Evan's baby blessing

Evan was blessed in the ward that I grew up in with his cousin Natalie. Evan is just a little over a week older than Natalie.  It was neat to have them blessed together and even more neat to have so much of our family that was able to attend.  Our families made up almost half of the congregation.

Michael and I had to make a quick trip to make it in time for church on Sunday considering he had to work Saturday but we are glad that we did, so neat to be all together.

After the baby blessing we met up with Michael's side of the family at a nearby park to have lunch.  It was fun that they could have a little cousin time. (We have more pictures from the luncheon but I haven't figured out how to upload them here yet, I had left my phone at home when we went to church and then didn't have it at the luncheon.)

All of my family together! It has been a while and gets harder and harder to have all of us together.  So neat that we could all be there.  Above is all of us with our babies, we are just missing Jeanine who will be having a little girl next month!

Benson is really growing up, he definitely is looking like a big brother now!

Greyson and Benson were fun to see together, they play together really well!

Leonardo Museum

 This year we bought a family pass to our planetarium in Tucson. It has been great because it has gotten us into a number of places for free. The Leonardo was one of these.
Andrew came with us and helped the boys do a bunch of the activities. We were there for almost 2 hours but could have spent much more time there.
We were glad we got to spend time with Andrew before he left for Thailand.

Big River

I've said this before but I love musicals! Often when we come home my mom will try to make it so that we can go to a play at the Hale Center Theatre. This time it was Big River. I always leave with a desire to dance and sing and with new resolutions to enjoy life more by filling it with music and often other resolutions as well. I'm grateful I was able to go. My mom watched Evan and Benson, then she brought Evan to me part way so that I could feed him! How nice it was to get out for a little bit and enjoy a show!

This is the place state park!

 On Tuesday before Michael and I left Utah for Texas we met up with his parents. They are serving a mission at the family history center. We were able to see their apartment and where they work and then we went over to this is the place state park.

 The boys loved riding the horses and seeing all of the farm animals. All except Benson was not up for riding the horses, he enjoyed looking at them from a distance.

 Alden did a great job milking the cow.

 Calvin was willing to milk the cows once he had Dad helping him out.

 Benson enjoyed being in the stroller where he could see the animals but not get to close to them.

 Grandma had prepared a nice lunch for all of us to have together.

 Everyone loved panning for gold! But I would have to say that this was Alden's favorite, he found a good handful of gold.

 Calvin enjoyed looking for gold but he could see this train and kept stopping to ask if it was time to ride the train. Eventually I took him over and he rode the train all by himself and then rode it again when everyone else caught up.

 We had a great day seeing all of the places and spending time with family.

When we came home Benson had just a couple more minutes to play with his cousin before it was time to go to bed.

Gutenberg

Lately I have been a little bit lazy with our history lessons and haven't done as many fun activities with the lessons. The other day we learned about the invention of the printing press and I knew we needed to do an activity, after all it is the most influential invention ever!! Also this was a simple activity, we cut shapes into potatoes and used them like a stamp. The idea was to make letters but I was impressed with any shape they could make! They all did great and loved it!

May

The month of May is usually a hot one but this year it has been gorgeous! The afternoons are a little warm but the mornings and evenings are perfect. This is a picture taken from one evening when the boys were just about all ready for bed but we decided to go out and play one last time. (Probably because we needed to water the plants and pick up the lemons.)

Our first pool trip with Evan! 6 weeks old. He slept great on the chair, the water would have been too cold for this sweet little boy.

A fun night at the mall! Our AC broke and took a couple of days to fix, mostly it wasn't too bad but one of the last days it was hot. It hadn't cooled down much in the night and was hitting 100 or more in the day so that afternoon we went to the mall as a family and then ate out. It was a was a really enjoyable evening. While our AC was out we spent time each day at the pool. (We really go to the pool most days whether we have AC or not.)

Benson's first chocolate chip cookie! He wasn't too sure about it but the next day he decided he did kind of like them and ate a whole one himself. I don't bake much at all anymore so it was fun to bake something that we all could eat. (These were made with coconut flour which is my flour of choice when I do bake, it is a dry flour but with the right recipe it works great!)

Below are just a few random pictures from the month.

My Apple boys! ☺