Spring Time

We had a lot of fun this Spring.  We spent as much time outside as possible.  We went on a lot of walks, especially to go visit the horses and foals in the field across from our neighborhood or to the pond to throw rocks.  The kids love to go to the park, McKay especially loves the swings.  We were able to get to the zoo once and ride the carousel. McKay actually did really well and was happy to stay in the stroller and see all of the animals.

 Our most favorite thing of the spring though was the new swing set.  We bought it at Costco, but knew it would take us forever and a day to put together so we paid someone to do it for us.  Good thing we did because it took two of them 12 hours straight to get it put together.  I'm sure Craig and I would have given up after about 2..  The kids absolutely love it.  They are out there multiple times a day, every day.

Another super exciting thing that happened this spring was that Craig's parents got home from their mission in Anchorage Alaska.  The kids were so excited and we are all so glad to have them back.

Craig and I were also able to take a day and head over to Twin Falls, just the two of us.  My Mom watched the kids for us and we went to the Twin Falls Temple and then out to a nice lunch and to check out Shoshone Falls.  The temple was beautiful, lunch was delicious, and the falls were spectacular.  It was a really nice day together.  Sorry mom you had to deal with cold and rainy soccer and then McKay throwing up all over your living room.

We had a great spring and are excited for a fun filled summer.  Brooklyn is excited to swim as much as possible.  I have already told Craig to not expect the house to be super clean because we will be spending all of our time at the pool or at the park or splash pad.

Preschool Graduation

I cannot believe that Brooklyn has graduated from preschool and will be heading to kindergarten in the fall.  She has loved Harmony Preschool so much and loved her teacher Miss Michelle this year.  She really does thrive in school and loves to learn.  Each night when she says her prayers she always asks for Heavenly Father to help her to learn.  Brooklyn is a pro at all of her letters, both upper and lower case and their sounds.  She can count to 100.  Her hand writing is better than Craig's (sorry honey) and she has started to learn how to read.  We have been working on sight words and starting to sound out words as well.  She really loved all of the crafty/artsy things they did at school, since I am not a big fan of doing those things.  She also loved to just play with her friends.  She really has grown up a lot this year and is such a big girl.  She is going to do so well at kindergarten, but I am going to miss her dearly.  They had a end of the year program on the last day of school.  They sang songs, handed out awards (Brooklyn's was Sight Word Wizard, her teacher said that if she saw a word she knew she would also shout out "that is one of my sight words") and watched a cute movie their teacher put together.  She was so sad to say goodbye to her teacher a friends, but I reminded her that she will get to meet a lot of new friends at kindergarten.  After her program we headed over to McDonald's to celebrate with Pops and Nana and some of her cousins.

A few weeks ago at school they had a little Mother's Day program where they sang us a few songs and gave me a bracelet that they had made at school.  The teacher did a great job putting this little program together and amazingly McKay sat through the whole thing.

Soccer Star and Dance Diva

Our sweet little girl decided to try her hand at soccer this spring.  She was really excited and was ready for the season to start.  Her first game of the season though was a little bit of a let down, it was so cold and so rainy and my poor mom had to tough it out with the kids because Craig and I were gone.  Her second game she was just getting over her nasty stomach bug, so there were a lot of tears throughout that game and a very frustrated mom (both Craig and I are very competitive and we will have to learn how to be parents to a non-competitive kid).  Finally the third game was a success with good weather and the bribe of donuts after the game.  The next game was a bribe of Panda Express and then after that no bribes were needed.  It wasn't a matter of her not liking soccer, but more so the chaos that is 5 year olds playing soccer.  She loves order and knowing exactly she is supposed to do.  She is also very timid and was not a big fan of the few very aggressive kids that liked to push their way through everyone.  By the end of the season she was talking about wanting to play again next year.  She was pretty disappointed that she never scored a goal, even though she was very close a couple of times.  I hope that she will continue to want to play because I feel like you can learn so much from playing team sports, but I do have a feeling she might be more of an individual sport type of girl.

Brooklyn also loved ballet this year and she just recently had another recital.  For this recital her class were ferrets as part of the Carnival of the Animals.  Luckily their costume didn't really resemble a ferret much at all, but they sure looked adorable.  She really does enjoy dance and I do feel like I am becoming a little bit better of a dance mom and I do feel like there will be a lot of dance in our future.  She was so excited that both set of grandparents were able to make it to her recital and that her Daddy got her flowers again.  Our cute little ferret was sad that dance had to end and can't wait for it to start again in the fall.  She loved her teacher and all the girls in her class and was so excited when they got to wear whatever they wanted to their last class.