Today we celebrated this handsome guy's birthday. He is a wonderful husband and dad and takes care of us and loves us well. We wouldn't want to do life without him. We are blessed to have him!
After our Fathom trip to the Dominican Republic, we had a free day in Florida before our flight left back to the northwest from Ft. Lauderdale airport so we took a 2 hour airboat ride in the Florida everglades with Airboat Rides Ft. Lauderdale. Highly recommended. Our guide Jim was a great tour guide!
As some of you know, Kevin works for Fathom Travel - a brand of Carnival Corporation. This past week 5/6th's of the Donaldson crew went on to their Impact Travel cruise with Fathom to the Dominican Republic. The minimum age is 8 so PJ was too young but he got to spend a whole week with Lulu and got her all to himself.
During the week we also did an afternoon excursion to the Damajagua waterfalls. You can find that post here.
A family visit to the Damajaqua Waterfalls - Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic. Amazing Experience!!! Highly Recommend.
There are 27 waterfalls in total. On this visit we did the lower 12 which took about 4 hours end to end. Noah wants to go back and do all 27!
Thanks to Anthony and his team!
The Spring Performance and Project Night was last night. The kids sang some great songs. Abbie is in honor choir and is in flower dress with a white cardigan. Noah is up near the top right in a green plaid shirt. Hunter is off to the far right in a blue shirt and you can see him with the shaker. Hunter is also playing the guitar at the bottom of the video.
In Hunter's class they designed and built a robot. The students over the course of the month integrated this into all areas of study. The driving questions were:
How can you use computer programming to modify your robot to better solve a problem for Benjamin Franklin?
How would taking this robot back in time affect the culture of the colonies in the late 1700's?
The students presented their robots and wrote persuasive papers. Parents then got to vote for what they felt the best robot.
Abbie's class had to design a seed dispenser that would disperse seeds over a large area. Noah's class did a study of the prediction of weather in the summer time. They surveyed parents and asked them their predictions of the weather over this summer.
Kelly shared her birthday with Mother's day this year! A double celebration for a great mother and a great person!
This past weekend Kevin was away at a men's retreat with our church at Washington Family Ranch in eastern Oregon. There was a good amount of playtime including this big swing. (Kevin on Right)
The kids had their big jog/walk a thon fundraiser yesterday. They raised money for their school for science and technology for the classrooms. They ran/walked all day. Abbie ran a little more than half a marathon, which was around 15 miles. Preston ran his heart out too and completed around 8 miles. Hunter ran a marathon, yes a marathon! He finished it with his teacher Mrs. Collins and a couple other students from his class. He finished 26.2 miles around 2:00 pm. Noah was bound and determined to run a marathon too. All the students had gone home and the jog a thon was being cleaned up but Noah was still running. The kids and I along with Mr. Bales the school principal stayed and waited for Noah to finish. He finished 26.2 miles at 4:55 pm. Noah is the youngest at the school to ever complete a marathon. A marathon was not the goal of the jog a thon, however, our kids were very driven and to meet this goal and had fun doing it while raising money for their great school. We are so proud of them! I think we may have some future cross country runners. Today our runners woke up very sore. It will be a relaxing day at home today as they recover watching movies and all being together.
Hunter turned 12 today. Hard to believe he is this old. It seems like just yesterday he was born. We went as a family to Sun River to a virtual reality place where the kids got to play. Hunter had his friend Nathan from school come along. It was a great afternoon for a birthday celebration.
Thank you Hunter for being such a gift to us. Thank you for making us parents. We love you Hunter!!
Noah received the character trait award for demonstrating "Wisdom" at school. We are so proud of him!
