Ann Marie, Age 3

In the afternoon we played a couple of rounds of frisbee golf.

The darker dirt in this picture was a huge fire ant hill. It had a bunch of new queens that were flying off to make their own hills.

Ann Marie requested pink cupcakes. I decided to get out my frosting tips and try making something pretty. The first tip I tried made the cupcake look like a cinnabon, but the next one I tried got some pretty results. Of course the kids just licked the frosting off. I don't know why I bother making the cupcakes.

Ann Marie loves puzzles, so she got two for her birthday. These are the wooden Melissa and Doug 24-piece puzzles, and they're great.

Ann Marie says: I like cupcakes and pink cupcakes. More puzzles of that. A ducky for my birthday. A pink one. For my birthday. A pink ducky.

May pictures, in no particular order

This vine (Jasmine?) grows all the way around and up a tree in the backyard, and when it was flowering in May the entire backyard smelled fantastic!

Ryan started teaching Kevin to mow the lawn.

These were some of the lilies we got. Unfortunately, the deer ate most of them, and this is a variety that only makes four or five lilies each year. I tried Deer Resist spray, and that seems to have helped a bit.

Ann Marie and I went strawberry picking. We made some strawberry jam.

We went back a couple of weeks later and picked a couple more gallons of strawberries, which I was planning to make into more jam. Unfortunately, that night I injured my back, so instead of making jam we just ate all the strawberries, and we never got back to the strawberry patch to pick more.

Silly Heidi dressing up in Kevin's Sunday clothes: 

The candy tuft died, so I decided to try out petunias. They've done pretty well, although now they're looking a little leggy and I'm not sure how long they're going to last. The vincas in the back are thriving now. All the plants are at least a foot high and wide.

One of my favorite ways to fix the girls' hair if I'm feeling ambitious (I'm always looking for cute hair-dos to keep Ann Marie's hair out of her face since she's developed an unfortunate habit of sucking on her hair lately . . .).

The first of our cherry tomatoes:

It's been fun to see Heidi's writing develop throughout the year. For this assignment she wrote about my grandma (Grandma Great).

Grama grat did a war with the deer.
Grama grat has toys.
Grama grat has a pano (piano).

Here are the kids waiting for the bus on the last day of school. It was a good school year. I hear third grade is pretty challenging, so we'll see how it goes for Kevin.

On Memorial Day I saw this pool and decided to get it. We've gotten quite a bit of use out of it this summer. We didn't end up getting a pool membership, so this has been a big help with getting through the hot days.

With Ann Marie's birthday approaching, Kevin and Heidi decided to make these birthday banners for her. They did it all by themselves with no help from me other than supplying the construction paper. It was very sweet.

Various April photos

Ryan was looking for a new exercise option since walking in the heat wasn't really working, so he found this elliptical for a good deal. The kids enjoy seeing how high they can get the numbers.

Kevin made a robot costume.

Kevin and Heidi really wanted me to teach them how to sew. Kevin made a pillowcase (it still needs some work) and Heidi made a doll pillow. She was very proud when it was finished.

Kevin was proud to finish the fourth Harry Potter book. He's almost done with the fifth one now.

I loved these Gerbera daisies. These pink ones with a hint of orange were my favorite. I had to move them from the sunny garden beds in front to some pots on the steps, which helped for a while, but I think they couldn't take the heat because eventually they all died. :'(

At the Camp Helaman Easter egg hunt, Heidi had fun pulling this handcart with some friends.

We did this craft in my primary class after using Resurrection eggs to talk about the story. I thought I must be crazy giving five preschoolers scissors, but it actually went really well and the kids enjoyed it. It was such a special and spirit-filled class.

Ann Marie was being cute.

Mistletoe State Park

I didn't realize how behind I was sharing photos, but we'll see if I can catch up.

In April Ryan and the kids had spring break. We had grand plans to do fun things like going to the park and we were even planning to go camping in the Great Smoky Mountains, but the week of spring break ended up being unseasonably cold and rainy, so we mostly stayed home and watched our garden die.

But we did go visit Mistletoe State Park one day. Kevin went there on a field trip last fall and had a nice time, so we had been wanting to go see it. It was really cold.

We walked down a trail that was near the parking lot. At first Kevin said he didn't recognize it, but apparently after a while he remembered it because he started saying, "So guys, pretty soon we're going to get to this spot and there's going to be a HUGE hole! Like 50 feet deep!"

And he was right. Well, I don't know if it was 50 feet deep, but it was really deep.

There was a sign that told what these are called, but I can't remember the name anymore. This isn't just a regular river. The whole area used to be farmland in the early 1900s, and the farming practices that were used were not good for the soil and they affected the soil really deep down, so these channels were formed very rapidly by erosion because of the farming practices.

We walked around some more on the trails.

We saw some woodpecker handiwork on several trees:

After that Kevin wanted to play on one of the playgrounds and we briefly explored the beach and had a snack.

New calling and other happenings

Two weeks ago I spoke with the bishop and he released me from Primary. He said I've served well, which I really appreciated. I'm not a perfect teacher by any means (I struggle with classroom management), but the children love me, we've felt the Spirit in our class, and they understand the doctrine a little better. The past couple of months I've been losing morale and I've been feeling pretty isolated, but I didn't expect a release any time soon because I knew they were already trying to find eight more teachers, so I was planning to persevere and deal with my social challenges in other ways. I told the bishop I was surprised they were releasing me, but he said they had actually been prompted quite a while ago to ask me to be a family history consultant, but they had put it off because they really needed me in the Primary. Then the prompting came again and they decided they shouldn't ignore it. So I've been asked to be a family history and temple consultant, and he also asked me to be a back-up Sacrament meeting chorister. I'm grateful that I will be able to go to Relief Society again (I actually only attended once in this ward before being put in Primary). The bishop said Heavenly Father is aware of my needs and maybe that's partly the reason for the calling change. I don't really feel qualified for my new responsibilities, but I do love family history. We'll see how it goes. Today was my first week back in Relief Society, so that was nice. Apparently a couple of the girls from my primary class cried today when they found out I wasn't their teacher anymore, so I guess I've made an impression. It's definitely been an experience that stretched me.

Our plants are growing. The tomato plants are getting big and we have a few cherry tomatoes. I finally gave up on growing zucchini from seed and bought a plant from Lowe's, and it's thriving. The cantaloupe is taking off and has a lot of flowers, and so do the cucumbers.

The kids have been out of school for a week. In some ways it will be nice to be less bound to the school schedule and have more time to play, practice the piano, do chores, etc., but I have to admit that sometimes it's hard for me in the summer when it's hot and the kids are home with me all the time. I need to sit down and figure out some things we want to do. We probably need to keep working on Kevin memorizing addition and subtraction this summer, and I still haven't figured out any swimming lessons. I'm leaning towards finding someone for private lessons because they never seem to swim much in group lessons. I think Kevin and Heidi are ready for a break from school work. I'm working on putting together some daily responsibility charts and Saturday chore charts. Maybe I should make some for myself too.

Ryan is working on some material that will be distributed to the public about the solar eclipse coming up later this year. It talks about things like how to safely view the eclipse. He's also getting a different borrowed office (they're still working on getting him a permanent one), which involves moving his stuff out of his current borrowed office so the old chair of the psychology department can move back into it, then the new chair will move out of her office to the chair's office and Ryan will get her office. So right now he's kind of in limbo.

We bought nectarines at Costco yesterday and there has been considerable discussion about what these things are called. The kids keep wanting to call them tangerines, but they've also said nangerines and (my favorite) submarines.

Kevin discovered the Secrets of Droon series recently. We checked out four on Friday evening and by yesterday he had already finished them all.