May...

The month of May came and went in "the blink of an eye"... or perhaps it felt that way because we did A LOT that kept us busy!

The first week in May, I visited the tulip gardens at Thanksgiving Point 3 days in a row! It was Thanksgiving Points Annual Tulip Festival and hundreds of thousands of BEAUTIFUL tulips were in bloom through out the gardens. Gosh I wish they stayed in bloom all year round- the sight of tulips makes me SO HAPPY! I LOVE tulips!

5 years ago,
Spencer proposed to me with 300 PINK tulips.

He surprised me with So MANY tulips,
he had to have the help of my roommates to carry them into my place
and then ask our neighbors if we could borrow any and all of their
vases, pitchers, mason jars, Brita Water filter containers and
even a few BLENDERS and buckets to put the flowers in.
For two weeks, until all the flowers died,
my bedroom and apartment literally looked like a botanical garden.
I'm surprised honeybees outside didn't knock down our front door trying to get into the place!
I thought the sight of 300 tulips in bloom was astonishing,
but the next time I visited Spencer in Orem, during our engagement,
he took me to a beautiful new park near his house called Nielsens Grove;
here there were HUNDREDS, if not at least 2 or 3 thousand tulips in bloom;

the flowerbeds of tulips were GORGEOUS!

So now, 5 years after the proposal and my first trip to Nielsen's Grove, I'm asking myself, how is it I NEVER knew about the Annual Tulip Festival that has been going on for years at Thanksgiving Point?!

There are LITERALLY hundreds of thousands of tulips
varying in all sorts of sizes and colors planted in the gardens there.
It is ABSOLUTELY BREATHTAKING!

Our 1ST visit to the gardens, Spencer and I took all 3 of the boys. I didn't think so much that they'd like looking at the flowers, but figured more so that they'd keep busy burning off some of their extra energy running around and rolling down hills. My assumption was CORRECT.

Noah rolled down the hill, while Ian preferred the "scoot" technique.

Noah was pretty DIZZY after a few good rolls down the hill;
he couldn't even stand on his own!

It wasn't long before Ian ditched the "scoot" effort and just began to RUN down the hill!

I LOVE this picture below; the boys charged those stairs!
It was their "Rocky Balboa" moment...

This picture below shows just about how much interest Noah had in all the tulips...
zero to none.
His smile was a forced smile;
he wanted to hurry, squat and take the picture QUICK
so that he could run around some more before it was time to leave.

The 2ND day at the gardens I took the 3 boys and met up with my sister Tricia and 3 of her children.

Noah & Daniel rolled down the hill 6 or 7 times together...

while Bella modeled "fabulousity" in front of a flower bed for me.

Midway through our little jaunt in the garden,
I caught a glimpse of Noah smelling the flowers...
Perhaps he does appreciate nature more than I thought he did.

Izzy and Daniel.

My 3rd visit to the gardens was as a date. Spencer and I had an afternoon to ourselves, while the boys napped back at home under the watch and care of Grandpa Campbell. We decided to rent segways and ride them around the park. I'd NEVER been on a segway before; I worried a little about crashing on one (I guess I've seen too many clips of IDIOTS operating them and imagined that segways were really hard to balance) but my worries were calmed once I stepped onto my own. It was SUPER easy to balance on and ride and REALLY FUN! It was also the BEST way to see the gardens quickly.

Cruising the gardens in style...
Though the helmet made my head look GINORMOUS,
"SAFETY COMES FIRST before LOOKS";
Spencer wasn't with me on that thought obviously,
he forfeited his right to wear one.

The first two weeks in May, Noah played T-Ball; we signed him up to play through Lehi's Itty Bitty Ball program for tots. He LOVED it...most of the time... with the exception of when the coaches made the kids stretch or run relay races. Noah preferred to just sit and talk while the other kids around him all stretched (he'll regret this later on in life when he decides not to stretch and consequently pulls a muscle) and he's a bit slow when it comes to running... slower than all the other speed demon kids that were in T-Ball with him! He was always placed last in line during the relays because he runs SO SLOW! In fact I don't remember the coaches ever "officially" ending any of the races because Noah was still running it while the other kiddos were packing up to head home with their parents. I wish I'd taken video of Noah running during the relays; his run looked like one in slow-mo. I had a few good cries from laughing so hard. There's no questioning who the tortoise was in these races...

Noah played for "The Dodgers".
I'm sure Spencer would have preferred to see him play on "The Braves"
(there's always a chance though by next year he could be traded. wink, wink)
but at least he wasn't playing for "The Yankees" or "The Red Sox".
Noah's cousin Daniel is sitting on Noah's left.

I wasn't aware until t-ball that Noah's a natural "switch hitter".
He prefers to bat left handed but can also hit just as well right handed.
Most of the time the coaches actually encouraged him to hit left handed
which is AWESOME especially if Noah continues playing ball.

"Swwwing batter!"

Noah's up at bat!
The little girl in the pitchers position, front and center in the blue,
is our friends, Jimmy & Becky's, daughter.

This little man continued to crawl like spider in May.
Cohen never used a pacifier, except for during the first few weeks of his life,
but in May and as of late, I've found him more than just a few times
with one of these screws from the boys tool bench popped in his mouth just as though it were a pacifier!
It was even more funny to see Cohen 10 or 20 minutes later
crawling around the house
still sucking on the screw like a pacifier!
Okay, so Cohen will put just about anything in his mouth as he crawls.
Here he is towards the end of May,
taking his first couple of steps on his own
with the lens cap to my camera in his mouth!
The crawling method is still the way to go for Cohen though,
since the whole walking thing is a bit of a challenge.
Cohen can though take 3 or 4 steps COMPLETELY on his own before falling down.
His older brother Noah is always more than willing to help teach Cohen the art of walking.
I LOVE this picture below...
it's not often that I see Cohen like this.
He's a BUSY kid and likes to be ON THE MOVE at ALL TIMES!
Along with taking his first steps in May,
Cohen has also started to scale the stairs...
we had to buy one of these extra wide child gates to block off the top of the stairs

because one morning the poor boy took a good tumble down the stairs!
No worries- though he fell from the very top of the stairs and hit EVERY metal bar on the railing on his descent down and landed on travertine head first, but he was fine!
No cuts or bruises, no broken bones... just a bit shaken up.

Did I fail to mention that Cohen is now at that stage in which he likes to
be into EVERYTHING!
He's into drawers, into cupboards, the refrigerator and even while I may be taking a potty break, he's right there by my side, trying to dip his hand in the toilet. I know GROSS!
Once again, just as after I thought it was safe to ease up on the child locks around the house,
it's time to start locking EVERYTHING up again!!!

Cohen's quite the character! He's a happy baby, most of the time except when he's hungry. He has a MEAN temper when he's hungry. He still isn't sleeping through the night... I'm not sure he ever will. He wakes up once, sometimes twice, every night for a bottle. One doctor of his told me it's likely he still gets up at night every night because his bottle of milk is probably like what milk and cookies would be to us as adults... if I knew milk and cookies were waiting for me every night at 1 a.m. why wouldn't I want to wake up for them??? On that note, after the doctor shared that analogy with me, I've been tempted each night to give him V-8 tomatoe juice instead of milk. I haven't done so yet, but if these nightly wake up calls continue after baby #4 is born, I just may start. I'm pretty sure tomatoe juice wouldn't be Cohen's "choice beverage".

Cohen has such a DEEP voice. It's one of the first things people comment about after just meeting him for the first time. He babbles A LOT, more than either of his brothers did at his age, and he can say a few words such as "Momma", "Dadda", "egg", "cheese" & "go away"... no seriously, I know it sounds pretty incredible that an 11 month old can say "go away", but I'm pretty sure that Cohen has heard his older brothers say it often enough that he knows how to say it himself. He'll even repeat it, the same thing, 10 or 12 times, as if his first order for us to "go away" wasn't obeyed, so he must repeat himself till either Spencer or I actually go away!

Last note about Cohen... maybe you've noticed a difference in his appearance from pictures I posted last month and this month. Well, after the little trim he recieved in April, we decided in May he NEEDED to get rid of his Zach Efron look; it was getting to be too difficult to style on a daily basis while I had the two older boys hair still to do... SO... we gave him a buzz. It took me an afternoon to adjust to his new look, but then I decided he looked awesome with the buzz. His look reminded me of Kelly Slaters, but then... it wasn't a week later when Spencer said he just wanted to "touch up" a few spots where our friend T.J. missed with the trimmer, but before I knew it, my baby was COMPLETELY BALD! It looked awful and I nearly cried; Spencer gave Cohen a new nick name, Lex Luthor, yes, same name as the evil genius and villain from the Superman comics... no Mom likes to hear that her son looks like that same sociopath Superman fights! I worried that his bare bald head would get sunburned anytime we went out in the sun, but we've been lucky in that the weathers been pretty mild and semi overcast here the past few weeks I haven't had to apply any sunscreen to it. I'm even THANKFUL, Cohen's hair grows quickly, enough so that two weeks after being shaven bald, he's grown enough hair not to look like a prison camp baby anymore.

On MAY 9TH we celebrated this little mans BIRTHDAY!
Ian turned 2 years old!

Instead of throwing a BIG party with family and friends, we decided just to keep things simple by keeping the focus on Ian. (Who wants to worry over what to feed 50 guests and how to entertain 20 little kids???).

We started the day by letting Ian open his gift from his Grandma and Grandpa Truesdell.
They gave him a set of magnetic turning gears from Lakeshore Learning.
Ian LOVED them and knew immediately how to piece them together to make them work. After letting the boys play a little, we packed up and drove to IHOP for breakfast,
following which we went as a family to the indoor Legacy Pool in Lehi
and spent a couple of hours swimming and enjoying waterfun together.

We all had so much fun swimming,
though there were a couple of times Spencer and I both felt like we could have used
another pair of arms each to hold onto the kiddos.
Cohen proved to be a "water baby";
I had to keep a good grip on him in the water cuz he would have been content
crawling off into it any second on his own.

After swimming for a bit, we took the boys back home and let them take short naps before heading off to a birthday party for one of Spencer's long time friends. We stuck around the party for a little bit and then left to grab ice cream at Maggie Moo's.

Spencer didn't want take all 3 boys into Maggie Moo's since it was busy and it would have been a pain loading all 3 of them back into the car after, SO, I ran in and ordered our ice cream treats "to go".

When we got back to the house, we stripped the shirts off the boys and let them enjoy their blue ice cream melting messes (Ian ate his so slow it was almost entirely liquid, so we poured it into a cup and let him drink it!).

After indulging in Maggie Moo's, it was time for Ian to open his presents.

Birthday presents and balloons for the birthday boy!
(note: it's now a month after Ian's birthday in which I'm writing this post
and that frog balloon is still floating around our house!
Talk about long lasting hellium!)
Ian recieved Lincoln Logs from us...

...which Noah sort of claimed as his own.
He loves to build and therefore built this fancy schmancy log cabin.

Anyone interested in buying it???
It's on the market for $300 k. Just kidding of course.
Noah & Cohen gave Ian a baby alligator egg to hatch and watch grow.

After about a week and a half, Ian was the proud new pappa of a baby alligator!
Ian also recieved a ladybug farm from us...
which reminds me, I still have to send off the voucher in the mail
so we can get the ladybug eggs to grow.
(here's hoping that growing ladybugs isn't as morbid as raising an ant farm was;
the ants that were sent to us in the mail last summer for our old ant farm were cannibals!)

The last gift that Ian recieved from us for his birthday was a GOLDFISH! He actually got this present a few days before his birthday. The Wednesday before Ian's birthday, Spencer and Noah came home with TWO GOLDFISH, one for Ian and one for Noah.

Noah's goldfish is the brownish one.
Noah named his fish "Rootbeer".
Ian's goldfish is the orange one.
Ian named his fish "Juice".
The BOYS ABSOLUTELY LOVED their new pets,
ESPECIALLY IAN!
I have a CONFESSION to make though...
I HATE GOLDFISH!
They were fine for about the first day or so,
but then their water began to get dirty and stinky after 3 days...
GOLDFISH ARE SO DIRTY!

Both fish unfortunately DIED PREMATURE DEATHS... yes, you read correctly... they've both died. Noah's fish, "Rootbeer", died the eve before mothers day, Ian's birthday.

then...

Ian's fish died just a little over a week ago (the first week in June). I may responsible for "Juice's" premature death; I found myself wishing the whole week before his death that I'd wake up one morning and find him floating at the waters surface... so one afternoon later in the week, just after I'd returned home from a long day of shopping, I noticed "Juice" was upside down on the rocks at the bottom of the fish bowl. He remained so for 5 or 6 minutes, then he started to swim around- only he wasn't swiming normal, he was swimming sideways and then upside down. After swimming unusually for a couple of minutes he started to sink to the bottom again and remained there for a longer period of time. I didn't have the heart to actually wait and watch him suffer death, so I ordered Spencer to send him off to fish heaven via the toilet. I'll never really know whether or not if "Juice" would have survived on his own, but I'm pretty sure fish aren't supposed to preform like Shamu and swim sideways or upside down and that he was already on deaths doorstep before he got the "royal flush".

I was a little afraid that the boys wouldn't react well to the deaths of their fish, but after explaining the fish had gone to heaven to be with our Heavenly Father (I hope that's where they're at), Noah and Ian were fine with their fishs' absence.

It's pretty PATHETIC both our fish died in less than a month; it's a good thing I'm a better parent to children than I am fish... I think our next fish will be a Betta... they may be lonely fish considering they like to live on their own, but at least they're a lot cleaner than goldfish.

Ian's birthday celebration carried into the following day, which coincedentally also happened to be Mothers Day.

We celebrated Ian's birthday and Mothers Day with Spencer's family at his parents house. His Mom prepared a yummy lunch for the family, (Go figure, even though it's a day in which we celebrate mothers, most moms nationwide still are responsible for preparing their families meals on Mothers Day! A mother never gets any rest! Thanks Linda for lunch). After lunch we sang Happy Birthday to Ian and he opened his gifts from his aunts and Spencers parents and then the mothers had their turn opening their mothers day cards and gifts; after which once all the gifts were open, we ate Ian's birthday cupcakes.

Just a note about Ian's birthday cupcakes...
SPENCER DECORATED THEM!
YES, that is correct, SPENCER
decorated all the cupcakes without any help from me!
I didn't ask him to decorate them,
but he instead he just offered.
He claims that since he was watching
Food Networks "Ace of Cakes" his artsy side was evoked
and he wanted to get crafty with icing and candy!
(It's not the best picture because I took it on my phone and it taken late Saturday evening, but as you can see, Spencer just might have a knack for cake decorating).We made BUG CUPCAKES.
I got the idea from a friend who did the same with candy and icing
for her sons birthday earlier this year.
(Thanks Janae for sending me the instructions earlier on).
The bugs varied...
there were centipedes, caterpillars, beetals, spiders, slugs and flys.
My favorite was the spider made from a Ferrero Rocher, an almond m&m, mini m's, and icing.Ian had to get a real close look to make sure the bugs weren't real...
wouldn't that have been a rotten joke if they were the real things on his cupcakes!Nope, just candy...
but then again, Noah could have told Ian that.
Noah took a good bite out of one of the spiders bodies
and a beetle
before Ian even got to see his birthday cupcakes!Loving the bug cupcakes!

We had quite a bit of candy left over after making all the cupcakes... some of it we kept for ourselves, other we gave away... Spencer's sister Megan watched the boys one night in May while Spencer and I went to the Real Salt Lake Soccer game...when we returned home, we wanted to give her all the Ferrero Rocher candy we had left over that we didn't use making the cupcakes, but...
...when I went to get it for her, it wasn't in the candy drawer.
...So...
I looked in the pantry, but it wasn't there either.
Hmmm....
Spencer and I wondered where it could have disappeared to.
That following morning, I was in the boys bedroom cleaning out their closet when the baby crawled in to greet me. I could see that he was chewing on something, and he had some brown substance smudged around his mouth. I scooped my finger into his mouth to see what he'd been eating and found a piece of foil! Immediately I KNEW it was a wrapper to a Ferrero Rocher.
I told Spencer about what I had found and together the two of us stormed into the boys playroom where all three of the boys had quietly been playing all morning. Spencer started looking around the room for the candy but had no luck finding it. We asked Noah and Ian where it was, but they wouldn't give and tell us... that's when the baby, Cohen, crawled back into the playroom, DIRECTLY over to the schoolbus and began reaching underneath it. We moved the bus out of the way and found THIS!

The boys candy stash!
Each Ferrero Rocher had carefully been unwrapped from its foil
and each piece had a bite taken out of it!It's not unusual now to find candy stashs hidden under our dressers,

under the school bus, the tv set or even in the toy bench.
Just today,
Noah got into some of his Easter Candy I had stored away;
he attempted to conceal the evidence by hiding the eggs AND the trash under our bedroom dresser but I found it as I was picking cars up off the carpet!

Since Mothers Day happened to follow Ian's birthday, I hadn't thought much about it and wasn't really expecting anything... but it was a pleasant surprise when I recieved these special dinner plates that Noah and Ian made especially just for me with the help of Spencer's family.

I look forward to collecting plates like these the boys made me
the next 18 years or so of my life.
I LOVED their surprise...

... HOWEVER...
I did NOT like this Mothers Day surprise the boys left for me later on that evening.

Permanant marker ALL OVER the wall!
Lucky me, I was able to clean the mural they'd left on the wall
OFF with a Mr Clean Magic Eraser...

BUT...
they were at it again the very next day!
I woke up the next morning to find them already awake,
in our office with a permanent black marker with which they had drawn ALL OVER
the computer screen, the mouse pad, the desk, the printer and the lens of our VERY EXPENSIVE NIKON camera!
UGGH!
Lucky me though, with the help of the Magic Eraser, ALL the markings came off,
except for the grafitti they drew on the mouse pad.

You'd imagine that after two days in a row of drawing on things they shouldn't have with permanent markers and getting scolded and spanked, Noah and Ian would have the smarts NOT to mess with markers any more or draw on walls, but evidently that was not the case! On the third consecutive day, I was in the office working on the computer, just two doors down from the boys playroom, when I realized things were a little too quiet and no noise was coming from their toyroom. I ran in there to find a HUGE circle scribbled on the wall (at least 3 feet in diameter), markings on picture frames, the plate to the light switch was drawn on, the rocking horse, the school bus and THESE TWO all had markings from a permanent pen on them...

Noah told me he drew on Ian in an effort to make him look like a PIRATE...
my best guess is that scribble on Ian's chest is supposed to look like chest hair.

Noah also told me that Cohen wanted to be a TIGER!
Really? He said he wanted to be a tiger you say???

I'm not sure HOW or WHERE the boys keep finding these permanent markers... since these incidences I've thrown out pretty much EVERY pen or marker we own! I was able to remove the markings from the rocking horse, the boys school bus, the picture frames, and I replaced the plate on the light switch, BUT, this time, I WAS NOT ABLE TO remove the scribbles from the wall with the Magic Eraser! Looks like I'll have to trouble Spencer and have him paint over it one of these days.

I have a hard time imagining now that Ian is two when really I shouldn't because everyone else seems to think he's much older than he really is due to his size. He's a BIG kid! At his two year check up last month he weighed 31.5 pounds, (only 1/2 pound lighter than Noah) putting him in the 85th percentile for weight with kids his age; he is also 35.5 inches long which means he is in the 80th percentile now for height among kids his age (this is the first time his height hasn't been in the 90th or 95th percentile).

Spencer and I were worried up until a couple of months ago that Ian wasn't speaking as well as he should have been; he's a smart kid and seemed able to comprehend everything we ever told him or asked him to do but he just didn't talk much.... no worries though. Over the last month or two he's started to talk A LOT more than he ever did before and seems to have the same language skills as any other two year. He is incredibly smart and has a really great memory. He LOVES playing with both his brothers, particularly Cohen- maybe it's their closeness in age. He's still our little muscle man- not a pinch of fat on him- he's as solid as a rock and as strong as a horse! He runs, climbs, rolls, jumps, does just about everything his older brother can do... in fact, it was Ian who taught Noah to climb out of his bunk bed and/or the crib! Ian's very sweet but VERY sensitive; in fact I call him "DRAMA" sometimes because he could be getting along just fine, but if you rub him the wrong way or do something to upset him, WATCH OUT- he is a spit fire and has quite a temper and he can throw one CRAZY tantrum... tears, whailing, flailing of legs and arms- I mean the works! Lately though, when ever he's upset, he'll resort to holding his breath and tensing up all the muscles in his body. Yes, be aware... Ian can be a bit dramatic. As I mentioned though before, he is so sweet. He loves to cuddle, even give hugs and kisses. He's a LADIES MAN already and likes to charm women with his stunning blue eyes and dimples. I've caught him kissing a few girls older that he is while in line at stores or amusement parks. He has what I refer to as "Jack Nickelson eyebrows"- he shows so much expression alone just through his brow. He melts my heart that child of mine and while it's time for him to grow up and grow older, I hate to think of how fast the time passes and too soon, before I know it, he won't be little any longer but a grown young man.

Ian loves to help me clean,
but that's only after he's made a mess.
He is ALL BOY!
One of his funny little quirks is that he is a "pack rat".
Everynight before he falls asleep he MUST have
two pillows, both his blankets, his sippy with water in it, his flamingo, his "choo choo", his frog,
5,6,7 or so books, the elephant off of his big boy bed, the pirate off his big boy bed, his turtle
and his flashlight.
If there were more items around his bedroom to take to bed with him,
I'm sure he would but theres not thankfully.
I ask myself each night how he sleeps comfortably in such a mess,
where as it drives me crazy seeing so much clutter,
but his clutter is heaven to him!

We experienced a bit of a HEAT WAVE here Utah, prematurely, before all the pools and waterparks around town opened up to the public. The boys had been anxious for the SUN to make his debut after such a long winter. They begged and pleaded to play in the sprinklers outside once things started to heat up, SO... that's EXACTLY what they did on those HOT HOT afternoons.

I LOVE this picture.
They look like little old men testing the water temperature.

It's not a pool, but it's the second best thing to a pool or a beach...
the BIG beach ball that sprays water from every direction!

Okay, so the temperature never hit 100 degrees here in May,
but it was 90 degrees one or two days.
It was HOT enough we had to hit the sprinklers
and pick up SONIC SLUSHES nearly every day in May!

On days that we'd already enjoyed our Sonic Slushes before lunch,
the boys ate Otter Pops in an attempt to cool off.
Nothing says SUMMER like an Otter Pop.

The CRaZY spinning water caterpillar didn't soak the boys quite like I imagined it would.
Good thing it was cheap!

It was a cruel trick, but too funny not to try and get a picture of.
Spencer convinced Noah to put his eye up to water hose to see if there were any bugs inside,
at which point once Noah did, Spencer turned the water on FULL BLAST spraying Noah in the face!

Spencer and I split Salt Lake Real Soccer Season Tickets with his sister Megan and her husband John this year. We had tickets to 2 of the games in May. The first game fell on a Wednesday evening so since Spencer has classes for his Masters degree on Wednesday nights, I invited my friend/old mission companion, Heidi, to go to the game with me. It was fun catching up and being able to have a decent conversation with her without kids around to distract us. She introduced me to Pei Wei's, it's a chinese place owned by the same people who own P.F. Changs, only Pei Wei's is less expensive and they have a gluten free menu of food options to choose from!!! I was so excited to eat their gluten free sweet and sour chicken! It was SO GOOD!!! It's to bad though, any time I want to eat at Pei Wei's I have to drive to Sandy- I really, really wish one were closer! On that same note though, it's about time restaraunts started getting on board and offering gluten free food items to customers. After we ate, we still had some time to spare before the game so we did a little shopping at the new Nordstroms Rack. While I hate to say, I only shopped for the boys, and not myself, I did find some really cute clothes there the boys could wear at half price! Nordstroms Rack is my new favorite place to shop for kids clothes now that I discovered the Quicksilver Outlet doesn't sell toddler clothes any longer! It was a HUGE disapointment; but no worries, Nordstroms Rack sells Quicksilver for toddlers at half price along with Volcom, Hurley, Billabong, O'Neil and Ralph Lauren Polo. LOVE IT!

Spencer went with me to the second soccer game. While Real still lost, it was fun to go and watch as a date night out with my husband.

Since the weather improved in May and things finally started to warm up here in Utah, Spencer started golfing once a week. He used to golf some when we first were married but with school and a busy work schedule, he hasn't had the time these past couple of years to hit the green. I don't mind him playing, so long as every now and then he takes Noah along.

On this particular day in May,
Spencer took Noah and his dad golfing.
I was told that Noah tried more than once to drive off with the golf cart!
I think Tiger Woods was already considered a phenomonom
in the sporting world of golf by time he was 3 years old...
so maybe Noah's not a phenomonom but he's well on his way to learning the game!

When it wasn't his turn to putt,
Noah did some bird watching with grandpa.

Some time during the month of May our bedroom became a Bed & Breakfast.

Noah has this new found philosophy that bedtime is when the SUN goes down and when the SUN rises in the morning, it's time to wake up! This wouldn't be problematic if only it were still Winter Solstice, but now that the sun rises earlier each morning and stays up longer into the evenings as we approach summer, it's really beginning to mess with the boys sleeping schedule. In the matter of one month, the boys have gone from waking up around 9:30a.m. to 7:30, sometimes even 7 or 6:30a.m., and while we try to put them to bed by 7:30 each evening, sometimes they don't actually fall asleep until 9 or 10 depending on when the sun goes down or how long their tired little bodies can hang in there. I realize we've been pretty fortunate having children who normally slept in until 9:30 or sometimes longer every morning up until a month ago because some friends of ours have kiddos who wake up every morning at 5:30 or 6 a.m., but the change came too sudden for us, since neither Spencer or I, are much of morning folk, so breakfast in bed has been the "usual" around here since the beginning of May.

On a funny note, before I forget, one day in May I looked over to see Noah fumbeling around with his pockets on his shorts; then a second later I caught him showing Ian something that looked like money! I walked over to where the two were sitting and saw that Noah had 3 twenties crumpled up in the pocket of his shorts! I asked him what he needed the money for and he told me he needed it so he could go buy candy at the store!!! I couldn't help but laugh- SERIOUSLY, $60 for candy??! I wondered where he had gotten the money and then I realized he probably SWIPED it from Spencer's underwear drawer earlier that morning. The funniest part about it all is that Spencer hadn't a clue that it was missing!

The last week in May I had surgery to remove 4 lipomas I had on my forearms. Nothing serious, and so far I haven't heard any bad news back from the lab that sampled them post surgery. Lipoma is a benign tumor composed of fatty tissue. These are the most common form of soft tissue tumors. Lipomas are soft to the touch, usually moveable, and are generally painless. Approximately one percent of the general population has a lipoma. These tumors can occur at any age, but are most common in middle age, often appearing in people from 40 to 60 years old. The tendency to develop a lipoma is not necessarily hereditary although hereditary conditions, such as familial multiple lipomatosis, may include lipoma development. In my case the plastic surgeon I went to see concerning the lipomas I had and who removed them by excision said there's a good chance my lipomas on my forarm developed after a minor injury to both my arms. The injury probably triggered the growth- this is called "post-traumatic lipoma". Chances are the injury that could have caused this was was when I had the permanent I.V. pick line in my arms for 7 of the 9 months I was pregnant with Noah and had to have blood drawn and my veins flushed every week. Here's hoping that no more lipomas form. The procedure to remove the lipomas was relatively painless- though the doctor put a surgical tape over each insicion that he made and closed with stitches and since I've had a really bad allergic reaction to making my arm itch like crazy! I got a good laugh over the fact that I'd been in to see a plastic surgeon; I'm sure a few other people in his waiting room probably had a good laugh too, seeing me there and probably wondering what on earth I could be doing there! I hope they didn't think I was there for a boob job or a tummy tuck or nose job at 30 weeks pregnant. Oh MY!

Though we stay pretty busy during the day, even if it's just catching up on laundry, cleaning house, washing grimy little hands or running through the sprinklers in the backyard, it's always nice when things settle down in the evenings, just before bed time and we have time as a family to relax a bit and read the scriptures together.The boys aren't always reverent while we read the scriptures or say prayer, it's a process of teaching them by example. When they bow their head, close their eyes and cross their arms for prayer with out us reminding them to do so, that's when we recognize they're learning as they grow and how fast they grow!