School's Out!!

 "No more teachers!  No more books!  No more teacher's dirty looks!"

Hurray!  School is out!

My girls were so excited for the last day of school that they were up at 6am.  Funny kids.

Here is my Second Grade graduate on the first day of school, and the last (this morning):

And Missy Moo, my kindergartener no more:

They sure change a lot in those 9 months.

Also, I wanted to mention that our family went to their school's Dance Festival on Wednesday, which was a rockin' good time.  I totally depended on my cell phone to take some pics, but it failed me.  It decided right then was a good time to die.  Great.  It was so fun to watch the girls shakin' their thang.

We are looking forward to those crazy, hazy, lazy days of summer!  Bring it on!

Spring Projects

 First of all, on Memorial Day weekend 10 years ago, Nick and I started on an adventure that will last into eternity.

A group of friends went on a camping trip to Yellowstone.  We camped with bears in the snow.  It was obvious that Nick had an interest in me.  It was on this trip that we both individually decided to give this thing a shot.  And boy oh boy, I'm so glad we did!  I'm so grateful for what it's turned into.

 Also, boy oh boy, we were a bit chunkier back then.

Ok.  On to projects.  First off, we finished refinishing the deck.  Here it is before:

And here it is, finished:

We'll be the first to admit that it's not perfect.  If we wanted it to look really awesome we would've replaced all the materials, but it's about a thousand times better than what it was, so we are loving that.

The girls took it upon themselves to make masks for everyone (including cousin William) and then had a parade:

Western day for the kindergarten:

Ok, back to our Spring projects.  We felled this tree:

 It was a beautiful London Plane Tree that was starting to outgrow it's space, unfortunately.  Once that was taken care of, we started on this little (kinda big) project:

Building a shed.  We appreciated Nick's brothers coming to help out.  Zach came along too.  Everett appreciated having a boy to play with:

 Big helpers:

 I really enjoyed hammering a few nails myself: 

We didn't quite finish, but we are getting close!  By the way, it feels really good to work hard, and go to bed deserving a good night's rest.

A Trip to the Farm and Our Kind of Camping

 The school year is coming to an end.  HURRAY!!  We went to Maren's kindergarten program, and it was so stinkin' cute.  My girl was so happy and so proud.  But first grade?  Really?  She's super excited.  I just can't believe it's true.

I got to go with the kindergarteners on a walking field trip to a nearby farm.  Kindergarteners are awesome:

  A lot of hand holding going on.  So sweet.

We had a great time on the farm.  We saw lots of animals, including so cute baby lambs and pigs, ate ice cream, got to go on two wagon rides, see a sheering demonstration, and feed fish.  Oh, and also some little life lessons as the bulls were a little frisky, if you know what I mean.  ;)  What a day!  Apparently, it was also a little stinky:

Just a random pic of the kids enjoying ice cream:

 By the way, Nick makes some good ice cream.  What a lucky gal I am.

Friday night we camped in the backyard:

This is some serious sticky:

 And dirty.  I don't know why, but I love it when my kids get good and dirty.  It's satisfying for me, like they are living life to the fullest or something.  Maybe it's the farm girl in me.

Daisy was there too:

She's growing and changing.  She's turning into a toddler.  My baby.

We actually slept in the tent, as in, we got some sleep.  Hurray!  

Saturday we spent all day working in the yard and garden and went to bed exhausted.  We got a lot planted, I'm looking forward to those garden tomatoes!

10 Months

 Baby girl is 10 months old today.

We sure love her to pieces. 

And, 10 month old babies are very wiggly.

Moms

 This photo was taken several years ago.  My mom, me and my mother-in-law.  How blessed I am to have such wonderful women in my life!  And seriously, I could not have a better mother.  She is patient, kind, loving, faithful, sweet, happy, optimistic, humble, snuggly, meek, calm, charitable, patient and all things wonderful.  Did I mention patient?  I want to be like her.

What a wonderful, happy day today has been.  I have been thoroughly spoiled, and I feel above and beyond blessed for my sweet family, and my children, who made me a mother.  I'm not close to the mother I thought I would be.  I'm not as wonderful as I want to be.  But you know what?  I'm becoming more and more ok with that.  I'm learning every day, and I celebrate what I can do.  And by golly, I love my kids.  

I love my kids.

I came downstairs this morning to this:

Isn't that awesome?  Nick had the kids paint a mural on this pegboard for my craft room, totally in secret to surprise me.  And I was.  And I love it.  I imagine my 70 year old self sewing pajamas for my grandkids, looking at that pegboard and thinking about my sweet children who were once so little.

But please stay little for a bit longer, ok?

Oh, and a lot of this was going on too this morning:

Girls happily making cards for me, along with the little things they made at school sitting out as a surprise.

And Nick had this ready and waiting for me too:

 It was delicious.  I enjoyed church very much, and especially the kids singing in sacrament meeting.  Everett was funny.  He gave me a bag of candy he'd prepared for me in his class and said, "These are for you to share with me!"  And later, "I like Mother's Day because I get candy."  We spent the day visiting our mothers and enjoying family.

Ok.  Other things.

We visited my family in the middle of the week, too.  My sister was in town, so we all got together.  My kids love going down to Grandpa's farm.

 This photo of Daisy cracks me up because #1, she's always doing weird things with her mouth lately, I think it's because she's growing top teeth; and #2, she hates the feel of grass, which is why her foot is way up high; and #3, I just can't get over those cute piggies.  And, I thought I'd gotten photos of all the kids, but apparently I missed one.  Sorry Ellie, I'll be sure to get a good one of you soon.

This makes me laugh too:

 Lainey had very thoughtfully shared her chocolate milk powder with Daisy by dumping it right on the floor.  How does one get chocolate milk powder off the floor?  Why lick it, of course!

Ok, just a few more things, I promise.  I need to work on shorter posts.

Everett was super excited to go camping with Dad for Father & Sons:

I hear it was a pretty great night, which ended with Everett puking in the car before coming home.  Oh well.

Us girls ate homemade pizza, painted toenails, watched a movie in mom and dad's bed and then slept there.  I'm pretty sure I'd like Father & Sons a whole lot better if we had 4 sons instead of 4 daughters.  ;)  It was a fun night all the same.

On Saturday, the kids needed naps.  Here is position #1:

 Aw, sweet.  What a good daddy.

Position #2 (when daddy's entire left side started going numb):

And finally, position #3:

Yep, I'm pretty sure it's time for me to go to bed now.  That looks really nice, even all neck-kinked.

And look, Daisy does stairs now:

 It certainly makes life a little more exciting around here.

I Wear My Sunglasses At Night

 The title of this post is thanks to this:

I went to check on Lainey to find her dead asleep wearing her sunnies.  Her swimsuit was there handy too.  Two year olds are awesome.

She has a thing with sunnies lately:

 She looks like she's about 15 in that photo.  And she went to bed with sponge rollers in half of her hair.  It looked fantastic.

She's cute and funny and helpful and just pleasant right now.  We love our Lu.

We've been busy refinishing our deck.  We've taken it apart, sanded, planed and painted and started putting it back together.  Here the girls got a lucky moment in time that they got to help Dad paint:

We've had wonderful weather lately, and we've soaked it in:

 Of course it also snowed last week.

We went to the Tulip Festival:

 Five happy kids.  They look happy, don't they?

These flowers certainly look happy:

 I think 9/10 photos of Nick and I are selfies.

This was our Saturday:

We love Sunday evenings:

We celebrated Cinco de Mayo with my family tonight.  The kids had helped me make a pinata for the occassion:

I know it's not the most amazing, creative thing, but for something you beat with a stick and then throw away, I was pleased with our efforts.

 The kids had a blast.

Here's my favorite photo:

 My nephew was goin' to town!

Picking through the loot: 

By the way, life is good.