The fun never stops

Grrr.  I already wrote this post once this week and then for some reason my dumb iPad never published it.  Moral of the story: Blogger app stinks.  

Anyway, the month of May has been off the hook crazy, as always.  But in mostly good ways, so I'll take it.  Last year in May we were in the middle of buying and selling a house and moving and getting ready for girls camp and I had morning sickness.  So this is a breeze in comparison.  

To begin Jaxon had a little performance at school.  It was hilarious and adorable and I took no pictures, but obviously Colton and Hudson were incredibly entertained.  Poor kids.  I had to wake them both up from naps. 

The kids had open house.  It was fun.  Jaxon has done awesome in Kindergarten and I have not regretted even once that we didn't hold him back.  

Madison has done equally awesome in second grade!  

We got a swing set, more on that later, the kids wanted to camp out in the swing set.  That lasted all of about 30 minutes, because once Chris and I went inside the kids started chickening out.  Colton didn't even try.  Jaxon got scared of a June bug and Madison didn't want to sleep alone.

We went on a little day camping trip.  I made Madison and her friends flower crowns.

We did a little piñata.

And we did some skeet shooting.  Jaxon and I like to look hardcore. 

Our stake split.  Which is pretty nuts because we've only been a stake for 6 years.  But now there is a new stake and we have 8 wards in our city of 130,000.

Colton and I have been attached at the hip for this whole month, not necessarily by choice.  Although I absolutely adore him, I also kind of like to eat without someone sitting on my lap.  The poor kid.  He's been sick, he's had nightmares, we have a new baby, and he's three--which is probably the main source of his separation issues.  

Jaxon had his last soccer game.  The whole family made it.  Jaxon has now played 3 seasons of soccer and this was the first game where I really felt like he "got it."  

He was super proud of his trophy, though.  Now his life is complete.

We ran out of strawberry jam last winter so I've been waiting for strawberries to go on sale.  When they did I figured I'd make about 10 pints of jam.  Well I misread the recipe and pureed twice as many cups of strawberries as needed and ended up with 22 pints.  Oh well.  

Colton and I took a little trip to a nearby museum with some friends.  

Hudson is almost sitting up and almost starting to scoot and almost ready to be a lot more high maintenance.  He's been such a dream baby and it's going to be a hard adjustment when I actually have to start watching him instead of leaving him to play for 15-20 minutes at a time. 

The neighborhood pool opened.  We went the first day.  My kids are fish.  

The kids had a temple trip to the Dallas temple.  My goal this summer is to see how many temples we can visit.  

Mothers day was wonderful.  I always love celebrating mothers and appreciating the blessing I have to be a mother.  I'm so grateful for these four little hooligans and for their dad.

This was colton's mother's day survey.  I have no idea why he is so focused on exercise.  Exercise and McDonalds.  Obviously we live a very conflicting lifestyle.

We got to Skype with Seth from brazil.  It was fun to have the whole family on together!

Jaxon and Madison started swim team.  They love it.  I love watching them learn to love something that I love. 

One day while I was walking the kids to school Colton held Hudson's hand the whole way.   It's moments like these that make me so grateful my kids have built-in buddies in our family. 

The weather has been great so we've been spending evenings outside eating and doing homework. 

The kids had field day.  Field day is a lot cooler these days than it was when I was growing up.  

Jaxon loved the bounce house.  He kept telling me to stop talking to him because he was focusing. 

Hudson thinks he's hot stuff.  

We introduced Hudson to the pool.  He loves it.  We are 4/4 for water lovers in our family. 

Madison and Jaxon had their piano recital.  Jaxon had been doing piano for two weeks.  He was adorable playing all 12 notes of his song!  Their recital was a dress-up recital.  It was super cute.  

After the failed fort sleepover I told the kids I would sleep on the trampoline with them.  We made it until 3 a.m.  Then I couldn't last.  It's so loud outside at night. 

Chris's grandma died.  So Chris had to fly last minute to Boise for the funeral.  While he was gone we had a little picnic at the pool.  That night I came down with the flu.  Colton had a random fever.  Chris was gone.  It was a looooong Sunday.  To make matters worse I had my whole family coming into town the next weekend for Madison's baptism.  It's days like those that I'm just glad I survive.  

This is what Colton looked like the whole time Chris was gone.  He just cannot handle his life sometimes.  

But he's cute when he sleeps.  And when he's awake and not crying. 

Hudson is super smiley.  He likes to pop his cute little head up any time I walk through the room.  Baby smiles make me happy.  

I have a new opinion on selfies.  I know a lot of people hate them.  I don't necessarily agree that most selfies are necessary, but I have decided that selfies with my kids are important.  We spend a lot of time together and I want my kids to look at pictures and see that I was there spending time with them.  Usually we don't have someone to take a picture, so we end up with kid selfies.  And pictures like this help me remember Tuesday afternoons spent at the park with all the boys while Madison was at piano lessons.  We go every. single. Tuesday.

Madison is in activity days now and she LOVES it.  They did a mother/daughter activity a couple weeks ago and she kept saying "this is just so fun."

One of the activities was a mud mask.  Madi thought that was pretty cool.  We went home a tried it.  She said it was itchy. 

That's part of May.  Next I need to write about house projects I've been working on and Madison's baptism weekend, but both of those are posts by themselves.