not expected to open until 2028) while the residents of the area who were used to commuting over the bridge daily continue to suffer.

 

Words fail me for this picture other than it is Derek being Derek.

 

 

We went on a pirate walk through a fancy neighborhood.  A new walk is pulled together monthly by a family that runs this as a small business/something for kids to do.  The walk goes through a neighborhood and the kids have to solve clues to learn the code that opens the treasure box at the end of the walk where the kids can choose a treasure.  We managed to find a goose family crossing the path to get to the lake.