pretty much everything else may 2k19

Cue ALL the springtime baby bird songs because we had the cutest nest ever appear in our front tree:

We loved tracking the progress of the sweet eggs and baby birds (from a respectful distance! most of the time!) and I choose to believe that all the babies lived and are happy grown birds now. I will merrily ignore any ideas Chuck may or may not have on the subject.

But seriously though, if you were looking for a spot to build, wouldn't this tree totally entice you? I love it.

Oooh, how about the tree underneath a rainbow??

Annual Star Wars day photo shoot. Instagram caption: Happy Star Wars day, y’all. Love how Will is using the force instead of physical violence to stop Clyde from pestering him with that piece of grass 🌾✋🏼🥰👏🏼. Jk, the physical violence followed quickly 🤦🏻‍♀️😂

Ahh yes, the outtakes. Notice the moving around of people and arms and such.

Pre photo shoot? Post photo shoot? Either way, some cute random races with bikes and scooters:

Another day found us at the church parking lot for bike and scootering fun.

Yoshi 2.0 is pretttttty awesome.

Couple more bikers: Carma and Grandma Pam!

Speaking of Grandma, she had a slight issue with some weedkiller BUT as always she found the testimony affirmation in it all and we enjoyed some time helping out with yard work at her place.

Will and Jack getting the 'running through the sprinklers' season started a bit early.

My fantastic cousin Kellie founded a non-profit organization called Operation Birthday Bash because she's incredible. They hosted a fundraising/awareness gathering and we were thrilled to attend and donate and see Disney princesses and cousins and second cousins that look like Disney princesses 😍.

Obviously any venture to Boise requires a stop at the Boise D.I. where Will found this book. He is VERY excited and interested in being a babysitter and would like to be well trained and educated.

Got to go hang out with Coders to celebrate his bday a couple days late. Love this yahoo.

This white board is my favorite. It keeps track of everything on the top half and the bottom half is for random drawings and doodling and it all brings me joy and a slight bit of organization.

Carma June turned five! McKay and Andy came over to celebrate and it was the best.

Katie showed up too ;). We did art and ate pizza and decorated cupcakes and ate those too. Good times.

After the great towing of our white Ford we realized that neither of us had any desire to get behind that wheel again haha. Enter this Honda Accord! My mom and Sam and Quinn all have Hondas (various models) and now we feel like we truly belong in that extended family. Thrilling. Also don't ask about the kids in the trunk. It's a weird vehicle christening that I personally choose to abstain from but the children love... also this is the first time we've really had a car with a trunk....

And because you can NEVER take too many trips to the DMV to register a newly purchased vehicle, we picked up this bad boy so that Chuck and I can scooter side by side like the extremely cool people that we are.

                                            Cute girlie.

Carma was over the moon (er, rainbow?) to open the mailbox and find a beautiful, amazing envelope addressed just to her. I highly recommend making friends with incredible artists whilst you are in college math class so that you can stay in touch via social media and then 13 years later still be in awe of her talent and humor and thoughtfulness.

This is probably the most flattering thing to happen in my life so far or ever. Bailey wanted to wear her hair LIKE MINE to school one day so Emily nonchalantly whipped up this super cute top knot bun and now I want Emily to do my hair every day. Also I just love Bailey.

On a related note, sometimes evening classes at the Rec overlap so that Kaitlyn gets to hang out with me during swimming lessons so Emily gets a quick break from toddler on bleachers duty. If you've never tried to keep a toddler safe on bleachers, you're missing out... on mini heart attacks every four seconds.

My girls night crew started using press-on nails and obviously I do whatever they do, so here ya go. Took me 34 years to try fake nails and I'm legit obsessed now.

The girls in question. Love them.

Carma loves her some llama llama. Don't we all ;). 

Not super sure what's happening here or who took this picture but I love it!

Brothers getting haircuts = time on the stage for Carma. 

Clyde playing piano is one of my favorite things.

Chuck's locker at work. I'm glad we are one of his favorite things.

Another one of Chuck's favorite things is wrapping one of his children up in a figure four. Classic.

Another round of swim lessons completed - possibly Clyde's last. Pretty sure all four kids now swim better than me, which is the minimum goal haha.

                            Phase 10 shenanigans.

                            Formation shenanigans.

I love Willy boy.

Spring recital for our piano playing boys!

The boys were thrilled to have Grandma Pam in attendance and all did awesome!

may 2k19: school/work stuff

There's a chance May was jam-packed with end of school year activities and such. 

Including Carma graduating from preschool! It actually fell on her 5th birthday, which was so thrilling for this sweet girl. 

Getting to sit close to her friends Sunny and McKay for the whole ceremony was extra exciting. Carma loved preschool with Ms. Cherry and we are so glad.

Random preschool day that Carma looked adorable... both Grandma and I attempted to get a picture haha.

Caption via instagram: And juuuust like that, we have a FIVE year old🥳! Carma was thrilled to have preschool graduation 👩🏻‍🎓 on her actual birthday and I was thrilled to watch her have such a perfect school year💯. Five years ago I was terrified and humbled and delighted to hold my new daughter👶🏻👀, sure that I was completely unqualified to be a ‘girl mom’ but grateful for the chance😅. As I look at pictures I took of Carma throughout the day with strong, smart, incredible women I am just so aware of how lucky she is to have so many role models and influences and people that love her💟💜. Chuck and I adore our cray-cray girlie💃🏻✌🏼🚴🏻‍♀️! 

{pictured: Carma’s amazing preschool teacher Ms. Cherry 😍👩🏽‍🏫🍒, our nanny extraordinarie Grandma Pam 👵🏻🌺, Officer Tlucek- whose acquaintance our ‘girl cop’ obsessed Carma has been eagerly waiting to make and who did not disappoint AT ALL👮🏻‍♀️💪🏼🤩, and Ms. Winder, whose friendship and attention Carma flourishes with and cherishes even more than the jolly ranchers she gets from her classroom 👩🏻‍💼🤗🍬. Love them all 😘}

Clyde's tennis season wrapped up with a very exciting conclusion: he and his mixed doubles partner Kelli got 4th place! They only played together the last half or so of the season, so it was pretty awesome how quickly they bonded and how well they played together.

The official A Team picture.

Clyde got to be the spokesperson at the 7th grade spring assembly to talk about how awesome tennis is. Lucky I was on the front row to cheer for him!

Speaking of spring sport wrap-ups, track is over! I was so happy to make it to watch some amazing EVMS athletes. Instagram caption: Two hours at a track meet = up and down the bleacher stairs seven times, a million rounds of rock/paper/scissors with patient middle schoolers, and lots of dirt and rock playing. Ohhhh how we love our Carma June❣️

Insta caption: Parenting hack: Have your fifth grader set up his science project at grandma’s house, so she can provide all of the materials, advice, emotional support, and water the plants on nights that he forgets. 🤓👩🏼‍🌾🌱💦🙌🏼

Will had a great idea for his 5th grade science fair, and we had a great idea for him to carry it out at Grandma Pam's house.

Thanks to their hard work and Will's careful documentation, he was awarded 3rd place:

Cutest little science nerd!!

East Valley held a middle school open house for incoming 6th graders and apparently there was some kind of mix-up because my TINY BABY BOY WILL was invited to attend?! Kid was a natural on the middle school scene, though. He loved looking at the classrooms and tried out holding a violin - he's leaning towards orchestra as his elective next year.  

Pretty proud of this grown up boy and this transition from elementary to middle school. Will's amazing.

East Valley held spirit week leading up to the spring assemblies, and our sweet leadership kids mailed Adrian an official invite to join us that day. I followed up with a couple texts, including one thanking him for the use of his umbrella haha.

‘Merica Monday🇺🇸 Love me some middle school spirit days- I walked out this morning wearing Carma’s leg warmers and Chuck told me I was the dorkiest person he knew 💁🏻‍♀️. Daaaaang straight, babe! 🙌🏼😎💃🏻

Clyde was a stud and dressed up every day with me AND agreed to be photographed with me, so that's pretty stellar. 

The younger kids decided they needed to participate in Spirit Days, so I got to pick up a couple extra tie-dye shirts the night before at Savers!

Western Wednesday - I made gold star badges for a bunch of the staff - someone was the constable, someone was the sheriff... and we maybe had a ranger or two in there? Good times.

Love having lots of plaid shirts on hand.

Tropical Thursday! This day made me laugh, everyone expected me to come suuuuper decked out but I opted to use my grass skirt as decor instead of costume. There's no way I could sneak in and out of classrooms with any kind of discretion wearing a grass skirt haha.

Cutest little hula boys!

I love cheesy school spirit stuff - I walked around with candy to bribe students into participating, and it worked a decent amount! I just feel like school pride done right (ie not solely focused on athletes, popular kids) fosters an awesome sense of belonging for all the students which leads to better behavior and investment in learning and taking care of the school and each other. 

The last choir concert of the year! So fun to watch this 7th grade group enjoy their year together so much.

One day I was contemplating my complete inability to get anything done in life and trying to process how I went from juggling kids and laundry and church stuff and friends and reading LOTS of books to feeling like no matter what I did, I was always behind. So then I pulled up this calendar of the school year - the days I worked are in blue. I remember starting off at the beginning keeping to my 2-3 days a week plan.... and then steadily increasing until this full time long term sub job. Turns out if you work 37 hours a week, that's 37 fewer hours to do the other stuff you used to. Basically I have no idea how people with regular full time jobs get anything else done.

Spending an hour or so at lunch time outside in amazing sunshine and seeing skies like this? Definite work perk.

Oh, Will's fifth grade class organized and carried out an amazing fundraiser car wash! I was at work, but Chuck took the car through and documented our cute boy helping out:

We continued to get to and from school a variety of ways - as promised, Jack did size up to a BMX bike and did awesome on his daily bike commute. Clyde biked on occasion, and sometimes we busted out Chuck's new scooter, Baymax aka Big Hero 6!

And finally, I referenced a 37ish hour work week, but clearly 20 of those hours were dedicated to selfies. Those lanyards just really look good on me, sorry! Also a bird mask from some hilarious 8th grade girls in art. Also one day I did a dutch braid and a regular braid and it freaked everyone out, including me. Also I'm just vain :).