May days

It's been another quick month, a crazy month, and ultimately (and somewhat surprisely) a GOOD month! Mother's Day weekend was wonderful. We spent that Saturday at the Phoenix Science Center, where we walked through Bodyworlds, and spent a long time playing with the other hands-on exhibits. The following day, the boys gave me the seventh season of Friends for my Mother's Day gift, Mike surprised me with a white oleander for the front yard, they took me out for breakfast at Five and Diner, and we capped off the day with a trip to Sports Authority, where we got the eliptical machine I've been wanting for months.

After weeks of trying not to stress about it, I had my wisdom teeth extracted on the 17th. It went as well as could be expected, and Mike and the boys took exquisitely good care of me... especially those first few days when I was in bed, on painkillers. The following week, while I was still recovering from both the pain in my teeth and being sick to my stomach from the medications, Spencer had his tooth extracted as well. He did AMAZING with it, and had bounced back to his normal Spencer self within a few hours of returning home. Later that week, Mom and Dad officially arrived from New Hampshire, ready to call Arizona home. The boys were estatic to see them, and wasted no time in catching up.

This past weekend was Everett's third birthday party. It was a fun and low-key day, spent mostly hanging out, visiting, and watching the kids amuse themselves by shooting their water guns and running underneath the misters.

Yesterday we spent the last day of the long weekend up at Mom and Dad's new house, enjoying the nice afternoon, playing board games, sitting on the back patio, watching the boys digging in the dirt, and laughing. There was lots of laughing. Life is good.

Highlights of Everett's party:

Oh Yes Oh Yes it's Springtime!!

These pictures are from the Phoenix Nascar race, the last fun thing we did before the crummy second half of April started. We went with our neighbors, hung out with Kevin Harvick's family and friends, and otherwise just enjoyed the atmosphere and watching the cars go around and around.

The sun is starting to shine a little brighter now, and we're starting to make plans and look forward to summer. We just got a family membership to the Arizona Science Center, and I'm really excited to take the boys there soon. We got tickets to see the Body Worlds exhibit, something I've wanted to see since I first heard about it several years ago.

The boys and I signed up for a kids' summer movie program at the local Harkins theatre, where we'll be going once a week for 10 weeks, to watch a different movie. Cool! Spencer and Paxton have signed up for Cub Scouts again too, and will be starting activities over the summer. They are both looking forward to it, but particularly Paxton, who wasn't quite old enough to be an official member when we lived in NH. Finally, the kids decided that they really want to get the new Nintendo Wii. We told them that if they earned the money for half of it, we'd pay for the other half. So they're happily doing odd jobs around the house, and counting down the days until they can buy it.