Sam has only had one friend party in his life. He was three. He had four friends over. We went to the splash pad and then came back to our house for lunch and cupcakes.
A few months ago I read an article about how many kids never get invited to parties and how it's so great when you invite the whole class over together. So I had an idea to have a water-themed party and invite his entire class to hang out in our backyard and do water activities. Then I realized how nuts that would have been.
Instead, we let Sam invite 5 friends to go go-kart racing. (Good thing, too, because it was unnaturally cold that day. 60 degrees or something.) Thunderbolt Racing does a party package where six kids can race twice and then they provide a party area, ping pong table, and ice cream cake. Sam and his friends had lots of fun! Some of them had never raced before so it took them a while to figure it out, but once they did, they were going pretty fast! The winner was the person with the fastest lap of 12 laps.
All the boys. I love how they wore their skull caps almost the entire time.
Connor, Sam, Brady, Charlie, Billy, Evan.
Game face. Kind of.
I'm so glad they had the ping pong table, Between each race, they had to wait for adults to race and it took a while. I don't know what we would have done without it.
Although six eight-year-olds playing at one table was nerve-wracking. Especially when one of the boys chased the ball over the gate and into the track area...
This is how Afton spent most of the party - playing on Dan's phone. And we didn't get any pictures of Eli because we were busy chasing him around.
Ready to race!
During the racing, Dan went and picked up some Costco pizzas. Then we had ice cream cake.
I've never volunteered in Sam's class because you can't bring younger siblings, so it was nice to see his friends and how they all get along.
In the end, Evan came out victorious. Sam got second and Brady third.
I think he had a lot of fun and I hope his friends did, too.
Before I get to all the big stuff that happened in May, I wanted to go through my phone pictures so that I'll remember all the little things, too.
We've had tons of geese in our backyard this year. Eli loved to watch them from his high chair or at the window. So much so, that "goose" was his first word. (Comes out "goo.") We haven't had any geese for the past few weeks, so we haven't heard him say it lately. Other words he says are some form of "mama," "dada," "ball," and "car."
While Sam takes piano lessons, I try to find ways to entertain us for 30 minutes (it's too far to drive home and back). This day I needed to grab a few things at the grocery store. Eli's first time in a car cart. According to the weather app on my phone, it wasn't supposed to rain for another hour at least, but while we were in the store, it started pouring.
When we got out, I took off my flip flops and left the groceries under the awning while I ran the kids to the car (I had the closest spot). Then I ran back for the food and seriously got so close to being struck by lightning and I'm not exaggerating. Anyway, we were all pretty soaked and Afton was freaking out the entire way home. She kept her ears covered and cried and cried. She really hates storms. (Tangent: Last night Dan was out of town at a work retreat and I was up watching a movie and she came down to tell me that she was scared of the "fast moving clouds." So I let her sleep in our bed for an hour and then put her in her own after she fell asleep. She hates weather-related things.)
Another pretty walk and sunset.
I saw this pretty group of rhododendrons. We just planted some at our house, too.
First time he's ever fallen asleep in the high chair. It was Mother's Day after 9am church. We were just waiting for Dan to get home so we could head over to my parents' home, and I was trying to keep him up. Didn't work. And our high chair is permanently gross.
See? Mother's Day.
Another day during Sam's piano lessons we stopped at the park for a few minutes. Eli is kind of a wild child compared to my first two.
The beginnings of this year's garden. Once again, our peach trees aren't looking too hot. Something's wrong with them, but we're not quite sure what it is.
Sam likes to push Eli on the 1-mile walk around the neighborhood. We let him as long as he doesn't get too wild.
Sam also got his first bloody nose (albeit a very slight one). He and another kid collided during soccer practice. Coincidentally, before this crash occurred, they referred to themselves as the "Brick Wall Brothers" because whenever they ran into anyone, it was the other person who fell down.
Also during the course of this soccer season, Eli has gone from just sitting on the quilt because he didn't like grass, to crawling in the gutters that run along the fields, and eventually walking and crawling all around this port-a-potty. Nice.
The kids had an International Night at their school where each grade performed a few songs/dances from a different country.
Afton with a few girls from her class:
And Sam with his:
Afton wrote about her favorite movie.
Translation: "My favorite movie is 'How Do You Train Your Dragon Two' (How to Train Your Dragon 2). But I didn't get popcorn. With butter."
Speaking of disappointing food happenings. I saw this fully in tact peanut butter cup melting in a parking lot. A travesty.
Mom and Aunt Maureen came over for a day to hang out. We went to the Lewis Ginter Gardens. It was a beautiful day.
Eli and his Great-aunt Maureen.
After the gardens we went to Buzz and Ned's for lunch and got some ice cream and then came back to my place and visited for a while. It was great to see her and Mom!
I decided to be a nice mom one day and take the kids to a different playground. We'd been there a few times before when we were living in our cave apartment, but it had been a few years. Sam is super good at monkey bars.
We took some beautiful walks.
Sat through some soccer practices.
Sam went through a Hardy Boys phase and read pretty much the whole Hardy Boys collection. Here's one week's worth. (Not sure if he actually read the whole collection, but he read everything our library had.)
Our kids got spring pictures again. They're not as bad as last year, but still. It drives me nuts how they print out a whole package - key chains and everything. What a waste.
Afton did a bunch of artwork that I never know whether to keep or throw away. A baby chick hatching:
A self-portrait.
The kids' school had a carnival. It was really cold that day, but they wanted snowcones and I had a bunch of tickets to use up, so there you go. I made them do the cake walk a bunch of times in hopes of coming home with one of those big Costco chocolate cakes, but no dice.
Afton has begun to read the scriptures with us every night.
