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Carma is seventeen months old and straight up hilarious. Girlfriend is nuts; she watches her brothers run and jump and climb and proceeds to follow. Her newest favorite thing is scurrying and leaping from couch to couch to chair in the living room without touching the floor - unless you count the times when she miscalculates the distance and plummets to the ground (luckily not that far away).

Carma has a strong belief that sacrament meeting is social hour, and she's the star. I try to keep her somewhat contained, but if she's pretty quiet, I let her wander a bit and as a result she counts Brother Birrell and Brother and Sister Volkert amongst her best friends. Yesterday she spent a lot of time a pew ahead of us, coloring with Raquel, which was fabulous. Towards the end of the meeting she started worrying about young James Fleshman's possible hunger pains and dutifully took him veggie straws one at a time.

 Ohh Carma - I told her to stand by the tree for a picture, and she merrily stood there, looked to the side, and smiled... all with a little twinkle in her eye that clearly communicated, "I did what you asked, Mom! You never said I had to look at you, hahaha!" There's a chance we have our hands full with this one ;).

 How to describe Jackers in his current three and a half year old state? He is the very definition of a lover and a fighter. It is rare to find him without his little fingers in 'star wars blaster' position, ready to take down lurking storm troopers. He is also a self-proclaimed ninja. At the same time, he is by far THE most cuddly child I've ever had... and that's saying something. He climbs on me constantly, usually accompanied by his blanket and his monkey and once he's comfortably ensconced on my lap he announces, "I snuddle with you!" Snuddle either = cuddle + snuggle OR we need to step up our efforts to get him back into speech therapy. (spoiler alert, it's def the latter). He's also taken to sweetly declaring that I'm 'da best' every time he thanks me for something.

Jackers strongly values his space and alone time (somewhat ironic since he denies me those things on a regular basis, but whatev). When he gets hurt or embarrassed, he immediately withdraws, both emotionally and physically. He loves loves loves Clyde and Will but also merrily waves goodbye to them each morning, knowing that he has the run of the house (and the legos!) while they're at school. He mostly lives within the realm of Star Wars with frequent visits to reality and he is also the sweetest big brother to Carma that he can be - he continues to be the first one to run to her when she's crying, offering her 'favorite purple toy' and a kiss to make her happy again.

 Will's life currently revolves around animals and his plan to someday become an animal scientist. (note to self: figure out what an animal scientist is/does). We are (and forever will be) a pet-free household, so luckily Will gets his animal time in elsewhere - one day I kitten-sat for a girl I visit teach and Will was so, so happy that Titan was still here when he got home from school and helped me take him home when the time came. Will has also found a kindred spirit in Sister Sherman, a woman in our ward who we get to visit and eat dinner with every couple of weeks. Will comes with me and promptly fell in love with her two dogs, Einstein and Pretty Boy. He was very sad to find out at our last visit that Pretty Boy had passed away, and I think Sister Sherman appreciated his understanding of her loss. They really are a sweet pairing! 

Willy boy also continues to be the silliest, sweetest kid around: his new favorite game is Apples to Apples Jr. and all you have to do to make him giggle uncontrollably is read a random card like "hog dogs" or "ballerinas" and he dissolves in front of your eyes. Will is killin' it both at school (watching him in his element is one of my favorite parts of helping in his classroom, another being getting to use the copier) and on the social front (where many of his friends are girls. If he keeps this up, he'll be set come high school, haha).

 Last but not least, our fearless leader/oldest kid, Clyde! What a babe. He takes his role as older brother pretty seriously - he is the first to tease, poke, rile someone up (usually his brothers) and also the first one to snuggle, comfort, or help (usually Carma). Clyde just recently hit a real rough spot with his Hirschsprung's, so he's being put through the ol' wringer of dr appt/xray/meds switch-up. We feel good about where we're at now and going forward and we're continually impressed with Clyde's overall resilience and maturity. We talk a lot about it in spiritual terms - that Heavenly Father won't give us more than we can handle, and how he's been blessed with great doctors, stellar parents ;), a very understanding teacher/school, etc.

Clyde continues to read twelve books at time, ten of which are usually books he's re-reading. He just started the Beyonders series and is mixing it up by also reading the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books. He's been spending a lot of time in the Harry Potter world lately too - it seems like that's just kind of a fall thing in general, am I right? What's fun for me to watch is Clyde's wit emerge and trace some of it back to his favorite authors (Rick Riordan, especially).

Okay, back to the back log. It's a chilly 54 degrees outside, so we might as well delve back into sunny June!

may days: the conclusion

Might as well start with some pictures of a darling little Carma Junie (aka what Jack lovingly calls her). At this point (a couple of weeks before her birthday), Carma was craz.y. outside. She still wasn't walking full-time but alas, that did not curtail her climbing or wandering all around the front yard:

And of course there's always room in the cozy coupe for two! It just gets a little cozier ;).

And here are some lego creations by Will:

The kids continue to be completely lego-obsessed, which is fine with me. They happily sit in there for an hour at a time and build and imagine and it's darling.

Speaking of Willy boy, the next night he sneaked out of bed and joined me on the front porch glider for a bit. He wanted to take a picture of himself and the moon, so I made it into a funny activity. When he brought home his journal a few weeks later at the end of the school year, I loved finding this entry about that night:

And here are the pictures, as he detailed - the first one only has part of his face, the second one he's blocking the moon, the third one has the moon and his face but he's not smiling...

 

 And finally here's the winning shot! If I teach my children nothing else, at least they'll be competent at taking selfies ;).

 The kids all donned Star Wars shirts for May the Fourth [be with you]. Honestly, we end up with all the boys wearing Star Wars shirts at least twice a week just by random rotation and the fact that Jack rarely wears anything else, but we dug out Carma's shirt just for the occasion:

 Oh man these kiddos make me happy!

Carma observed Mother's Day by being an absolute nut during Relief Society, so we hied ourselves out to the foyer to entertain Sister Corse. 

 

 Chuck had stuff after church, so I gathered the wee ones for a Mother's Day group selfie. Honestly, I'm not super into Mother's Day but I am super into being a kick-a mom.

We spent the evening at my mama's house for dinner and dessert (delicious cheesecake!) and played at the park and also celebrated Cody's birthday. #multitasking

 Have I mentioned how awesome it is that my mom's neighborhood park is riiight across the street from her house? So perfect.

I have no idea what game or activity the boys were engaging in here, but I feel like it's a good illustration of "It's all fun and games until somebody gets hurt":

I already chronicled the insane part of Holly's visit where she had to keep me from completely freaking out when Jack drove the ol' van, but here's some more chill pictures of the rest of our afternoon: lunch/visiting Cody at work, and a picture of the two of us before she left. Also, we are the same height (I recently verified this via text) so I have no idea why it looks like I'm her kid sister. I feel like it's something with the angle... and I think the grass slopes a little there.. and she's wearing shoes (albeit flats, but still...). LOVE you Holl!

 I sneaked out that weekend for more girl time, hooray! Maren and Kautri and I met up with some of Kautri's friends to watch the Bellas attempt world domination:

Random pictures from the month. Initially Carma wasn't super steady on the ladder/slide, so her long-suffering brothers were constantly recruited to 'stand behind her' as she climbed up. And for a while Jack refused to eat unless someone was reading aloud to him (That Kid, grrr) so Will sweetly took up that job on a regular basis. Also sometimes I let Carma have her second lunch on the floor - I mean, it had only been sitting there for the few minutes since she had unceremoniously thrown it down... (That Girl, grrr).  

And here are some random pictures from Chuck's phone. Will's well-being check-up came up while I was in Utah, so Chuck took him. Will LOVES the doctor... like, he's disappointed every time someone else gets to go and he doesn't. So obviously they had fun. Also pictured: Chuck and I riding new bikes (Clyde's and mine, respectively), turns out Carma loves red velvet cake balls, and Chuck sent me a picture of my day lilies blooming while I was gone! He's sweet.

 Carma loves the trampoline and Chuck, possibly in equal amounts.

 

 The end of May found us at yet another ENT appt for Jackers (we had to switch because the one we went to first made me SO mad) and this is what I texted Chuck that morning:

 Amazingly Jack went the 'good' route nonetheless, even though we were in the flipping exam room for AN HOUR AND A HALF waiting for the dr. Luckily I am pretty chill in those situations because obviously emergencies happen (in this case the ENT was called over to the hospital for a emergency surgery thing) and Jack and I had loads of fun and read books and rested and played. He's cute. 

So Chuck found a great deal on craigslist for a new bike for me and even though it's not "cute", it is "functional" so I'm opting to be grateful and biding my time until I convince him to let me spray paint it, haha. Here Chuck is testing it out and taking Jack and Nathan for a ride:

And here we all are taking a family bike ride one evening!

Saturday morning think tank:

We were thrilled to be a quick stop point for Sam and Terri and their girls on their way to Warshington. (am I the only one who says it that way? I can't be... right?) Hazel was the sweetest little protector of Carma ever on the trampoline.

This is the very last picture I have from May: Clyde Monster sneaking out of bed to sit outside with Mom and Dad for a few minutes. Sometimes I veer towards panic attacks when I think about how old he is and how soon he'll be traumatically pulled from my grasp and thrown unceremoniously into adulthood (hopefully not before we figure out where he gets his melodramatic streak from...) but in the meantime I will treasure the fact that he still fits under my arm and lets me snuggle with him sometimes.

All right, done with May!

may days: end o' school

May heralded the end of the school year for Clyde and Will. Jack and Carma and I went to the zoo to celebrate:

Oh, and Will happened to be there the same day with his class! I couldn't be an official chaperone (what with the two other attention-hungry kids) but we hit up a few exhibits with Will and his friends before heading out on our own. Here is Will with his cute friend Alexis:

Funny story: Will and his group got lost! Well, kind of. Their parent volunteer got the time wrong, so they were still out exploring while the rest of first grade had loaded up on the buses. The most impressive thing I saw all day was sweet Miss Overcast sprinting through the park to get back inside the zoo to find them. She's amazing. I wasn't very panicked because I figured it would be hard to kidnap five first graders + a parent volunteer (+ the two extra kids she brought) + a grandparent volunteer. If juuuust Will had been missing, I obviously would have freaked. out. but I banked on the 'safety in numbers' thing and it all worked out!

Probably our favorite Park Ridge May activity is 'Pastries with Parents'... for obvious reasons.

Probably our least favorite end of school activity was Clyde taking a fist to the eye during P.E. (it was a slight bowling mishap) and sporting an awesomely disturbing red eye for a few days. It got worse before it got better, prompting a quick visit to the pediatrician to double check his luckily-still-perfect eyesight. To complete the boxer look we stuck him in Jack's sweatshirt as a warm up jacket, hahaha.

And finally, here are the actual last day of school shots for our third grader and first grader:

We got a quick picture of Will and his good buddy Spencer, who (spoiler alert) moved mid-summer. Will misses him!

Asher, Clyde, and Jared. Cute boys!

Willy boy and Miss Overcast, aka the best first grade teacher we could have asked for (and did, haha) for Will. Love love love her.

After school we kicked off the summer by hitting up the library (#nerds) and Costco for frozen yogurt (spoiler alert: new end of school/beginning of school tradition). YAY summmmmmer!