School's Out for Summer...

Because of our summer plans, the girls last day of school arrived sooner than usual.  Becca has had a great year at preschool.  Each week, she's also had playgroup after school with her carpool buddies.  This week, for Becca's last preschool playgroup, we went to a splash park...

One of Ben's residency perks has been the food plan - he gets a generous amount of money each year to spend on food at the hospital cafeteria.  Luckily, they sell a lot of fun and yummy foods - and since Ben only has a few weeks of work left, he has a build up of food money to use or lose.  He's been bringing home all sorts of fun foods over the past few weeks.  They sell those mini bundt cakes from Nothing Bundt Cakes in the cafeteria, so he brought some home for the kids teachers.  I added a little tag from here.

Becca and her teacher, Mrs. Goodrich...

Becca brought home a cute picture book about starting Kindergarten, her diploma, and a sweet note from her teacher (that would have been read at preschool graduation, which she will sadly miss)...

Emma usually rides the bus home, but I met her at her school a few minutes before they were dismissed for the day.  I snagged a cute picture of Emma with her teacher, Mrs. Farmer.  Emma's teacher has just loved having her in her class, and Emma has also really enjoyed her 1st grade year in Mrs. Farmer's classroom.

On the way home from school, we stopped to pick up donuts and a huge icee.  A last day of school treat!  And also the beginning to our "girls night".  Ben took Jake camping for the Father's and Sons campout with the ward, shortly before Emma got out of school for the day.  We took our goodies to the park...

We really enjoyed our time at the park.  Claire and I found some shade under a big tree, while Emma and Becca gathered treasures and ran down the hills...

These sisters love each other...

Looks like Claire might needing saving?  haha...

So, we're officially on Summer Break!  Yippee!!  Since the boys were gone camping, we painted our nails and toes while watching The Little Mermaid.  :)  And Emma, Becca, and Claire all enjoyed a big bubble bath in mommy's tub all together.  So much sisterly love.  :)  And Emma and Becca decided to spend the night in Jake's big bed in his space room - haha.

My big ONE year old

My sweet Claire turned one this week!  Oh I love her so so much.  

We had a simple little party for her.  I made mac and cheese (not from a box) and served it with some strawberries.... both Claire favorites.  But Claire isn't picky.  She will pretty much eat anything

Present time!

Cake!  We had to keep it a fair distance from her while we sang or she kept trying to grab the lit candle...

She worked on that cake for a while.  Claire loves eating...

Happy Birthday Clairie!  What would I do without you?

Mother's Day 2012

Mother's Day was lovely.  Ben and the kids always go above and beyond.  I got these beautiful hydrangeas....

And Ben and the kids made me a delicious breakfast - lemon blueberry pancakes (which were really amazing), bacon, strawberries, and orange juice.  As in the past years, the girls cut up the strawberries all by themselves.  Then Ben made an impressive coconut lemon cake - using a real coconut!  What a man I have...

A couple days before, Ben took me out shopping for new makeup - he knew I needed some new stuff in that department.  Really, i couldn't ask for a better guy.  He spoils me and I love it.  The girls gave me the cutest little gifts they had made at their schools - This first one was from Becca (you can click on the picture to make it bigger)...

These next couple are part of the gift that Emma gave me - there were many pages - these were my favorites though...

(I laughed that Emma included "cornflakes" on the list of things I like to shop for... I recently came home with 10 boxes of cornflakes that I almost got for free from the couponing... Becca appears to be only one who will eat them though... haha)

(It took me a minute till I noticed something odd about Emma's rendition of the inside of my purse... you see that squiggly layer at the bottom?  Well, I asked Emma what that was supposed to be, and she says "all the crumbs and gross stuff at the bottom!".... the truth hurts.)

Church was wonderful - I got to enjoy going to Relief Society during the last hour - I'm no longer in Primary, but was recently called to Young Women's, so I've still been missing out on attending Relief Society on Sunday.  But they had all the young women help out in Primary, so that all the women with primary and young women callings could attend.  We got served a delicious lunch too!  It was wonderful.  After church, we spent the evening at Emily's house and had a yummy dinner, Ben's mother's day cake, and enjoyed each other's company.  I love being a mother... and I love MY mother.  She's the best.  I can't wait to see her soon - one more week!

Time for splash parks and AC

We've been hitting up nearby splash pads this week - it's heating up quick out there... like an oven.  Claire's my new favorite thing to photograph...

The library is another routine outing for us, especially when the oven outside is heating up...

A Canoeing We Will Go...

While Claire and I were in Utah, Ben went on a little canoe adventure with Emma, Ben Lee, and Adam.  Aunt Emily watched Jake and Becca while they were exploring the Salt River.  Ben says it was so fun!  Most of the time the river was calm, and Emma even held the fishing pole trying to catch a fish for some of the time - but they did get some white water too and got good use of their paddles. :)  And they saw tons of wild horses along the river - one even jumped in to swim across!  I hope to get to try out canoeing too at some point - it was a very memorable experience for Emma and her daddy.  :)

Emma's new smile and Becca's dance moves

Some random stuff from the past week...

A simple preschool time activity - I colored little dots on sheets of paper and then they matched up their stickers to the right colored dot...

Emma lost her third tooth!  This one was a big deal because it was her first top tooth to come out.  It's been wiggly for more than 6 months - We're all so happy that it FINALLY came out!  The tooth fairy must have been really busy that night, because she didn't come the first night.  Emma was SAD.  That silly fairy must have felt bad because the next night she left her a sparkly dollar, a certificate and 3 cute bracelets.  :)

We had a late night last night - Ben's brother, Peter, graduated with his masters from ASU last night - after graduation and dinner at Ben's parents place, we put the kids to bed and went to see The Avengers!  It was THE BEST movie!  Poor Grandma and Grandpa ended up having a late night too when Jake woke up throwing up all over the place.  I felt so bad.  Jake seems to be fine today though, thank goodness.  So, anyway, we were going to go the water park for a couple of hours this afternoon - but I was too tired in the end to take them.  But they were surprisingly appeased by the backyard sprinkler...

investigating some ants

Jake would not go into the water - but he kept acting like he was going to... here he is putting his fist out like a super hero counting down to run into the sprinkler... but he would finish his countdown and then just run the perimeter of the grass :)

Snack time... strawberries, pretzels, and mini marshmallows...  Claire especially loves snack time 

Here's a couple of random videos - We've been to the water park 6 times - and each time we go the kids get a little braver about stuff - on our most recent visit, Becca decided she was ready to stand under the big bucket to get wet - she did it 3 or 4 times - she was so very pleased with herself.  :)

And here's one more Becca video- she loves dancing and she gets rather creative with her dance moves.  This is nothing new for her - haha.  She didn't realize I was recording her until partway through...

The Doctor is IN

My handsome Ben had his residency graduation this week! His residency doesn't actually end till June 30th, but they had the graduation/dinner early. What a smart lookin' group these doctors are. I'm proud that Ben is among them. The group above are all the graduating internal medicine residents at the Mayo Clinic (minus one). Congratulations sweetie! I am so proud of you!!