May Happenings

As I'm trying to catch up on the old blog I like doing these "[month] Happenings" posts which are just a big brain-dump of pictures and miscellaneous things that have gone on during the month.  May's is maybe the most random of all so far, but that's OK!  Random is good, right? :)

Here goes!

You never know who you are going to meet when walking out of the basement fruit room with your arms full of food to take upstairs...Aargh!   SpiderMan/AfroCircus-Madagascar-Zebra-Man!

 For Mother's Day the kids all gave me lovely gifts which were homemade and so very sweet.  I wanted to type up what Bree said on her "All About my Mom" paper...  if you can't read it, it says "My mom is 25 years old.  She weighs kind of shortish pounds. Her favorite color is every single color.  Her favorite food is pasta.  She always says "clean up your room."  She cooks the best food.  Her job is to do the dishwasher.  She laughs when my brother says every single person is purple. If she had time, she would love to drive.  We like to play kid & mom.  She really loves when flowers pop out and the colors shine out.  I love my mom because she gives me hugs and smooches."  Aaah, I love it!

Bryan's Gramma Gee passed away this month.  It was really nice to hear more about her life from Bryan's mom during the services.  Gramma Gee was a very hard worker and she taught Karren how to be a hard worker too.  I loved hearing about some of the fun things they would do as kids.  A funeral is always a sad thing, but at the same time it's nice to get together with family and spend some time together.  Bryan's big sis Jennifer flew out from Ohio for the funeral and it was wonderful to have a visit with her.  The funeral was in Springville and there is a fish hatchery there where Bryan and his siblings used to play when they would visit grandma & grandpa.  We thought it would be fun to go there after the funeral and feed the fish.  It is really cool to see each of the different areas of the pool where they had teeny fish, little fish, medium fish, etc...up to the really big fish.

In other news...this happened!

Yikes!  Bryan watched her carefully while she mowed but I don't know if she's quite big enough to do it alone yet.  But she was pretty proud of herself and we were proud of her too.

Miles always loves to have a mohawk, and he had a fairly tame one during Kindergarten last year.  Well, his hair has gotten pretty long and he begged Bryan to cut it into a real mohawk that would be really tall.  So, for the last day of school, he got to rock this mohawk, and it did look great!

I was minding my own business in the kitchen when all of a sudden Darth Maul challenged me to a sword fight!  Aack!  (Darth Maul with knight's armor, of course!  She had a sword instead of a light saber.)

We had some crazy rainstorms this month!  During one particularly heavy downpour, Bryan dared Miles to go outside and lay down in the gutter.  He did and, needless to say, got completely drenched.  (And yes, his pants are on inside-out with the pockets flopping around on his legs.  Crazy kid!)

 And lastly, we took our first family 4-wheeler/motorcycle ride of the year.  Lots of fun.

Joy School Graduation

We finished up our great year of Joy School with a little graduation program in our backyard.  I have done Joy School (a neighborhood co-op preschool) with each of my kiddos when they were 3 years old.  It's such a fun way to get them to preschool so they can begin to play with other kids, learn how to sit still for the teacher (at least for short amounts of time), take turns, walk in a line, and all that jazz.  We always have lots of fun with stories, songs, and activities, with lots of free play time as well.  It's a great introduction to preschool and I have loved taking turns teaching.  Our group this year with Bree was probably my favorite group of all the 3 kids (maybe because with the other 2, I always had a baby to take care of at the same time! ?)  We had a great group of moms, who were always reliable and well-prepared.  I loved it.

Bryan was out of town for our graduation so I asked Tess to take a few pictures of the whole group.  I loved seeing her pictures on my phone later with the heads chopped off.  Ha ha!

(This one's better, but I'm still chopped.)

 Here's our graduate Bree (who had of course taken her shoes off by this point...that girl!)

 And look at the cute cupcakes that one of the other moms made.  So fun!