May Schtuff

I tried taking a panoramic pic of our lake in our complex. It makes it look really small and circular and weird--I mean I was standing pretty close to the kids and they look crazy distant. So it is definitely distorted. But it does look green and gorgeous.

5 year old boys.

Freckles.

Freckles AND ginormous eye lashes. That girl wins in all the ways.

My troop biking over to the pool. Ruth was pretty proud she made it the whole way with her pool noodle in hand.

Our friends from the Delray Beach ward graduated med school and headed off to California! Baby Ray was the highlight of playgroup for Molly and she is sure going to miss him!

Kids biking home from school and wanting a picture on the rock...every day. Haha!

Kindergarten Round-up at school! She was the cutest little cowgirl around! Thanks to her little brother for the jeans and shirt!

Will had Mother's Day Tea at his school and they did a little program. It was so adorable!!!

I love his teacher so much!!!! He was super ornery about this picture and I was just going to throw in the towel, but I turned around and she already had him in smiles!!! She's from England and has the greatest accent. She also has an identical twin that still lives there--which I think is cool. Molly already talks about next year when she is in Miss Avogardo's class!

Family Swim Day

These pictures have been sitting here for two weeks and I'm finally getting around to posting them. Sterling had a Saturday off two weeks ago (in surgery he has to work one weekend day, so we always pick Saturday so that he can go to church on Sunday and that has mostly worked out) and I realized it was pretty much the last full day that he would be able to spend with us before we left for Utah. So we made the most of it! 

We started out the morning at Home Depot making their windmill flower pots. The kids had a fabulous time. Then we made sandwiches and headed to the pool. I loved having Sterling there! And the kids LOVED showing off all their sweet skills to him. They are learning so much at swimming lessons. And, of course, it was nice to have someone else's strong arms to throw kids in the air repetitively. (I tried to get everyone to go to the beach and they all vetoed me and voted the pool. How disappointing that we live in Florida and my family chooses a pool!!!! To the kids credit--they can't swim underwater and strokes in the waves of the ocean.)

Molly the fish.

Diving rings are also really good teething rings.

Will is the funniest lately with his little toys that he is always dragging around. We got to the pool and he had one sheep, one horse, and one dog stuffed into his pockets. He floated them around on his boat all afternoon.

Ruth and Molly had a lot of fun holding their breath and sitting at the bottom of the pool with daddy.

Pool chairs are also really great boat ramps.

The pruniest little feet there ever were!!

I can't remember what we did the rest of the night--but I remember being happy it was so low-key. Oh I think Sterling and I watched the Saratov Approach, which somehow we had never seen before. After bathing and feeding the kids and Sterling giving them an extra long story time. We hadn't watched an entire movie together in a really long time, and as nail-biting as that movie was, it was still really nice. Oh surgery, how I loathe thee, and I cannot wait for the end. 

Sterling has been leaving at 430am and getting home around 8pm. That's not incredibly late--but its after I've got all the kids in bed and usually done all the dishes, so it feels very solo around here. We have been having major van issues---oh van, how I loathe thee, I love thee, but I loathe thee--and it's been pretty awful. I've been crawling out of bed at 429am and getting myself and four kids illegally into Sterling's little nissan sentra to drop Sterling off so that I can have the car to do things like take Will to school and take them to swimming lessons. It makes for pretty ornery kids (even when I convince them to go back to sleep at 6am when we get home) and a pretty ornery mom. We bought a more expensive van with lower miles with the intent and hope that it would last us not only through med school but through residency. We've had it one year. It has 65000 miles on it. It makes me sick. We've put way too much money into it, and they still don't know whats wrong with it. And I'm starting to get nervous because I am supposed to be driving it to Utah in four weeks. Some things in life are just rough and this has been one of them. And added to the already tough stress of Sterling being in surgery, it hasn't been fun. Sterling actually enjoys surgery--but he doesn't like the environment. He says surgeons have the worst mouths and nastiest attitudes of anyone he's ever worked with in medicine. And he spent several weeks at different locations and he just started his last four weeks at the VA hospital and he said its even worse. So fun for him. Also the test at the end is supposed to be pretty awesome. So he's stressed, and not enjoying his days as much, and I am dealing with not having a van, and it just isn't fun. 

On the upside, it's not raining today (yay for sunshine! The tropical summer storms have started and I would gladly leave until October because I do not like them at all.), and the kids have been having adorable end-of-year activities. I have all of our dental and well-child checkups planned so we will be good to head out for Utah, and we have UTAH to look forward to! ALL SUMMER LONG! (It is a bit of a downer, because Sterling will be here in Florida and I will miss him, but he's going to be so busy--I wouldn't have seen him much anyway.)Another upside-Sterling put new training wheels on Molly's bike and she is THRILLED (her old training wheels were falling apart and it made her ride very precarious). I *think* we're getting over the fever/colds that Will and Russ have had the last few days. And that is good!

Russ 11 months

 This boy is the cutest, squishiest, smilingest most adorable baby on the planet. He is always happy. He wakes up with a smile and he goes down for naps with a smile and he pulls out Molly's hair with a smile, and he claps and smiles at dinner time to amuse everyone. He is into everything--crawling, climbing, scaling, going up stairs, emptying all the drawers, opening all the cupboards, tipping over all the things and throwing around all the clean laundry and ripping all the books. He LOVES the piano and dumping out the diaper bag. He races to the dishwasher whenever it's open--so funny. I put him in the high chair whenever I actually have to do something without him being right at my side. He waves and claps and babbles and sings and says "mama" which I love. He stands up on everything--which means he can reach all the things.

He's crazy and he's fast and he's always giggling and I just love him OH SO MUCH!!!! So does everyone--he's the only baby at church so EVERYONE has to take a turn holding him. He smiles and waves at the crossing guard so she gives him special fist bumps every morning. The kids are still in so much adoration I wonder if it will ever wear off! He brings the joy to everyone and we are so glad he's in our family!

Kid-isms.

I am the WORST at writing down adorable things my kids say. Which is such a travesty because Molly has some real winners lately.

One of my absolute favorite things she says is "smil-oh-wing" it sounds a lot like 'swallowing' but she means 'smiling'. Because Russ is such a happy baby, she says it frequently--"Look mom! Russee's smilohwing at me!" I love it. Sometimes I even say "he's what?" just to get her to repeat herself. Haha.

Today the kids were riding bikes and Molly was having hysterical fits of laughter because she was ramming Will's back tire with her front tire. It just hit her funny bone. At one point, he was slowing down, so she was passing his back tire and couldn't hit it anymore so she said something to the effect of Will! Go fast! I'm following up at you!---It was super funny.

The other day while driving in the car Molly was telling me, in great length and detail, about how when she went to Rupee's school (which we had just been at for Muffins with Mom) she wasn't going to be scared of the prisoner's, and she was going to ask the prisoners what the black stuff on the ceiling was. I was so confused by the whole conversation. I finally figured out that the cafeteria had open piping, and she wanted to know what it was. And she wanted to find out by asking the 'principal' but she kept saying 'prisoner'. I was laughing so so hard. I also loved how she said she was going to be so brave to ask her.

My kids have an obsession with going down the stairs head first. They call it 'belly sliding' and literally do not descend our stairs in any other fashion. And when they have to walk down the stairs, they do it with jubilation "Guys!! Belly-sliding!!!!" It's hilarious. I love how kids can take the mundane and make it so much fun!

Both Ruth and Will have been ending the school year on recycling units. Ruth remembers so many things and has made me be a much better recycler at home (I'm not terrible--I just don't go to any great lengths). The other day on the way home from walking Ruth to school Will saw two water bottle on the ground and asked if he could pick them up and put them in the garbage (I've told them to ask first, kids will pick up anything haha). He picks them up, throws them in the garbage with triumph and yells "I'm saving the earth!!!" It was the best!

Swimming Lessons and other cute things

 Way back in February Will got a remote control car for his birthday. Ruth stepped on it the first day. So when my friend emailed me a deal of a sixty dollar one for $25 we decided to try again. It's already not working at full capacity (what are we doing wrong with these things?!?!?!) but Will has had some fun with it!

 We started swimming lessons! The kids are stoked and they love it! It's longer than I thought--I assumed everyone was thirty minutes lessons, but Ruth's are an hour. Luckily, they have a shallow end that starts at the walkway and slowly gets to about three feet deep, with some tiny fountains to play in and they let Molly and Will play and play during Ruth's hour lesson. They all fall asleep on the way home--these teachers are legit (Creole's man, they are tough! Will got smacked on the head with a pool noodle when he dived the way she said not to--haha! I worried about how stern they were because Molly was so nervous, but they just whip her around in the water and she'll just float--because she has to! Ha!) and have learned so much already, in only two days! Ruth and Will are learning diving and back stroke and free style. Ruth's is a little more advanced and they are really strict on her form, they are just teaching the basics to Will. Molly is learning star-fished-back floating, kicking, holding her head under water and coming up to breath, etc. I think it's going to be such a great month of lessons!

Ruth free style

Hanging out at the shallow end during Ruth's lesson.

He's just soooooo cute!

The broom is his very favorite toy.