Thank goodness May is over!!  Our May was so busy with meetings and school functions that I didn't know how we were going to get through it, but we did!  Cole is done with school on Wednesday and Hunter goes to Friday.  I can't wait to be done so we can stay up later and sleep in later in the morning!!

 
(pictures from Hunter's birthday in March...I made the cake myself...note:  don't use too much black icing on a cake or everyone will have black teeth!!)

Hunter at Field Day...

 
Cole at the Merry-Go-Round Museum...Hunter and Cole with cousins Hope and Skylar...

I'll be retiring as president of our PTO effective June 30, but I'll be pretty much done after this week.  We did a lot of activities this year and just the organizing alone takes up a lot of my time.  It'll be a relief not to have to feel responsible for it and there are some great people as officers next year!

We got our pool opened a couple of weekends ago and it is all cleared up and ready to go if the weather ever decides to cooperate!!  It has been a chilly May this year and I hate to see the pool sitting there and know its too cold to go in.  The boys are being patient though and I'm sure we'll get plenty of use out of it in a couple of weeks!

Hunter started baseball practice for this year and Cole is trying T-ball.  This is the first year that they invited 4 year olds to play and I'm a little nervous that he is too young, but we'll try a couple of games and see how it goes.  Jason and I took them down to the baseball field last Saturday and let them hit and field the ball with just us four down there.  It went really well and I think it probably helped Cole's confidence in what he is doing.

We're looking forward to all of the good movies coming out this summer!  We've already seen Night at the Museum 2: Battle of the Smithsonion and UP.  We LOVE going to the movies and they are so good when I take them!  Hunter (and I) just finished ready Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince so that we'll be ready for the movie in July.  It was a 7th grade reading level and he finished the whole thing on his own and got a 100% on the reading test.  I'm so glad that he enjoys reading like that.

We finally decided to get rid of our Chinchillas.  Jason is getting ready to remodel the room they live in and there was no place for them to go.  Plus they were getting to be a lot to take care of.  The boys were sad at first but adjusted well to the idea after several weeks.  I was having a hard time finding a home for them so I put them on Huron County Freecycle, which is a neat group where people can list things they don't want or things that they need and other people in the county can get a hold of you about them.  I had over 20 emails from people wanting them!!!  I found them a home with someone that we actually knew and they took them that night.  What a relief for me!

Saying goodbye to Stormy...

Tomorrow we have our PTO Fun-A-Thon where the kids get to participate in different fun themed stations like Monkey Race, Sack Race, Red Rover, Bubble Gum Race and things like that.  We are looking at a chance of rain so I am praying very hard today that it doesn't rain!!  We'll have to reschedule if it does and that won't be good...we'll lose a lot of our volunteers if that happens.  We have our last PTO meeting of the year on Wednesday along with Hunter is participating in a Wax Museum at the school where the kids dress up as people and do a little blurb when people walk by.  He chose Christopher Paolini...the author of the Eragon series.  Hopefully after this things will slow down.  We have Vacation Bible School coming up in a couple of weeks, but hopefully we'll recover from school before that!! 

Things have been unbelievably busy around here...as usual.  I am hoping we can cut out as much extra stuff as possible here in the next several months!!  Jason is coaching flag football (on top of council and a part time mowing job at Sunrise, and cleaning the one Sunrise branch on the weekends...) and I got recruited to teach Sunday morning PSR (on top of PTO and part time cleaning at the library and cleaning the one Sunrise branch on the weekends, and I took the pictures for the flag football teams and the 5th and 6th grade volleyball teams...)  Please pray for us that things slow down! 

For those of you who don't know already, on September 20th my mom tripped over Cole and fell and broke her foot.  We had to take her to the ER and we were there for about 5 1/2 hours.  She has a brace on her foot and goes back to the dr next Tuesday for another xray.  She is very hopeful that she will be allowed to put weight on it and get around a bit more then.

Hunter started flag football and seems to like it.  Jason is coaching and he has a good group of kids.  Some parents take it a little too seriously...it should be about teaching the kids the rules and having fun.  Some get REALLY into it.  It makes me glad Jason is coaching because at least I know that Hunter won't have that super competitive pressure put on him.  I don't think that it's necessary for 8 year olds.

Hunter's flag football picture.

Cole had his birthday parties the last week of September.  He picked an Indiana Jones theme.  He had a blast!  He got so many really nice things and he has a bunch of money and gift cards to go shopping with!  He is so excited!  We had a beautiful weekend for it.  He spent most of the time both days out jumping on the trampoline with his cousins.  I can't believe he is 4 already!!  And since he has started school he seems so big to me!!

Here he is with his cake...I made it myself this year!  He chose what colors he wanted the actual cake to be...so one cake was half chocolate, half blue and one cake was half chocolate, half purple.  I think they turned out pretty nice for my first efforts!

Last week was fire prevention week at school so Cole's preschool walked to the fire station.  It was so cute to hear them say the things they had learned (Know 2 ways out:  the window and the door) and they even practiced "Stop, Drop and Roll".  They sat in the fire engine and they even got to spray the fire hose!!

 
Isn't he a cutie!

He's driving the fire engine today...

Cole spraying the fire hose...

Today we went to the apple orchard/pumpkin patch with his preschool.  They even got to ride the school bus there, which was pretty exciting.  We had a really nice day other than when a slight cold front passed through...the wind made it kind of cool then, but it passed and it felt warm again.  We went through how they store/clean/package the apples.  We went out and the kids got to pick 4 apples off of the tress.  Then they showed us how they make cider and we went on a hay ride and they showed us all of the different fruit trees they have there.  We stopped and the kids got to pick their own pumpkin out of the patch.  After that they got to play in a little hay bale maze and ride big tricycles through another little maze.  We had a sack lunch and they each got a little orange plastic pumpkin filled with cider.  They had a really good time, but they were all tuckered out by the time we got back on the bus.  Several kids fell asleep on the way home.  We went from 11:15-2:15, which is nap time for a lot of us. :)

Here's Cole with the apples he picked...

And here's his very own pumpkin!

We're going through the hay bale maze!!

Cole and I are down with a horrible cold and I think it may be the respiratory flu that is going around.  Now it burns when I breathe.  It was a long day, with not feeling good so I am hoping we all get in bed EXTRA early tonight!  Tomorrow night we're taking the boys to a Harlem Wizards basketball game at the school...which is supposed to be like the Harlem Globetrotters.  It should be a lot of fun and I think they'll really like it!!