May 2015

I feel like a lot more happened in May than really happened, but what did happen was lots of fun (mostly).

 

At the beginning of the month, I found out that my neighbor, who is a photographer, was doing mini Mother's Day photo shoots.  She was only charging $20 for a 15 minute slot plus 5-10 edited shots, which is an awesome deal!  I wanted some updated pictures of the kids since the last ones we had were from October, plus I figured it would make a good Mother's Day gift for the moms in our life.  She did them in the Provo Orchards and they turned out absolutely adorable.

Sometimes holidays can be a little tricky, especially when all of your family lives in the same state.  Throw in a divorced family and it gets even more tricky.  In order to try and make things work, Covey and I have to split things up the best way we can.  This year, we decided to do an activity with my mom and go to the Living Planet Aquarium the Saturday before Mother's Day.  It was a fun activity for everyone.  Makadie loved seeing all the different animals, especially the otters and the sharks.

Mother's Day was the next day.  We celebrated it with my dad and step-mom with dinner that the men were in charge of.  My Mother's Day gift was a necklace I picked out myself.  I had been wanting a necklace with my kids' names on it so I looked on Etsy and found a cute store that could do what I was looking for for a great price.  She was able to customize it just the way I wanted it.  I also had our wedding anniversary date on the necklace.  I really love it.

The weather started to heat up quite nicely, so playing outside was pretty much a daily occurence.  The kids loved playing with the little water station we have and running around in the yard.

Another activity we did was visit a place in American Fork called the Puppy Barn.  I had heard about from a friend of mine so I called her up one day and we took the kids.  It is basically a pet store that just sells puppies.  They have them in these big metal bins and you can pick them up and hold them and snuggle them to your hearts desire.  I think I was probably just as excited as Makadie to go!  Trey, on the other hand, is kind of scared of dogs and he tends to cry when he sees one in real life.  A picture?  No problem.  A video?  He's fine.  The real thing?  He cries and begs to be held.  I don't understand it because he doesn't have any specific reason to be scared of them, but he is.  (He is also scared of horses.  I don't get it.)  So part of the reason I wanted to go to the Puppy Barn was so that I could expose him to dogs and hopefully he would learn to be okay with them.  Makadie had a blast, just as I expected.  She cuddled the puppies and was happy as could be.  Trey did alright, but he definitely didn't want to touch one.  (Update: We went to the Puppy Barn in July and he actually reached out of his own accord to touch the puppy and smiled when it licked him.  Progress!)

You know how there are things that your kids do, and you tell them not to do, but they do it anyway, and you just know that one day they are going to really hurt themselves?  That was us with Makadie and getting down out of her chair.  We have a counter height table so our chairs are taller than normal.  In addition, Kadie sits in a booster chair, so getting down generally requires a little bit of help.  Well, one day, Makadie decided she was going to get down by herself while Covey and I weren't watching.  Next thing we hear is a bang and crying.  We rush over and see that Makadie has smacked her cheek right below her eye on the corner of the back of the chair.  It started to change color almost immediately and I knew that it had to have hurt.  After some hugs and kisses and ibuprofen, she was feeling a little better.  The bruise only got worse as the day went on and over the next couple of days she had a pretty good little shiner.  It was completely gone after 8-10 days.  I guess you have to just let kids learn the hard way sometimes.

More fun from May:

 For his birthday, we got Trey a little basketball hoop.  He wasn't sure what to do with it at first, but he soon got the hang of it and he's tall enough that he doesn't even have to reach to put it through the hoop!

 Me and my Kadie bug.  This was the day she smacked her face on the chair.  She let me snuggle up next to her on the couch and was so sweet that I got a little teary eyed.  I love my girl!

 Lots of self feeding going on--and lots of messes to clean up.

 Trey thought dinner was plate-lickin' good!

Trey had a little meeting with the cement when he tripped on the last step on the patio one day while we were outside.  He was still learning how to navigate going down the stairs and misjudged.  Poor guy!