Will's Birthday

 Birthday snuggles, followed by bagels for breakfast and the preparation of rice crispy treats

 Movie time and then the decoration of crispy treats with copious amounts of frosting and candy!

 Then we played outside, did some handstands and ate pizza

 And finally it was time to eat their amazing birthday creations!

Mother's Day

This was all planned and directed by Ruth with the help of Will and Claire to build my "Happy Meal Toys." I'm grateful that the kids were so anxious to make it a nice Mother's Day and wanted to create something special for me. I truly feel like I have the best kids on the planet.

Brad's Birthday

I swear every year to make sure Brad gets a good birthday. Usually I fail, big time...it's hard since it's my birthday, then his birthday, mother's day, Will's birthday, our anniversary and then Claire's birthday...all jammed into a two month time period.

This year he had a meeting up in Colorado (that we didn't get to tag along for) but made it back to Santa Fe the night before his birthday. All the family that was in town went out to breakfast at The Pantry so Brad could have a smothered breakfast burrito. The food was excellent. We drove home and then went on a date that night with friends, which was really fun.

This year was definitely better than most (usually he gets a special home-cooked meal (this year it was green chile, bacon mac and cheese)...and that's it). But I'm hoping for a slam-bang Father's Day this year...which will probably require some Legos!

Zoo Train and Carousel

The kids have wanted to ride on the zoo train since we moved here and today was finally the day. They truly loved it and we had an especially pleasant day together. Bonus for finding the elephant in these pictures!

Las Cruces/White Sands

 Brad had work to do down in Las Cruces so we all tagged along to get some sunshine! We had a really great visit with Julian and Ashley's family going swimming at the hotel pool and hanging out at their house.

 Saturday we headed out to White Sands on the way home. We were exceptionally grateful that it was only 65 degrees out there! We attempted cardboard sledding down the dunes, but it was pretty unsuccessful. Either way we enjoyed an hours worth of basking in the sand and sun and then we were ready for some lunch.

 

Ruth and School

 Ruth has really enjoyed projects recently. For a couple weeks she was in a kite building phase, then it was a learning to roller-blade phase, then a short tinkering phase and most recently she's been working on an "Under the Sea" book that she's typing and illustrating. She's also mastered multiplication for numbers zero through five and ten. The other day Will was counting how many legs are in our family and he miscounted and said there were 9 legs. Ruth was super happy to tell him that 5 x 2 is 10 because there are five people and we all have two legs. She's also been working on money and adding with money and decimals. She still reads like a champion and has blasted through several books, most recently she finished "Ella Enchanted," so we could watch the movie. She has thoroughly enjoyed going to her weekly science class so she can chat and make friends (she was ecstatic last week because another girl asked her to stay after class and play at the playground, which of course we did). She has also been showing tons of interest in cooking and baking and made several batches of cookies completely on her own. She also has been practising chopping and dicing vegetables. Ruth has also really been embracing her big sister roll, which is something I've really tried hard to work on with her (she tends to be more bossy than nurturing...wonder where that came from?). She also loves playing games and making perler bead designs to show off to her friends at church.

 Ruth had the great idea to make a teapot out of an old water gallon and a water bottle. We used the hot glue gun to make the spout...and then we just had to have a dress-up tea party! We just had a MAAAAHVELOUS time!