Just Another Day in Paradise: My My May Already

Adam got the Great Books collection down for a little light reading. How studious.

We finished eating up the last of the giant marshmallows that we had from our camping trip. I've never seen such big ones.

Sarah was invited to a very fun Harry Potter party at her friend Meg's. They really made it cute with potions class, herbology, divination, even a trip to Honey Duke's in Hogsmead.

Meg had made chocolate frogs and her little brother Heber was eating bites of them and then wanting to "share" them with the party guests, which they of course politely declined. He began putting the chocolates on their chairs when they wouldn't take them and one unsuspecting girl sat one and got all chocolatey. He is such a cute little boy. Adam loves playing with him when we visit teach there.

A quick Mother's Day shot. Here Tyler had made me breakfast because he cancelled morning meetings. He hears me say every now and then that you eat with your eyes and a lot of food prep is in the presentation. He called me down and said, "Now eat this with your eyes." He had created a beautiful plate display with eggs, toast, strawberries, and one of the See's chocolates his mother had sent. Yum.

I was very loved on Mother's Day and presented with sweet cards and poems from Sarah, new bike tires from Ty and Adam, and a bag of cherry tomatoes from Rachel. She knows they are my favorite indulgence that I just can't justify to include in our budget. I was telling her how I think they taste like little drops of sunshine and she secretly asked Dad to take her to the store so she could buy me some with her own money. What a sweet gift it was.

Later that night our friends the Reeves came over and made lasagna and enjoyed Mother's Day with us. You can see Adam really likes Kevin.

I love being a mother in my kids' silly moments.

And in their sweet moments.

Dad used a sick day! He actually got sick and for the first time I can remember he stayed home from work. He wanted to start the morning by snuggling up on the couch to watch a movie with the family. Times like this I'm so glad we homeschool. We watched Holes. Of course he mostly rested by catching up on Bishop stuff, but we made sure he got a good nap and got to bed early.

We have a tradition of getting to throw our workbooks when we are finished with them. The girls really enjoy it, especially this time when Dad was here to watch. Lucky coincidence.

We had enchiladas, salad, and olives for dinner. I just noticed Sarah's face at her cute siblings, silly poser.

The kids made book report diaramas. They both read Candy Fairies books, so they both used lots of candy in their scenes.

Adam insisted on making one too. He called his Candy Mountain.

The chicks are ready to start hatching, we can hear them peeping from inside the eggs.

Thursday night during date night we heard cheaping in the garage, it was midnight.

We woke the girls up to see their first little chicks and transfer them from the incubator to the box. Rachel named the yellow one Cuddle, Sarah appropriately named the black one Midnight.

By morning Peck had been born, then came the twins Sugar and Spice (they weren't from the same egg but the girls called them twins because they looked alike and were born at the same time). Of our 18 eggs 13 total hatched, but 9 died due to being lame, so sad. Cuddle, Peck, Sugar, and Spice were the four healthy survivors. It was most sad when Midnight died, he was Sarah's favorite. He died the same time Shadow (Grandma and Grandpa Palmer's dog) died in Utah. She drew a picture of her with the two of them in heaven.

We took a last minute Disneyland trip thanks to the help of some friends and had to leave the babies for two days. They were well taken care of by another friend and by the time we got back they were growing up quite a bit. We were popular in the neighborhood for a little while.