Tuesday, June 27, 2017

May Madness

We crammed a lot of fun into the first three weeks of May!  Let's see if I can remember what this pictures are from.....

The weather was nice at the beginning of the month, so the younger girls and I went on lots of walks - often past this farm near our house where we could see ponies and horses.  


Cora continued being adorable - it's harder than it looks!


And the girls and I went to Dino Day!  After one of Eve's soccer games in the morning.



Pin the tail on the Dinosaur!


A "real" dinosaur!  And we saw the Seegmillers and other friends from church there too!


Making dinosaur tooth necklaces:


Curious George made an appearance!


Dino close up!  


He was giving away little plastic dino eggs with mini-dinosaurs in them and Abigail wanted one, but this is as close as she would get.  


After completing the dino-specific activities, we quickly toured the rest of the museum.  Just before the end, Eve lost her bag of goodies collected throughout the dino activities.  So we redid the whole thing.  It turned out to be a good thing, cause there were a couple of things we had missed.  But still....it took a long time.  


Dino pics was one thing we missed!  Too bad Eve was wearing a green shirt and the green screen washed her out :)


One Sunday we did hot rollers in the girls' hair for church.  I should have taken a picture from the back.  


Silly girls!



Halle was invited to her friend Max's birthday party at the Science Spectrum so I got to go with her.  And the kids got to see the temporary dinosaur exhibit!  


And play a dinosaur video game - they had to find food, water, stay away from dangerous dinos, etc.  I think I had more fun with it than Halle did....


We also went to the National Ranching Heritage Center with our friends the Seegmillers.  We've been there a couple of times, but only for events, never just to tour the actual facility.  Eve and Naomi were at school, but the rest of us had fun!


Abigail and Emi love cows!


And trains!



The most unusual part of May was my participation in a Chick fil A First 100 Giveaway.  A new restaurant opened near our house and I learned that they would be doing a "Road trip" for 100 lucky customers, who would then get free Chick fil A for a year!  It just so happened that it was a day after Andrew was done with finals, so he watched the girls and I went to Chick fil A!  I arrived shortly before 6am.  It turned out that only 96 people showed up, so we all were selected!  After breakfast we boarded a bus for the road trip to begin!  There were 4 of us ladies from my ward, and another lady from our stake - including my friend and visiting teaching companion, Sharla!  

Our first stop was a gym for a zumba class - it was a blast!  


After that, we went to a community center and bagged meals for the food bank.  We did over 10,000 meals!


Next was a park for lunch, then we had some extra time so went to Prairie Dog Town.  I never knew this was an actual place in Lubbock!  It was fun to watch the baby prairie dogs run around.  


Next we drove to Barnes and Noble where we each picked out a children's book that Chick fil A bought and donated to a local elementary school.  Finally, we went to the food bank to deliver the meals we'd packaged.  



We ended the day back at the restaurant with dinner and some games.  Then we were each given a card good for 52 free Chick fil A meals!  Andrew and I will be enjoying those for the next year!  And another Chick fil A is opening near our house in August.....so maybe we'll do it again and win more???


Our last day in Lubbock was Friday, May 19th (Eve's last day at school).  While she was at school, the rest of us girls went to Legacy Play Village with the Seegmillers!  Cora loves, loves, loves to swing!  


The next morning, we headed out for a 3 1/2 week family trip!  So that evening was filled with baths, lots of packing, cleaning the house, and it was our turn for babysitting group, so we did all that while watching 13 kids!  Time for a vacation!

Eve's Last Day of Kindergarten!

I think I was more emotional about Eve's last day of Kindergarten than I was about her first!  And I was extra emotional about it because she finished early and missed the little end of year party and graduation ceremony.  :(  More on that to come - family vacation took her out of school 3 1/2 days early.

Look at this cutie!  The last day of school for Eve was Friday, May 19th - and it was also Buddy Day at North Ridge.


Eve took flowers, a frozen yogurt shop gift card, and a hand written letter to her teacher, Mrs Brown.  Mrs Brown was a great teacher for Eve and Eve loved her!


I got to stop by the school that morning to watch the Buddy Day activities for a bit.  Eve was paired the Leyton from her class and they had a great time doing all the activities together!  Each pair had a 5th grader assigned to help them with the games.  There were bouncy houses, various relay type games, bubbles, water guns, etc.


And all these two wanted to do was play on the playground :)  Eve showed me that she learned how to do monkey bars!  First time I've seen her complete them!



After school, I got a picture with Eve and her friend Naomi - these two loved being in the same class!  Fingers crossed for 1st grade?!


Thanks again to Mrs Brown for a great year!


Now what am I going to do with Eve all summer?  I have a feeling she's going to be bored....

Cora at 11 Months

I'm way behind in posting these blogs, so I'll try to remember what I can of Cora at 11 months.


Cora free stands for short periods of time but has not attempted independent steps yet.


This girl loves to snuggle objects, particularly her blanket, which she also sucks while sleeping.  



"Really?!  You say I'm 11 months?!"



Apparently the grass was prickly....!


Cora is still very wary of other people and will cry if we try leave her, or even if we walk out of eyesight.  


This girl is sweet beyond words and we all adore her!

 

Mother's Day

How lucky am I to be mother to these four wonderful, beautiful girls?!  


They are more work than I could have ever imagined, but at least I can say that two years into this being at home with them thing, and I'm finally starting to get my feet under me.  And to love it!


Eve made this for me in kindergarten:


And Halle did this in Primary:


The girls are right that I really don't like hitting or coffee :)  

End of Soccer

Eve successfully completed her first season of soccer on May 13th!



She played hard the whole season and we could see definite improvement in her, and the whole team!


Despite their efforts, these girls lost every game this season, up to the last.  When we showed up for the last game, we saw we were playing for a second time the team they played their first week.  This team did not look like 6-7 year olds; they were really tall and very good at soccer.  I was upset that we had to end the season playing them - the only team we had to play twice.  They killed us that first game and I was certain they'd to it again.


Boy was I wrong!  Our girls played extraordinarily well the entire game and came away with a much deserved victory!  Their one and only!


Eve seems to prefer defense and blocked many, many kicks at the goal during this game, and throughout the season.



Win or lose, we're so proud of Eve and all the hard work she did this season.  She loved having Andrew as her couch.  And she loved all her teammates.


The girls each got a trophy (which we didn't know about until that morning):


So proud of these two and look forward to many more seasons to come!