April/May

I'm sitting on the couch, in the middle of the afternoon, drinking a cup of coffee. Ahh, feels so good. These moments are few and far between and I'm taking advantage of the kids playing nicely together.  We only have two more weeks of school after this one and I'm excited. I love summer break with kids!!!!!  Except that I need to have a plan for all the bickering that's been going on.  If I can't find a solution to that, theres a really good chance I'll go crazy by August.  

I can barely wrap my mind around the fact that I almost have a 3rd grader, 1st grader, and preschooler! Wow, I almost a mom of 3 elementary school kids. 

For school, Zane had to create a 3-D model of a caterpillar out of any materials that he wanted. So, we all brainstormed with him and came up with making the caterpillar out of cake and frosting, and then adding all the parts with different types of candy.  Zane seriously did almost the whole thing by himself, starting with picking out the right type of candy for the correct part. 

Then, baking the cake, cutting it, frosting it, putting it together, and then writing about it... It was a big job and I was really proud of all the work he put into it.

Zack took a trip to New York last month for work. He found some time to play too.
Empire State Building

Statue of Liberty

I have to document this date night, because we don't get out on fun dates often enough.  This night, we ate at Hops n Pie, then went to see Union Station, and then ate Little Man Ice cream. It was a good night.

The Padres were in town this past month.  Zack went to 3 games in one week!!  We are so lucky to have a friend who works for the Rockies, who always give Zack free tickets when his team is in town. One night we went with friends - this is a picture of Zack on San Diego TV that his friend saw and send a picture of.  I got cut off from the right side.

Then we all went to the second game with my mom and Dave.




Getting ready for fly balls

Smith and Grandpa Dave shared peanuts the entire game.

They also each got to have a treat - all 3 kids could eat sugar the entire game and be fine with it.

I love these two baseball fans.

Then, Zack took Zane out of school one afternoon and brought the two big kids to an afternoon game. They had so much fun!

Zack had his very last youth group night several weeks ago.  Zack has been doing youth ministry since I met him, so almost 15 years! It is so weird and crazy and different to watch him move on.  But he is ready for a change and is so so excited to be our church's new campus pastor.  He still gets to work for our church, but also gets to venture downtown and work there too.  It's a win win. He is going to miss all the amazing kids and leaders that he's gotten to know so well, and change is always a little bittersweet, but we are looking forward to the future. Zack has poured his heart and soul into his ministry, and I know he'll do the same with his new campus.

On stage for the last time...

Then, his staff threw him a huge surprise going away/congratulations party at Old C's.  We filled up half the restaurant.  It was so cool to see how many people love and care about Zack, since he loves people so well.

I had to document these to remember this crazy day.  Mol came to our house feeling under the weather, and just had watery eyes, with a teeny tiny bit of goop. By the end of the day, her eyes were stuck and swollen shut!!  She had full out pink eye and felt so sick.  By some miracle, none of us caught it!

I enjoy every second of the rare times that the kids are best buddies these days.  They have been going through such a tough phase of bickering and fighting that I just LOVE when they are friends... These are the good times!

Their expressions match in both pictures.  Haha.

Superhero friends

Since Zane is gone all day at school (not for long - YIPEE), these two have been forced to be friends. They do well most of the time, especially when they realize they have nobody else so they should make the best of the situation. Haha.

I let them do sprinklers earlier this month, and then this past weekend, it snowed 6 inches!  Crazy May in Colorado.

Love these three.

I am so lucky to have four other moms, who are all room moms of Emmy's class with me.  The five of us work so well together and have fun getting together for planning, and also get our kids together. Emmy's teacher got diagnosed with breast cancer and had to quit teaching to get surgery and chemo, so Katie, another mom, coordinated the class putting together an entire quilt for her.  The kids drew and painted their own pictures for her and they got printed onto fabric for the quilt squares. Then, the other moms and I got together a few times to do all the work to put it together. This day, when we did the binding, all the kids came over for lunch too.  It's a fun group.

We did this!!!  It was the first quilt I've ever helped with.  Katie did most the work, but it felt good to be part of such a big project.

Then we met Mrs. Gourley at the park and got to present it to her.  She was so overwhelmed and thankful for such a nice gift.

ZOO DAY! One of my favorite outings has always been the zoo with the kids.  It just feels so good to get out and walk around and seems like we always discover or see something new.

They love the carousel and train...

Checking out our favorite crazy monkey.

This big guy sat there and stared at us for a long time.

This is my other sophomore leaders and I at our big event called "Dinner with the Dudes" where the sophomore girls (and leaders) get all dressed up and come to a party where the guys cook and serve us dinner and provide entertainment.  Its super cute and fun for the girls to get treated so nicely.  My last youth group night is tonight!!!  Then, I'm going to move on to focusing on the new campus at Paramount Downtown with Zack.  I have spent two years pouring into my high school girls though, and I'm going to miss them like crazy.  I know I'll keep in touch with a few of them.  I'll also miss leading with these ladies.

I had our good friends' kids over one early morning while they were in the hospital having baby #4!  I decided we needed to have a big pancake breakfast to celebrate their new baby brother. 6 kids eating is a lot of food!

Love these guys.

Zane has been playing flag football again this spring. This season, he is on the BRONCOS.  Yep, my sweet little Charger's fan is a Bronco.  Probably one of the only times we'll cheer for the Broncos.  He had an amazing attitude about it - so proud of him.
He is soooooo good on defense.  He can read the direction the players are going and grabs flags like crazy.  He's still a little timid on offense, but has improved a ton since he started. He also starts baseball this week, for the summer, so we'll see how that goes!

Weingartner

The next five pictures show Smith and his big personality so well.  Every minute of our days are filled with silliness, adventure, costumes, and big ideas...
I thoroughly enjoy my time with my little monkey. And lately it's been even more fun to have him and Molly together.  They are beyond cute together and treat each other so well.

This is a typical ride in the car, goggles, helmet, whatever he can find...

He's even cute when he's sick at the doctor.

play place and ice-cream at McDonalds

Zane has been really into comic books, especially Garfield.  He will sit for hours and just crack up like crazy. He's also been writing his own.  His sense of humor is awesome. This day, the two of us sat and read together for a while.

Here's my big girl holding our friends' new baby.  She loves babies and is getting old enough to actually be able to hold them and help.  What a cutie - she was so excited that Ford was holding her hand.

We went with cousins to the new exhibit at the museum, Mythical Creatures.

Em liked the unicorn.

Charlie and Sam were there with Eric and Shannah and Grandma Kathy.  It was a fun day.

Random pic of Zack and Zane playing their football game, Rush Zone. They are playing the entire Charger's last season.  Zane is always the Chargers and Zack is always the opposing team.

We have had some beautiful days. These two could swing all day.

We got all Zane's baseball stuff out to start practicing for his season coming up, so Smith of course wanted to play too. He ran up and got on all his Padres stuff.

We found a great rock park.  It's amazing what they come up with to play, with just a few rocks.

Nellie and Ant have a secret hideout under their stairs.  Anthony and Smith were having a Connect Four battle.

Zack turned 37 this year!  Holy Smokes, that sounds old.  LOL.
We took him out to dinner and then sang at home with his favorite, Mud Pie from Baskin Robbins.

We got new caterpillars recently.  I love Emmy's expressions, checking them out.  They've been in chrysalises for a while now - we should have butterflies soon.