Gonna party like it's my birthday!

Well, little Ava Pearl has turned two. We kept telling her it was her birthday, and she would say "birthday" but she didn;t really know what birthdays were all about, se we had to show her. I took her to King's to help shop for her present.

She loved the Princesses and dolls, but she picked out exactly what I thought she would, a Doodle writer that you can erase. She is a budding artist, and can color for hours, well not really, but it entertains her for a long time.
And this is what she really wanted-CANDY!!!! But she did not get it due to the fact that i noticed two little cavities on her back teeth earlier that morning and made her first dentist appointment. Yikes!
Then we went downtown to the Boise Co-Op a fun grocery store that has little carts for the kids, and tasty gelato, mmmmm our favorite. Ally's friend Sydney came along, Ava wanted to hold her hand the whole time.

And here we are with our little carts. The kids each picked out an organic fruit leather and put it in their own respective carts. But then they got a little wild and were causing traffic jams in the Co-Op, so we had to get them out of there. From there, we took a picnic to the Foothills Learning Center in the Boise foothills where a story teller was talking about bugs.

And then home for the best part, decorating cupcakes and opening the presents. the kids each got a pair of star goggles since they are so into swimming now and can go underwater without plugging their noses (I can't). And Ava of course just wants whatever the other two have. The kids licked the frosting off of their cupcakes, and we went to bed. It was a nice birthday, I hope another couple go by before Ava realizes that she needs friends to come to it. She is such a darling girl, and we are so happy to have her in our family. And we can't believe that she is two. Happy Birthday little Avesie.

Summer!!!

So Ally graduated from kindergarten last week. She is sad to not be in school anymore, she had the best teacher and such a great class with so many friendsshe absolutely loved kindy. I am so proud of her, she has learned to read and did such a great job, she can hardly wait for first grade. But she did have summer to look forward to, and one of Ally and Luke's main needs this summer was a slip n slide. So I bought them one...
And it remained just like this, in the box for over a week while we checked the weather every day to see if it was warm enough for the slip n slide. Luke would get up in the morning, and ask if it was warm enough today. One day there were black clouds in the sky, and he said "Oh man, I woke up and saw black clouds." The weather here has just been weird, not near as bad as some parts of the country, but definitely too cold for summer lovin' kids like mine...
But then today, after a long long wait, summer has arrived. The slip and slide made its way out of the box and on to our lawn. The jump house came out to visit too, and some popsicles made their way over.
And the kids had their friends over and are outside right now, as I write, slippin' and slidin' in the sun. Until the slip n slide breaks. It does not look very sturdy. But so far so good.
Ava and her friend Sophie are not too sure about getting wet, so they are cruisin' instead. We love summer!!!

the merry month of May

Well, we have had a lot of things happen this month, so I will just put a couple of highlights. It seems like May gets so busy with the end of school, soccer season finishing up, so many parties and things to go to, our anniversary, Mothers Day, trips and family coming to visit. It just flew by in a flash of fun activities, but we loved it all. My sister Suzi and her husband Matt came to see us. Suzi is a whiz in the kitchen, here she is whipping up a batch of blackberry cream cheese muffins for ally's school teacher appreciation. Those lucky teachers, they were the tastiest muffins I ever had. I tried to re-create them later, without Sue, but not even close. She also gave me the best recipe for Mexican Lasagna I have ever had.
Josh and I got to spend a few days in SanFrancisco last week. We are sad that Cale and Hailey moved so far away but are glad that they moved somewhere so fun. We are at the Golden Gate bridge. It is very high. A helicopter flew under it while we were on it. We ate delicious sourdough bread and saw the sea lions and rode the Trolley cars and went to China town, and walked and walked and walked all over the town, there was so much to see and do. We can;t wait to go back.
Here are the kids modeling their Chinatown pj's.
Pretty tricky.
Uncle Nick also got back from China yesterday, after being there since December. We were happy too see him, Ava loves Nick. We are excited to go up today and see his pictures and hear all about his trip.

So those were a couple of May highlights. I can;t believe that the month is already gone. Only three more days of school, and then summer is here. Hope everyone is doing good.