May--the rest of the fun

And now for a post about the rest of the stuff we've been doing that is not child-specific.

Jacob went out and took some pictures of the prickly pear cacti when they were in the process of blooming. My favorite are the purple pads covered in yellow flowers (if he had gone back out about 3 days later he would have caught most of those buds in blossom).

The desert does have it's beauty, so long as you don't try and touch it. :)

When I took Rachel up to the math competition in Phoenix, Jacob held down the fort here at home. Which, as usual, involved a trip to the park.

 Jacob and Ryan went on a Father/Son campout with our ward, which meant that us girls were back at home having a girls' night. We invited McKenzie and Peyton for some girl time and they all had a blast together. We had pizza and rootbeer, painted nails, and watched a movie.

The next day when Jacob and Ryan got home from camping we headed over to the splash pad by McKenzie and Peyton's house to celebrate McKenzie's birthday.

 Peyton had decided to do whatever Megan told her to, so Megan was having a ball dragging Peyton along with her.

 Ryan was having a blast with the buckets dumping out at random intervals until he collided with another kid and got hurt.

 After that he was in a pretty grumpy mood for most of our time there, almost missing out on cake and Eegees because he wouldn't even come over to sit with us.

 Luckily he came out of his mood with 10 minutes to spare and got another run in the splash pad so we all left happy.

For a mutual night a few weeks ago the Laurels invited one of the ladies in our ward who is an artist to come teach us how to paint. 

 It was a fun activity and I was pretty amazed at how well mine turned out for how much of an amateur I am.

 For mutual this week (the last week of school) we had a cookout in the Allen's back yard. It was partially for girls camp prep (since we aren't allowed to light fires because of fire restrictions, and cooking is only allowed in the kitchen because of bears and skunks and such), but also just a chance to get together for fun and to celebrate the end of school.

 Stacy Compton, our camp director, taught everyone how to make cast iron pizzas, and they really turned out really well.

 Towards the end of the night the girls ran through their lip sync to "I've Got a Dream" from Tangled, as well.

 For the end of the school year we decided to have a friend movie night. We used to do this a lot more often, but I think since I've been the YW president I feel like I plan enough parties all the time, and see enough people that my socializing bucket is full. When I was serving in primary I felt more need to connect and invite friends over to socialize while their kids watched movies with my kids. Anyway, so each kid picked 2-3 friends to invite over for movie night. And thankfully at least one came for each of them.

 We watched The Incredibles, so now we're ready to go see The Incredibles 2 one of these days, maybe when it gets to the cheap theaters.

 Megan's friends Kensie and Mikaela enjoyed the movie for a while, but eventually the pull of Megan's toys pulled them, and later Megan, upstairs where they played for the rest of the time until their mom came to pick them up.

 Rachel's friends Madisyn and Daryne were actually about the same, though I think it was Rachel that instigated their departure from the movie room, with their silly antics. Only Laura and Annie held out for the whole movie, though Ryan made it most of the way through. (His friend ended up leaving early.)

Saturday is our family's sugar cereal day, which usually means either Trix or Lucky Charms. Today it was Lucky Charms. And Rachel must have already been missing school, as the last day was yesterday, so she was doing her own bar graph exploring how many of each marshmallow comes in a bowl-full of Lucky Charms.

 So school is over for the year. Our schedule is greatly simplified, which I am very looking forward to. We'll have synchro, swim lessons, karate, piano, and gymnastics to worry about, but a lot more freedom during the day to do who-knows-what. We're ready for the summer fun to unfold.