May in Review (better late than never as my mom is wont to say)

(Eventually I might actually write one of these on the first day of the month; I realize that June is already halfway over and I'm just now posting the May review, but I still didn't want to miss it.)

In addition to the endless rain (the wettest month in Utah ever, in the history of weather record keeping), here's what happened in May:

Entire Family Stuff

• We went to Melissa’s baby Lydia’s blessing on May 22; played with her cats, admired the cousins’ ducks, gooed at the new baby
• We celebrated Mother’s Day with a Saturday concert that Haley sang in; on Sunday I made spaghetti and red sauce for dinner, just to make myself happy
• We celebrated Memorial Day by eating lunch at In ‘n Out; the boys went to see Kung Fu Panda 2; Nathan, Kaleb, and Amy decorated graves on the Friday before since it was supposed to rain all weekend (it started raining as we left the cemetery and then rained almost all weekend)
• For who-knows-what odd reason, the neighborhood paper boy picked May as the month to dump all his extra Sunday papers into our yard. Every Sunday we woke up to a pile of 7-10 newspapers. What the?

Kendell

• asked me approximately 1,278 times "what are we going to do to entertain the kids this summer?" Perhaps someone else out there has better ideas than mine?
• won the "I support my wife’s running habit" award by driving me to the top of Squaw Peak Road and picking me up at the bottom. (This involved a lot of sitting around in the car and waiting for me, something he’s not a fan of.)
• decided, on the spur of the moment, to go back to school so he can finish his associates. Classes on the block schedule means that almost every second of his free time in May was spent doing Astronomy homework. (Nathan calls this his "boring space crap")
• has been pronounced completely healed from April's gallbladder surgery.

Amy

• I ran lots and lots of miles in preparation for Ragnar; these miles taught me that running is perhaps the only time when my back doesn't have a low-grade ache going on
• I was astounded at how much I remember from my own Astronomy class, the one I took in 1992 or 1993. It is, after all, my second-favorite science! Lots of helping Kendell with homework and studying.
• listened to lots of Adele and a newly-discovered band, The Naked and Famous
• had a month of rereading: The Lord of the Rings trilogy (which I started as comfort reading during Kendell's hospital stay), The Book Thief and Birthmarked. I also read a couple of books about hiking in Grand Tetons National Park for an upcoming trip (I'm already frustrated at having to choose the hikes; I wish I could just go on all of them!)
• goal for the month: zero soda. None, nada, zilch. I made it! I had a few tough moments but managed to talk myself down from the soda craving.
• To support Haley (see below), I did almost zero baking. I did have to make a cake for a funeral (which, by the way, I remembered I was supposed to bake about 45 minutes before I had to leave for the day; thank goodness for the ease and speediness of a good sheet cake recipe!), and after the scent of sheet cake wafted through the house, I was powerless in the face of my craving until I finally made one for our family (on Mother’s Day). That was it, though, for baking. Much less sugar at our house. (Although, dare I confess: I polished off an entire bag of white chocolate chips in about 3 weeks. You know you’re desperate when you resort to naked chocolate chips for your sugar rush.)

Haley

• goal for the month: no sugar. She did it! I'm very proud of her. She's actually not eaten candy for years, but has a weakness for beverages of the Icee/Slurpee persuasion. And cookies. (Me too, sister!) But she was strong and resisted, even when faced with entire dessert tables.
• Sang beautifully at her Mother’s Day choir concert
• Found out she was accepted on the Nordstrom fashion board, the Con Brio choir council, and the city youth council; these took away a bit of the sting of not making the choir she really wanted to be in
• Finished reading Great Expectations and also read The Diary of Anne Frank—for, strangely enough, her math class (I still haven’t figured that one out!)
• finished her sophomore year of high school with a straight 4.0 for the year!

Jake

• At the end of April, I handed him a book I thought he’d like, The Hunchback Assignments. It had an enormous hold list so he only had two weeks to finish it. He read about 3/4ths of it and then couldn’t find it. We turned the house upside down looking for that book. I nearly just claimed it lost and paid for it several times. Almost six WEEKS later I had the ah-ha moment to check at the library of his junior high. Yep, it was there, along with six other books waiting to be returned to the public library. I took all of them back and still feel relieved, since we looked for the book for nearly the entire month.
• For his junior high awards assembly, he received the Student of the Year award in PE. I only had my little camera with me, as Kendell’s other class is a photography and so he’s always got my big camera. This was the photo I got of him: 
  (and it’s also why even though it’s nice to have a small camera in my purse, I still like using my big camera better, just because of the speed factor)
• Grew another inch or so; he needs a new suit for church because his arms are just too long for his current one. The growing of this boy amazes me!
• Finished seventh grade just shy of a 4.0; he had one A- back in the second term, but in the rest of his classes he earned As.

Nathan

• got to attend the special maturation program at school; plenty of "ah ha" and "that’s gross!" moments. But he survived!
• participated in the "Hope of America" school program that our district kids do here in 5^th grade. It’s every school in our district; they sing different patriotic songs. He liked it just fine, but even better (and I’ll agree with his assessment) was the morning of his practice. He was done with school at 11:00, so I picked him up from his practice and he hung out with me. We didn’t do much: went to Costco, ran to the mall to do some returns, picked up lunch from Sonic. After the errands, we went home and he helped me plant some flowers and some seeds. It was a rare non-raining May day and we just talked, and hung out, and it was a good, sweet afternoon. I loved this day!
• Finished 5th grade with straight As.

Kaleb

• The week before the last week of school, all the kindergarteners were off so they could have their kindergarten assessments. I was griping to Becky about how it seems every other week kindergarten is cancelled for one reason or another. She pointed out that when her kindergartner, Ben, was having a week off for the same reason, she tried to savor it because it was her last week with just him at home with her. I started crying right when I got off the phone with her because I realized just how right she was: my last week alone with Kaleb. So I made sure to savor it, too. We did lots of everyday but fun things, like going to the greenhouse, visiting my dad, stopping by our favorite bakery for dinner rolls. It was a good, sweet week together!
• He astounded me at his assessment. His reading skills literally tripled in the three months since the last assessment. My anxiety over his learning lessened a whole big bunch in that moment!
• Highlight of the month: seeing Grandma Sue’s kittens. He’s still talking about them!

Comments

[Becky K]

My kids still talk about the kittens, too. Love that your kids are so smart - they have smarties for parents, though, so I'm not surprised! I need to check out your new musical find.

Love the updates! And your format. :)