The Henderson Family: May 2014

-The girls wanted to hang up the baby hammock swing that we got on our cruise in Mexico. They were so cute working together and helping Shaelyn into it.

-May 1st is the National Day of Prayer, which I never knew until this year. So here in Bridger Valley, the Coalition of Churches holds a program to celebrate the National Day of Prayer. Rob and I were asked to sing "The Lord's Prayer" at the program. I have never sung that song before, but it is a gorgeous song, and Rob and I loved singing it. Although there weren't many people who attended, the program was a nice one and I am grateful for the Coalition of Churches and how much it encourages the members of different Christian faiths to work together and focus on Christ.

-My tulips in all their glory before the crazy awful snowstorm on Mother's Day killed them all.

-Hallie and I went to the mother-daughter night for Activity Days. It was so cute. They had all the moms bring a baby picture of themselves and one of their daughters to the activity. Then we pinned them up on a board and had to try and guess who was who. It was fun and hard! We also made cute little magnet boards. Sherry Goble, my next door neighbor (and Zumba gal) is the Activity Days leader and she does such a great job, I always love the things she comes up with. The other Activity Days leader is a less active sister named Kim Aimone, who also is one of my Zumba ladies. She is the sweetest person, I wish she would come to church with her cute family. I like her a lot.

Another lost tooth!

It's really springtime! We are finally warming up around here!

-When you have four daughters, these are the kinds of Sunday afternoon activities you do: make tea party hats out of tissue paper. Hallie did this as a craft in her class and so she showed us all how to make the hats.

I like Evie's face in this one

-Random cuteness:


Wearing Hallie's helmet backwards!

Wearing Mom's high heels

So fancy!

-So we finally got a new dishwasher--we have needed one for months, and finally did it! We picked it up at RC Willey the same day that we went down to Orem for Tim's graduation, and brought it back in our van. Robert got it all installed and took off the protective plastic cover on the front of the door and there was a great big dent in the corner of the dishwasher. Grrrrr.... So we call RC Willey and they send up a new one three weeks later (they didn't have it in stock so it took awhile). The guys took away the old one and dropped off the new one still in its box. Well, stupid Melanie forgot to ask them to take off the box and the plastic cover to check it before they left, and guess what? It had the EXACT same dent in the EXACT same corner as the previous one!!

The dent.

This was frustrating because I actually really love the way the dishwasher functions and I would even be willing to live with the dent, I just wouldn't pay full price for a dented dishwasher. But have no fear, RC Willey is a great company and they sent out yet another dishwasher, this time dent-free and all of us are happy!!

All the girls love the great big dishwasher box, though. They filled it all the way up with blankets, pillows, and stuffed animals and took turns jumping in it. And Shaelyn liked using it as a fort too:

I love that cute little face sticking through that hole!

My acrobatic four-year-old! Evie climbs up to the sink without a stool or a chair or anything so she can drink out of the faucet. She is so athletic, and a really good climber!

-May is a month full of the end-of-the-year busyness. We wrapped up preschool and Zumba, there were lots of thank you notes and field trips and swim parties at school. I volunteered at Field Day and took Shaelyn to her first developmental screening at the CDC (which she passed with flying colors).

-Mother's Day Snowstorm!!

Happy Mother's Day, everyone!

Firing up the stove one more time during the snow storm.

-While in Home Depot buying sheet metal to fix a leak in our trailer, Rob sliced his finger open nearly down to the bone. Thankfully our good friend Bryant Birch stitched him up--it was a pretty nasty cut. Darn sheet metal! It took several weeks to heal, and was frustrating for Robert because he couldn't use his right hand for very many things.

The day it happened.

-Our good friends the Halls hosted a Murder Mystery party. It was Italian themed, entitled Pasta, Passion, and Pistols. We had to solve the murder of Pepi Roni. My character was Angel Roni, Pepi's daughter. She is supposed to be young, beautiful, and dangerous. Rob's character was Father Al Fredo, the priest. He was the nicest character by far in the cast--just a nice old priest. Check out our costumes--I had to go buy some red lipstick because I didn't own any!

Getting into character

Tenya was Clair Voyant, the fortune-teller.

Brady was Rocco Scarfazzi, twin brother to Pepi Roni, and also a mob boss.

There were two other couples as well, Jan and Spencer Crosland and Jake and Kim...I don't know their last name, but they are a really nice couple from Evanston. He is the seminary teacher there. Everyone was in costume and we all did our best at attempting to speak in an Italian accent--with varying levels of success, lol! It was super fun!

-We got a double-yolker!! I pity the chicken that had to lay that egg!

-I have continued my NAET treatments, which seem to be going quite well. I haven't had any allergies bothering me for some time now, other than still a slight allergy to dogs and cats. But the hayfever seems to be completely eliminated, which is FANTASTIC!!

-More random cuteness:

I love my kids so much, especially when I find them doing cute things like this!

She was just singing to herself in the sunshine. The picture didn't capture how cute this moment really was.

My own design. I call it "X dutch braids".

The X dutch braids versus classic dutch braids

Picking wildflowers in our front yard

-Tenya became a representative for a company called Damsels in Defense which focuses on self-defense for women. They sell tasers, pepper spray, and kubatons and a variety of things to help you incapacitate an attacker. She had a party which I attended and it was cool to learn some tactics to use against attackers. I bought some pepper spray too--that stuff is nasty!

-Last time teaching preschool:

Look at Evie's hair--this hairstyle was designed by Claire

I will miss teaching these cuties!!

The last week of school, they had a little graduation ceremony and we played at the park. It was very cute and fun!

-Mike and Lacey came to visit the last week of May. We are so happy to have them living in Utah again--it is a heck of a lot closer than Indiana! Congratulations to Mike on finishing dental school. We are so glad to have them close so we can have fun visits like this:

Lovin the shades!

It was the girls' last day of school so we walked down to the school to pick them up and take a picture with their teachers:

Claire with her 1st grade teacher, Mr. Smith

Hallie with her 2nd grade teacher, Mrs. Erickson.

The girls both had great teachers this year--Hallie blossomed so much more this year with a good teacher. Mrs. Erickson had a good blend of loving the kids and also having good discipline. She inspires the kids to find ways to solve problems on their own and she was great at communicating with parents about things the kids were doing at school.

Mr. Smith was great too. He was also really good at communicating with parents and he did a great job utilizing all the cool technology that our teachers have available to them, including Ipads and the Smartboard. It doesn't hurt that both he and Mrs. Erickson are active Church members :)

One of the things I love best about our school though, is its size. There were 15 kids in Hallie's class and only 12 in Claire's class. It is so much nicer for both the teachers and students to have these smaller class sizes.

After pictures, we stayed and played at the park for a bit with Mike, Lacey, and Kallie: