life is so good, but kind of hard sometimes

a fun park date before taking henry to preschool

 eleanor and i spent the afternoon making cookies together

because "we never get time together" according to eleanor

 whenever noah wants to invite his friend david over 

he has to bring his entourage 

 reading together

 their new trick 

i love it

 it's a lot harder to get a picture of all of us on the trampoline than it used to be

 trying to shut himself into the toy kitchen

 jude's new thing

is throwing out his blankets

and climbing under the (very lightweight) mattress 

 silly monkey

 these two accompanied me on a three mile outdoor run

 i love our lilacs

 hazel's last session of mayor's bookclub

it was fun to sit and watch and hear her comments

 star wars shirt and "rey" hair for may the 4th

 jude is getting so blond!

 we went to cafe rio for dinner and then rented peter rabbit and had a movie night

 just a baby in a basket

 saturday morning bike ride to check out the garage sales all around

 while our own garage sale happened at home 

cuties

 after the garage sale michael and i finally headed out on our 10 mile run

but after biking around so much in the morning my legs were totally sore

not great for running

and it was really hot

but we made it half way before stray dog started following us

it was so funny and crazy and kept going into traffic so we looked like really negligent dog owners 

then someone started honking at us

and it happened to be rachel biornstad from growing up

we have known each other forever and got baptized together

but she lives in utah

and i live here and we're from covington so i was not expecting to see her

but her dad apparently moved here a few months ago

and she was visiting him and happened to see us running

so crazy

 it was hard to get our momentum back after that

but we made it to dairy queen for our free burgers

and hobbled home making it a 9.25 mile run

oh well, we're ready for our race

 that night we had a fun cinco de mayo party to go to at the pickett's 

where we ate awesome food and had fun chatting and the kids entertained us with red rover

 i love my cute lawn boys

  a reward for a job well done

 oh olive

where to begin

yesterday i went to her IEP meeting and although they said she was almost done needing it a year ago

they still wanted her to keep doing it next year

but i had already promised her she could be done

she hates being pulled out, missing classwork and the straw that broke the camel's back

was that they didn't let her do her standardized testing with the rest of her class

and she was super embarrassed and wanting to cry after school

it was awkward but i said enough is enough and we'll work on her "r" sounds at home or get private speech if we need to

then SHOCKINGLY she made the team at gymnastics

even though we did not think she would 

and after finding out how much it is and what a time commitment it is 

(not even that bad this year for level one but it will get higher and higher and more and more time)

we decided not to have her do it

which is so sad and hard and awful 

because we don't want to squelch her potential and she is totally passionate about it

but she is one of six kids and it feels like taking food out of one kids' mouth to put it in another's

(mostly because noah isn't doing any extracurricular activities and we were considering not letting henry to go the nicer preschool next year that we already registered him for to pay for her team and competition fees) 

gah! so hard but she understood so i took her to target for a late night consolation date

where we bought her a few new things and enjoyed the time together

sadly on top of it, yesterday i listed her bunny on craigslist because jude's eczema is SO much better

now that we moved her outside and she is getting forgotten outside :(

so while quitting speech is a win, getting rid of her bunny and not being able to do team gymnastics

was rough. i hope she isn't too heartbroken

we kind of talked about how it was a good thing but spending time together as a family is better

and she agreed

 at least we have lots to look forward to

cute jude in what was either hazel or olive's old romper i made a long time ago

 i was pretty proud i attached the bike trailer myself without any help or instruction

because i never have before 

the boys and i loved riding to pick up eleanor

 she loves riding to and from school lately

 life is so good