May

Moving on to May now...I think this is going to be a longer post, just because I feel like I'm not giving enough detail of our lives in my blog. And, essentially, since it is for my family and it's like a "journal/personal history" then I better start recording all the things that happen.

My calling in the church is the Relief Society Activities Coordinater. A.K.A Enrichment Leader. My mom has had this calling dozens of times, but I guess I never noticed all the time that she put into it. I was a kid...kids don't notice those types of things. :) I think she really liked it though. She's a crafty person. It DOES take A LOT of time and preparation, though. Our activity for May was a Parenting night and we had a panel of 6-7 moms there to answer questions that were previously submitted. We wanted it to end up being a discussion with all the ladies there, so our panel was there to get the discussion rolling. It wasn't one of our most highly attended activities, but I thought it turned out really nice and the ladies that were there came away with good suggestions and advice.

That weekend was our ward's annual Father/Sons Campout and so Garrett went to that and camped in the rain. He bunked in a cabin with a friend and his son. Garrett being Elder's Quorum President was in charge of breakfast in the morning. Since none of his counselors was able to make it, he was THE chef and THE clean-up crew. But, after the campout, he and some buddies were able to go shooting for awhile. So, it was all good.

That same night that he got back, Maggie had her very first piano recital. She takes lessons from a friend of ours that is in our ward and lives down the street. It's so handy for her to be able to walk down the street for her lesson every week. She's taken lessons for about a year and has quite the skill for piano playing. It's getting her to practice every day that is the hard part. She did really well at her recital though. She played "The Entertainer" and the theme from "Swan Lake". By the way, I took these pictures from a video that I took at her recital. I didn't take any still pictures, but figured out how to get them from the video. I'm pretty impressed with myself! :)


The next day was Mother's Day. My family always takes really good care of me. I got breakfast in bed and was able to read by myself, in quiet for awhile before getting ready for church. I also got to open all the girls cards and homemade gifts then. I love getting those. They are so sweet. Garrett stayed home from church because he came home from Father/Sons with a cough and a cold. When we got home after church, Garrett had set a nice table and had everything prepared for barbecuing fajitas. He broke out his new grill and barbecued for me...IN THE POURING RAIN!! Now, that's love! It was a delicious meal! After dinner, I got to open my gift from Garrett which was a Cricut. I was really surprised, because I had only mentioned it one time to him that I wanted one. Very exciting! He also made strawberry and peach shortcake for dessert! It was such a nice day!

On the 11th, Paige had her Kindergarten Celebration where they sang songs they had learned during the year and then took the parents through different stations showing us what they've learned throughout the year. She really enjoyed going to school and had a good time in Kindergarten.

Singing songs

She knows her numbers...
Making animals out of numbers. She made a bear out of a zero.

I hardly ever get to volunteer in the girls classrooms, just because it's so hard to find babysitters, plus it's usually around Noah's naptime. So, I don't think I've volunteered since Lydia was in kindergarten. She had field trip on the 20th and asked if I could come. Luckily, Garrett said he could stay home with Bella and Noah so that I could go. The second grade has been learning about birds and so they took a "walking field trip" to a part down the street where they had 6 stations to rotate through to put their bird knowledge to use. I was looking forward to rotating with Lydia's group, but unfortuneately, I was put with another group and only got to see Lydia in passing. It was a beautiful day and the kids had a lot of fun building birds nests, having a bird scavenger hunt, finding birds with binoculars, making bird feeders, etc.

Lydia's group making bird nests
Mrs. Bayley. Lydia's teacher--she's had her every year since kindergarten and we LOVE her.

Mrs. Weimer, the principal with the kiddoes

All the second graders

These are the birds that Lydia's student teacher brought into class for the bird unit. The kids had a great time with the birds.

It's getting late, so I will finish the rest of May in another post!!