We all know kids get too old waaayyyy to fast. Which brings me to the point that J has completed his first year of preschool. It flew by and he had the best time. I am so happy we sent him to the school we did because he has started out loving school. Everyone knows bad teachers can make you hate school, and his teachers was the total opposite of that. Yea! So on the last day of school the kids walked to the park down the street and the parents met them there. They got a yummy lunch of hot dogs, watermelon...



...and Cheetos! Hence the orange fingers.


His cousin T...


who he loves. Check out those adorable orange smiles.


This is the traditional angry face he gives me every time I take his picture. He's not mad though, it's fun!


And this is the wonderfully fabulous Mrs. Greene.


We stayed after so J, M and T could play together a bit and there were these fabulously puffy clouds that we don't see a ton of here. So I had to take a picture. I wish I had a really wide angle lens on me so it would have been all distorted and bowed in the middle. Ok, ok, ok so I did a wee little bit of that in Photoshop just to see what it would look like. Oh well. It was still a pretty sky.

me me me meeeeee

I was playing a game with M where she sat in my lap and and I scrolled through the blog and asked her who people were. Of course she knows all her family, but we're working on enunciating names, like she calls J Tedo. Then J came and joined along because sibling rivalry runs strong around here, but point being he is an observant kid and noticed there are no pictures of Mom on there. Then he insisted I take some pictures of myself so they could find me too. I'm way to lazy to set up the tripod and find a clean corner of my house with the right light, but I was having a pretty good hair day, so I sat on the treadmill against a blank wall that happened to have a nice window to one side, stretched out my arms as far as I could and snapped these.





Then M took some of her own self portraits.

Really she was whining and wanted me to hold her, but it totally looks like she's trying to take her own picture don't you think?

Heat Wave

It has been a really nice, cool spring and I love this kind of weather. But we have had one heat wave, and when that heat wave came we discovered our a/c was broken! Aaahh! So the a/c repair guy couldn't come on that first day (lots of other people must have discovered their broken a/c on the same day), but he came by the next evening for the 17th appointment of his day. And you know when it's really hot all day long and then starts to just cool off a tad little bit in the shade outside, but your house is still cookin' hot so you go outside in search of even the smallest respite from the heat?! Well that's when I took these pics.

Trains are popular at our house. Although that is a dump truck...


M taking a break after running up and down the sidewalk. How do kids still have the desire to run in the burning heat?




J taking it easy. That's a lie actually. He was running all over the place too.






And a little texture for fun.




Our a/c was fixed shortly after all this running amuck, and we went inside, closed up, and turned it on all night long.

Whhaat?

So Sarah watched M for me while I went to my super special Mother's Day luncheon and J's preschool. But right before we walked out the door to drop her off, she got into my lip gloss and schmeared it in her hair! I tried to wash it our real quick, but it was time to go, so I just spiked it up a bit. So I take M to Sarah, and when I got back this is what she looked like.





Punk hair, and makeup ta-boot.

Mother's Day

Nathan worked and had school on Mother's Day so I wasn't expecting much out of they day, but I got a nice surprise. J's preschool had a Mother's Day luncheon and it was completely adorably cute! They had tables set up in the backyard with a flower pot they painted, a picture frame of each kid, and a place mat made out of questions about Mom they had asked the kids. Questions like:

How old is your mom? 10
What is your mom's favorite movie? The one with the men on it.
What special message to you have for your mom? Hey, you forgot to put the toilet seat down!

So each of our kids found their picture frame and set the moms down at the table.


Then they sang us a few songs.


Then the kids brought us some yummy food!


And after brought us homemade ice cream sandwiches. Yummy!!!


It was super cute and J was so proud to help. Mrs. Greene and the other teachers do such an awesome job! I love this preschool.

Ash

Our poor dog Ash hasn't gotten a lot of attention since we've had kids. It's not like we put her out back and only see her to give her some food or anything like that, but the kids seem to make more noise and just draw our attention away. A few weeks ago I started jogging with a friend and Ash comes along. She could outrun us all 5x over, but even at our slow pace I think she is feeling like part of the group again. The kids are even starting to play with her. One of J's new jobs is to feed her and they both try to make her do tricks. She even listens to them when they bribe her with food. Here she is, in all her graying glory.

I hear it's your birthday!

I CANNOT believe J is four! How did this happen? I swear he was a little baby like two days ago. And now he's got a crazy big vocabulary and is jumping off retaining walls taller than he is. (sigh) So we had a little family party and will have a friends party with M next month when Nathan is out of school and can be there for sure.

We started off with a soothing activity to kids and adults alike.






J decided on a pajama/apron wearing party. Yep, he dressed himself.


Presents!


Sarah catching up on her Book of Mormon stories.




He looks like he's getting away with something...


He requested ice cream cake. That's my boy!




Behold, J's future.

Fieldtrip!

Remember when you were little and you got a chance to go on a field trip and it was the coolest thing in the whole wide world?!? I got to go on one with J and that was his totally innocent enthusiastic attitude. We packed a lot into a few short hours starting at the police department. We started inside where the kids got to sit and sit and check out the strange contrast between the cement building and the lush green foliage.

Then we walked around the back of the building where a very nice police lady pulled up in her police car and told the kids all about it. She showed them where the bad guys sit, the radar that catches speeders, where she keeps her gun, and of course the siren. Yep, it was loud.


And then they got to climb through the back seat. J, if you're ever in the back seat of a police car again...


Afterwards we headed to the grocery store where we say behind the scenes and got a snack, then to the bowling ally. Fun, fun, fun!

Blond Moment

Ok, did you notice that my last 30-something photos are all pixely and funny looking? I've been totally skipping a step in my photo editing/posting process without even realizing it. See, I usually resize the pictures smaller myself instead of letting the blogging program do it. If I skip that simple to do but apparently forgetful step, the pictures turn a little funky. Oops!

In other news, the Moon/Twohy family invited us over for enchiladas yesterday and they were magically delicious.

Now off to decide if I should repost all 30+ pics...

Down to less than a month behind!

April was a very mellow month and I don't think we did a whole lot of anything. Wait! Did I say mellow? What I meant to say was the kids tried to throw a rebellion and it was all I could do to keep them under control so we didn't go out and do a whole lot of anything. I say I because Nathan had tons going on at work and school and we didn't see a whole lot of him this month. M is almost two now and her independent colors are showing through. Don't get me wrong...she's a sweety, but when she's in a mood, she's in a mood! J is usually a really good kid, but entered into a see how much I can sneak into things and still get away with it phase. I had this strange suspicion that J must have been sneaking the string cheese out of the fridge, but he helped me to understand that it was Mr. Nobody taking it out, eating it on the couch and leaving the wrappers strewn about. I told J that maybe he should at least help Mr. Nobody hide the evidence deep in the garbage can. He thought that was a good idea.

Here's the kids with Grandpa Jim. M was in one of her moods.




And we did venture out to the zoo with our friends Sammy and Shaunika.


J was totally upset he forgot his sunglasses, but Sammy was a sweety and let him borrow his.

You should have seen his gnarly teeth.


Can you find me?


At the end of the zoo loop there is a playground for the kids. Don't they look sweet? And by the beginning of July they should have baby #2. Yay!


M was basically uninterested in the playground. But who needs toys when you can explore nature's carefully manicured foliage?