What we were up to in May

Here's how we celebrated Cinco de Mayo: chicken enchiladas (the totally mormonized version with cream of chicken soup--should probably not even count as a Mexican dish), seven layer dip, fruit salad and Guarana soda (which is Brazilian, does it get points for being from South America???  By the way, it's pronounced "gwah-rah-'nah", but we say it "gwah-rah-'nar-ah" in our family, mostly to make fun of my mom's mispronunciations.)  We even tuned our satelite to the salsa music channel! 

On May 6th Faith's fantastic teacher had a Mother's Tea where the kids performed, showed us the powerpoint they made for us, and served us cookies and punch.  It was so adorable!!

Here's one of my favorite numbers: The Insect Rap

Here are the lyrics so you can watch it again and join in!

I am an iiiiinsect.

I have a head, a thorax and an ab-do-men.

I have six legs to crawl on the ground,

(high voice) I have two antennae to feel around.

I started as an egg, so tiny and small

And a larva, where I eat and crawl

Inside my pupa, where I rearrange

Into an adult, in the final stage.

I am an iiiiinsect.

I have a head, a thorax and an ab-do-men.

On the 8th Faith and I picked up our Bountiful Basket that Joy had so sweetly ordered for us.  It was awesome!  You pay $15 and get a "grab bag" of assorted fruit and veg.  We ended up with a watermelon (we had already eaten most of it before I thought to take a picture), apples, tangerines, mangoes, green peppers, tomatoes, broccoflower, romaine lettuce, spinach and corn.

Here Christian is celebrating the sprouting of our seeds.  Unfortunately, they just got stringy and gangly after that and only two survived after being planted in our garden.  Right now they don't look like they'll last another week :(  Little premature there, mister "Mission Accomplished".

I took Buddy for a throat culture after this Mother's Day Lowe's project because Joy had just come down with strep and Christian said his throat hurt.  Luckily it was just a virus and went away after a few days.

That day Tony started clearing the weeds out of the corner of our yard reserved for our garden.  VERY LARGE TASK.

Here is my version of Faith's tumbling picture taken just before her class photo on the 12th.  What a cutie!

On the 13th & 14th I was at PTA conference in Provo while my wonderful mom watched my kids.  Other than the president-elect's son breaking his arm on the first night necessitating her leaving with our ride to meet up with him at Primary Children's (he got surgery and is now doing great), every thing went well!  I got some helpful instruction, but the best part was the presentation by Michael Ballam (seated at the piano behind the announcer lady in this photo).  He was such a great speaker and performer!  I had a fun night away with the ladies, but was glad to be back with my sweeties.

Here's Buddy's favorite activity at Faith's soccer games:  playing in the dirt.

Faith learned the very helpful skill of lawn mowing!

Christian's skills=not as helpful.

Tony spent the 15th hauling three pickup truck beds full of compost from the landfil to our back yard where we unloaded them into the garden.  It was very low so it needed that much to reach the bottom of the fence.  Looking good at this point!  We still had to wait for the nights to warm up till we dared to plant.

At one point Christian's shirt got muddy and he took it off.  He took one look at his neon white, skinny torso and said, "I wook wike Edward!"

Keeping in mind that he'd recently seen new moon, I totally understood how this (see photo below) could haunt a person's thoughts :)  But don't worry Buddy, you definately don't look this scary. 

Faith was taking some drawings down from her bedroom walls and I wanted to get a pic of this great owl that she'd drawn in school a few months ago.  Check out that detail!

The kids started having "sleepovers" (or as Christian calls them "weepovers") in the family room in their sleeping bags on the weekends.  Something about this picture tells me they get a little less sleep this way. 

Buddy has been playing a bit more Wii and XBox (Lego Batman) than board games lately, but he still likes to kick it old school on a regular basis.  Here is his victory dance after winning a round of Littlest Pet Shop:

When we were getting in our car at the library, the scent of these lilacs drew us out and across the parking lot to sniff them.  Buddy looks a bit wary because he'd just seen a giant bumblebee enjoying them as well.

My favorite sandwich is this: a piece of toasted bread topped with mayo, alfalfa sprouts, avacado, deli turkey and sliced mozarella broiled to melt the cheese.  It's similar to the "foul play" sandwich at the Greenery restaurant in Rainbow Gardens at the mouth of Ogden Canyon.  Christian, however, prefers to graze the sprouts.

Here is our front yard on the 23rd after planting our flower beds.  Pretty!  (Notice that I finally got smart and moved the tomato plants to our wagon to make the daily treks easier.)  Spoiler alert: (highlight the following lines with mouse to read) Those two beautiful pots of flowers on our porch no longer look so lush.  Or even alive. RIP.

Second half of April

Faith loved the spring season of soccer.  She's working on getting a bit more aggressive on the field--baby steps!

Christian has been loving all the little creatures outside.  Here he's showing me a giant worm.

Tony's 39th birthday was on the 20th, getting super close to the big 4-0!  Check out the awesome giant card Faith made for Tony.

It has pop-ups and everything!

Buddy's gift was helping him blow out the candles on his cake. 

Christian took this shot of the school's office ceiling while I was in a PTA meeting. 

And my guy requested that I photographically document this exquisite couch-cushion fortress.

I saved myself over $100 this year by not buying pictures.  I got the cheapest package of school photos, but skipped the class one, the "special" school pics, soccer pics, dance individuals, dance class, tumbling individual and tumbling class pictures.  I figured my own would be good enough.  Here's Faith in her dance recital costume after going to her class photo session.

On April 22nd I heard on the five-o-clock news that they were giving out live ladybugs at the Weber County libraries as part of their Earth Day celebrations at seven that night.  That sounded fun to us, so we headed out to the Roy library!  They had a reading of The Lorax, fruit and veggies for snacks, crayon rubbings of insects, and then gave out bags of ladybugs to all the kids. 

There were probably about a hundred per bag.  Christian decided he was too scared to release the little guys (as much as he loved them in the bag) and Faith even had a hard time with it.

Whose kids are these?  I love bugs (with the exception of wasps and earwigs) and had fun placing ladybugs on all of our plants, rose bushes and fruit trees.

After the bugs, we did our own Earth Day activity of planting seeds in little peat disc pots.

On the 23rd we went on the last field trip to Apple Village with Faith's class and then stopped at Castle park in Kaysville for a picnic.  It was so cold and wet!  But the kids still loved it and didn't want to leave.

What a fun park!

We had a stray cat adopt us for awhile and the kids named her princess.  She kept trying to get in our house and even got a short trip to Syracuse when she sneaked into my friend's minivan!  Luckily, she has now moved on because she wasn't nice to Crumpet and really freaked Dusty out.

Lowe's project - bird feeders.

Some fun outside when the weather was finally nice.  Those are our tomato plants on the walkway that are patiently wating for it to warm up and our garden to get ready.  I hauled those babies in and out of the garage every day for six weeks!!

I had to get a pic of grandpa Quinn's crazy birthday card for Tony.  He finally used up all the cards that my grandma had saved throughout the years (that he used to change the wording from Merry Christmas to Happy Birthday and such) and started using USED cards that people had given them!  He, he. This one was originally to my grandma many years ago.  Gotta love the recycling!!  (The joke about not washing the check is because Tony has done that in the past, SEVERAL times!)

April 29th we got a surprise--an all day blizzard!!!!!!  Spring Utah weather is so crazy!  We were out running errands and it was a pain getting home from Target.

By April 30th the snow had gone and the kids wanted to go pick asparagus at Day farm.  You can't tell by this picture, but there was actually some good spears and it was delicious. 

Home Depot project - a planter.

The kids have been loving the trampoline!  This is just after Tony set it up and we didn't have the net on yet.

On May 3rd Joy had a fun little party at her house for the letter combinations CH, SH and TH.  They started by chugging along on the chair choo-choo.

They drew with chalk.

They had a snack of chicken strips,

and chips with cheese.

They did shadow puppets.

And a race where they had to quickly dress in big shirts, shorts and shoes and race to the ship.  We shouted when Christian won!

They did a throwing game and also shook some shakers to Shakira music!

Joy then had the kids dictate a thank you note for some cute cards.

They included H's for track, shapes to build a train, thumbprint people in the windows, and chalk smoke coming out the smokestack.

Later that day Faith got a package of glitter tatoos at the dollar store and decided that she needed a full sleeve of them.

Here is a watercolor that she did at home and has been on our fridge for awhile.  What a beautiful still art!