May 2012 Activities and photos

Since it is six months later that I am posting this finally, let's go with quick summary style. Here are the best pictures from the month of May and short captions to try and explain what happened that month.

Baby wearing training pants. Mostly because I think I ran out of diapers that day.

Princess and Baby were spontaneously wrestling. It was funny to watch.

Princess grew these beans and was very excited to eat them.

He's just super cute.

A monster patch I did on Baby's pants.

Mother's day breakfast with my four helpers.

Trainboy lost a front tooth.

Pretty Princess

A history food project. One of our favorite things to do.

Baby gets a toddler bed. He was thrilled until he realized what it was intended for. Did not sleep in it for months. (Now demands to sleep in it though.)

An old hotel was imploded in town. We got up really early to go watch. It came down loud and fast!

My sister was visiting at the time. Here we are waiting for the blast.

Yay for early morning explosions!

Princess began her muffin making career (with Jiffy mixes) in May

Trainboy expresses his love for doing dishes. See the joy in his face?

Dinoguy attempts to defy gravity with a chair while reading.

Showing off some history projects.

Trainboy is ready for a battle.

Cutest civil war union soldier award.

Scrumptious cheeks for kissing.

Princess shows off her new jumper that Grandma made her.

New baby (for a dear friend)

The last week in April was spent at a friends' home helping her while she had a baby. The kids loved visiting friends. I also enjoyed seeing my dear friend and also enjoyed that I got to see another new child come into the world which is always a sacred experience.

Kids with water balloons

Yep I filled up approximately 100. It's a labor of love.

Water balloons plus trampolines are super fun.

It was a memorable birth because of events that were unexpected. However that is my friends' story, not mine. What I got was a chance to snuggle and care for her newborn baby more than I was expecting! 

Introducing her kids to their new baby sister. My sweet kids, including Baby and Princess are quite interested too and had to be reminded not to crowd out the siblings.

Love this cute pic. Trainboy is right there loving on the new baby too.

Her three kids first picture together!

Me with the new baby wrapped on in her mei tei.

Precious new baby!

It was a memorable birth because of events that were unexpected. However that is my friends' story, not mine. What I got was a chance to snuggle and care for her newborn baby more than I was expecting!

Trainboy's Book One Violin Recital

Toward the end of April, we finally held a Suzuki book one recital for Trainboy. He had learned all the songs in book one and we spent some time polishing them before holding the recital. I did record the recital - but on a video camera that I have yet to download several years of video...so here is a video of him at the beginning of April while he is still polishing Gavotte (the last song in Book one) and also one of him playing Minuet 1.

(If you are reading this in email, you must click on a link and go to the webpage to see the videos)

April birthdays

  

Fixitman & I celebrated birthdays in April. I made my own cake this year after falling in love with the strawberry meringue cake on the cover of Southern Living. It was delicious! Fixitman took the kids to the dollar store to buy presents for me and I did likewise for him.

The kids enjoy giving us presents and then helping us use them. It is also fun to see the difference between the ages of understanding of gift giving. :)

Lego Temples

At April General Conference time, I made a binder for each kid with activities for when each of the apostles and the prophet spoke. It didn't work exactly as planned but it was fun and we enjoyed the many activities. The boys' favorite (I think) was making a lego temple.

There are two of Trainboy because I love the comparison of glasses to no glasses with him.

Dinoguy's tooth removal

Did you ever wish you had an extra set of teeth in case you lost an adult tooth? Well Dinoguy came with an extra tooth. However it wasn't a bonus tooth to save for later, but an annoying partial tooth that was preventing his adult tooth from coming in. Luckily it looked like it was a simple removal and the dentist even hoped it could come out naturally after he lost his baby tooth. However most kids lose their front teeth by 9, so when we were past 9 and his front tooth was not even a little bit loose it was considered delayed. So it came to oral surgery. The surgeon pulled out two baby teeth and then were able to pull out the partial tooth without much trouble. Now we wait for his adult teeth to descend on their own.

Dinoguy thought it was memorable because he got to get put to sleep with laughing gas. Fixitman thought it was fun because Dinoguy was so "happy" afterward. Dinoguy did try to pull out the stitches at one point thinking they were something stuck in his gums, but he didn't get far before we stopped him. I am very grateful it was simple and straightforward and there weren't any complications.

His two baby teeth and the partial tooth

So now that he has a big gap in his mouth we told him we were going to call him "Fang". He didn't like that idea at all. I wonder how long he'll have a gap in his mouth before the other teeth appear?

Blue Bell Ice Cream Tour

For fun on our Spring Break week we went on a tour at the Blue Bell Ice Cream Factory.

The three brothers who founded Blue Bell.

Oops about Trainboy's face not being visible!

Sweet little boy with his short hair.

Handsome boy with his glasses. Nice to see his face!

My big boy is getting so big!

Princess actually looking at the camera.

So we have never really had a Spring Break before as a family - but this year we all had this week off! No teaching or classes for anyone. Well...except a certain grad student had tons to do anyway. But he joined us for this fun day trip.


The tour doesn't allow cameras but the kids really enjoyed seeing the ice cream be made. Then of course the ice cream at the end was a treat!

 Our camera has been slowly dying and really made that manifest on our trip. It just keeps doing the opposite of what you want - changing functions and such. So you could say it is becoming possessed.

On the way home we saw a pastured poultry farm and stopped. We were delighted to find a local farm that grows grass fed pork and chicken and actually delivers to our area too! The farmer also let us look around at all the happy animals. The kids loved seeing the turkeys, the chickens and the pigs. It is called Yonder Way Farms. Wish I'd taken some pictures but I'm blaming our dying camera on that.

We had a fabulous spring break week of low key fun at home. It could be called a "staycation". We also had a full day of video games and a full day of playing with friends among our adventures.