Various Items - Early May Picture Edition

 Rachel sent this picture from Shelbi's birthday party.  Melt my ever-loving heart!  What a sweet bunch of kids!  LtoR- Mary, Cannon, Shelbi, (one of the Bell girls), Camden B., (one of Cannon's preschool friends - don't know her name), and Ella D.  He's lucky to have such a fun group of pals and cousins!

 I got to go to lunch with these high school friends.  Nikki Moysh and Sara (Packham) Joyner.  We had Tandoori Oven - yum!  Lots and lots of laughs.  Great ladies.

 Lily modeling our Spring soccer attire.  Raincoat under her jersey and a nice warm hat on top.  Gloves, long socks and leggings, too, of course!

 Stanton sometimes takes a quick power nap before work (he gets up early to exercise, too).  This is how he falls asleep with the morning chaos going on around him.  Hahahaha!

 Cannon wanted Henry to come sit by him.  I came into the room a minute later to this sweet scene.  Oh, how lucky Henry is to have big brothers!

 Standing.  Up.  To.  Everything!!!!

 We went and visited our neighbor, Sandy K's duck.  She rescued him from the middle of the road up the canyon.  He was so cute.  Fun afternoon!

 My kids are weird.  Seriously weird.

 This is my comment on Instagram to go with this picture:
I hated 5:00 am today. So much that I wanted to punch it in the face. But I didn't. I got up and exercised, got the girls to piano (with practice before, even!), got everyone ready and out the door on time for school, read a book to Cannon, fed Henry and put him down for a nap, and set my alarm for a 29 minute nap. Do you like to set your alarm for weird times, like me? One of my quirks (one of MANY). Off to kick this insane day in the pants. Groceries, preschool, Stanton stuff, gymnastics, soccer games, etc. Thank you, @janabrough for keeping me going every morning! I would be a complete failure without you! #p90x #week3 #adayinthelife

 Just Henry break dancing at Chloe's private lessons.  :)  Go Henry, Go Henry, Go, Go, Go Henry!

 How the boys (and Lily, though she's not in this picture) entertain themselves while Chloe practices.  Homework, reading, and running around.

 He looked dazed and confused after his sweet potato meal.  Also, do you think I should make some bibs????

 I was SO thrilled to see Chloe smiling willingly for a picture!  It was late at night (okay, like 8:30 or so) and the sun was nowhere in sight, thus the grainy shot.  But she is such a lovely girl!

 Helpful Henry!

 Hank and Bubba (maybe they'll have a country music band one day??).

 Sammie left mints on our beds when we stayed at their house!  What a sweet little hostess!  She takes after her momma.

 Angie stopped by Chloe's meet in Lindon to cheer for her.  How I got such tremendous friends, I'll never know.  I'm so thankful for Angie!

 Chloe and I ate at Red Robin on the way home from her Lindon meet.  She is a neat young lady.  Wow.  I'm so thankful I get to be her mother!  She got some of her higher scores of the season at this meet, but she didn't medal at all.  In fact, she only received a ribbon for 8th place on vault -- with a 9.25!  It was an incredibly high scoring meet.  She was absolutely a gem as they called out everyone else's names for medals.  She cheered and smiled and had her arm around one of her teammates who wasn't handling it all as well.  I'm so proud of her.
The other day I asked her if she'd ever consider taking a break from gymnastics to try soccer.  She laughed and said, "No way!  I was made for gymnastics!"  I love that she has found her passion at such a young age.

 When we got home from the Lindon meet, Chloe set up the first snow cone stand of the season.  With help from Lily, Brigham, and Cannon, she made $19!!!  I made sure she payed her employees (hehe) and she walked away with $16 of her own.  She was busy for a good hour and a half.  Crazy!  (Thanks to the Broughs, Olsons, and Lundbergs for the extra ice!)

 My future Mozart....

 I was looking through my family cookbook and found this sweet little recipe that Chloe put in a few years back.  How do the years fly by so quickly?!

 That's Jana's shadow up above there.  We finished exercising one morning and when we walked to the door....SNOW!  I shouldn't ever be surprised to see snow on May 1st in Cache Valley.  It's not unusual, but it always sneaks up on me after days of nicer weather!

 Our house was freezing, as I'd very intelligently left a few windows open the night before.  Henry's hat and rosy red nose are good evidence of the  temperature in our home.

 Brigham is hot and cold with his LEGO playing, but he's been on a kick again.  This was a lair he built for Iron Man.

 Speaking of Brigham - this was his backpack the other day.  All Magic Treehouse books (some duplicates).  He's definitely my reader!

 Mama!  Come get me outta this crib!

 Chloe has such stubborn teeth.  She didn't get any until she was 15 months old and has lost them just as slowly.  Stanton has had to pull a few of them in his office because the new ones were almost fully grown in behind the baby ones...that were barely even loose.  This 5th tooth (seriously, the girl is 9 and she's only lost 5 teeth!) was just as stubborn.  It has been sore for a good week and has proved a distraction at school.  It has been loose, but not hanging on by a thread by any means, but the discomfort, especially during state testing, has made Chloe very anxious to have it out.  She's wiggled and pried, we've gotten out the pliers, etc.  Nothing would make it budge.  Finally, Stanton got out his home kit and numbed her gums -- he then invited her to pull the tooth out herself.  And pull it out she did!  It was so funny to watch!  She has been a much happier kid since losing it, too.  I think she was happy to have mouth feel normal again.
The tooth fairy has yet to visit her-- and as she doesn't care much for the tooth fairy deal anyway, I just need to find a sneaky moment to slip her the dollar!

 Who's that crazy guy up in the tree?  That would be Stanton tying a rope around the Brough's tree.  He, Tyler, and Tyler's dad and brother spent an afternoon taking down the cottonwoods in their front yard.  The kids were more than thrilled to spend the whole afternoon whittling on the branches and pounding rocks in the driveway!

I loved this quote I saw while Instasurfing (remember when we used to blogsurf around to the friends of our friends?  I guess this is the 2013 version....).