May's Days

Ohhh man, May was a busy month.

Just ask poor Jackers, who had to work through lunch most days.

You know what May has a lot of? Holidays. Like Cinco de Mayo, which a) I frequently misspell and b) is NOT a celebration of Mexico's independence but rather a victory over the French in the Battle of Puebla fought on May 5, 1862. Let it never be said that this blog isn't educational.

 We attended a fun gathering over at the Curtis'. Yummy tacos, good company, fun games, and I got to wear my beautiful embroidered dress, so a win all-around.

 Random shot of the boys at bedtime. When we gather in there for scriptures and prayer, Jack has started wriggling his way in under one of the boys' blankets and onto their pillows and it kills me every time.

 Clyde enjoys it significantly more than Will does :).

 During the craziest weekend ever, it was Mother's Day! Chuck was luckily enough to have his wife and mom on-hand, and he took great care of us. Breakfast was delicious French toast, and he made my favorite pork enchiladas for dinner. Mmmmmm.

 Pictures after church... possibly not the best time to ask hot, hungry, tired boys to smile for long periods of time, haha.

 Cute Mother's Day artwork from the boys.

 The swingset has provided loads of fun this spring, and also a prime opportunity for Clyde to bang his little mouth and lose one of his top front teeth. Soo happy it was a baby tooth!

We dusted off our gardening gloves (not really) for this year's garden. Here's how Jack's experience went:

1. SUPER excited to stroll outside and see what was happening. 2. NOT happy about the 'friendly fire' incident in which he got sprayed with the hose. 3. Having second thoughts about sticking a fistful of dirt in his mouth. 4. Very content to watch the action from his stroller - he climbed up all by himself. 5. Finally intrigued enough by the shovel to come and contribute.

 The older two boys were ALL IN from the get-go. Adorable.

 I promise that I helped too; there are about five sugar snap pea sprouts out there courtesy of my careful seed placement. I'm pretty sure they're going to be the best ones.

Two of my Scouts (well, one Scout and one former Scout) played soccer this spring and I got to watch each of them play a little bit. Cameron is the cute redhead (wearing green) in the top two pictures:

And Jacob is the cute boy in the blue uniform in the bottom two pictures. It was so fun to watch them play - both Cameron and Jacob are superstars :). Clyde came with me to Jacob's game and was pretty intrigued by how hardcore the games are with the older boys.

Clyde and Will got recruited by Grandma Pam for some cheap child labor; while Mom and Cody and I weeded their corner flower garden, the boys picked up the little 'helicopter' seedlings dropped by her big tree. For each little bucket they picked up, they earned a shiny dime, sooo it was possibly kind of a throwback to the 1950's :).

They were thrilled though, and each earned about a dollar. The cutest thing came the next Sunday at church when Chuck helped them fill out their little contribution slip to pay tithing for the first time.

Ohhh Jackers.

Good thing that marker comes off kitchen floors! (And toddler skin...)

We spent some of Memorial Day visiting my aunt and uncle, which is always fun.

Larry and Iris have a fun bonus room that boasts quite the dress-up collection, and the boys spent lots of time playing with their second cousins Kara and Rachel, although they made it downstairs for ice cream (and to play with some supercool dinosaurs).

Will and I hit up the dollar store for crepe paper on Clyde's last day of school and came across some 'magic towels'... which he may have talked me into purchasing. And holy moly, were they worth the $2!!

The anticipation of waiting for them to expand and unfold in the water was like Christmas morning. Honestly, I might pick up some more for Christmas morning...

Finally, our awesome friends the Littlewoods came up to Idaho for a family baby blessing, so we spent the last day of May happily reunited at the Haws' for a BBQ with the old gang.

It was SUCH a blast! The kids played, the moms talked, the dads supervised the marshmallow roasting. Good, good times. I seriously got emotional saying good-bye to Littlewoods - McKay grabbed Will and it just reminded me how amazing he was with Will right around Will's autism diagnosis and it made me miss having them around all the time.

I insisted on some pictures, much to EVERYONE'S chagrin. Whatev, they'll thank me someday.

Angie, Lynndi, Tasha, Tawny, Nicole, Jana, Shelly

THE KIDS! I think six of them are new since the Littlewoods moved away three years ago - crazy!!

One more of the kids :).

And the guys. Ohhh, the guys. It was ridiculous trying to get them to nicely line up, but I did it. Kind of:

Troy, McKay, Dan, Ryan, Chuck, Duke 

(just missing Angie's Ryan, who was on a Scout campout).

And that was May!