I think this might be the 473rd picture of Lucy walking Bo to school but bear with me because as we morph into summer over here I can hardly stand that another year has gone by.  I have to savor every moment, even (and especially) the hot mornings walking the dog to school with this girl who is becoming such a great dog-owner.

We rode the tandem every now and again too…

May was a good one.

We started off at Yogurtland for FHE to celebrate the end of our no-sugar April.

…with our DOG in tow…I may have said this before but I’m pretty sure that makes us official “dog people.”

We got real live LETTERS from Max in the mail.

And they were GOOD ones.

We were sure that Elle broke her foot skateboarding.

I’m not sure where the pictures are that she sent, this one does not show the swell quite as well.  It was bad.  Almost as bad as that toenail polish was 🙂  I was so worried because walking is her main mode of transportation over there, what in the world was she going to do with a broken foot?

But she was sure it was NOT broken despite the swelling and being unable to walk for a couple days…and she traipsed home this week all fine and good, so I guess we’re good…
I think she must have sent this picture and I don’t know why, but it sure is beautiful don’t you think??

I followed Dave up a mountain just in time for a gorgeous sunset…

(more on that little date back HERE)

Our girls cannot get enough of this dog of ours:

Grace and company:

Claire had her conference track meet:

(more on that back HERE)

Not sure where this is, but I love these beautiful girls:

(the one on the left up there is Elle’s good friend the singer McKenna who we all love…and who’s songs I talked about back HERE).

Every time I drove in our driveway I was greeted by this:

Those yellow blooms can’t help but just put a little spring in your step I tell you!

Grace was my chauffeur a lot, and I think the verdict is still out about who is more excited for her to get that license of hers.

Claire took off to California with this cute friend for the weekend:

I took this girl to “Muffins with Moms,” which prompted this story back HERE….

…en route to this little reunion with friends:

Which I wrote all about back HERE.

Is everyone out there with a junior high kid up to their eyeballs with “slime?”  Seriously, sometimes I feel like slime has taken over the world of 12 and 13 year olds all over creation.  Here’s Claire trying to fill a balloon with one batch of slime that was too sticky:

She figured it would make a good stress ball.

We delivered bread with our neighbors to new families who have moved in around us:

(We did this once before…we have a new development being built right next to us and we’re trying to get to know all the new families moving in.  We deliver bread to everyone and then have a little dessert open house for everyone at our neighbor’s house that next Sunday night.  My neighbors idea but I sure love it.  It’s been such a great way to branch out to all these great new people we get to live by.)

I got to hang with these kids for a day while their mom was in finals at the local community college.

They are in our church congregation and I love them.

My brother had a pretty cool awards ceremony that I wrote about back HERE.

Elle and her three roommates end-of-semester bed arrangement:

Oh man those girls sure had a good time.

I don’t think I posted this back in my art post (here)…I’m biased but isn’t that wave drawing amazing?

A little window into that art class:

Lunch with my daughter Claudia:

Ha!  But seriously, I am tall.  And seriously, I love this great friend of mine.

More and more soccer.

Claire had an interesting soccer twist of fate that I’ll get to soon…

Lucy and friends after I helped her resolve a little “recess incident” that would take too long to explain here…but man alive I love these girls!

Daddy-daughter date with my brother Josh:

(back HERE)

Claire and friends at school…

More Claire and friends…this time at the temple:

Dave and I got to go on a wedding reception date with our high-schooler:

So many summer weddings going on!

…always filled with lots of Elle’s friends who I love…and feel compelled to take pics. for Elle.

Late-night face-timing when we want Elle to be part of what we’re doing at home:

Dave puts on a good show that he doesn’t care for Bo, but sometimes I find them like this.

Deep down he loves her 🙂

Soccer tryouts for next year:

More on that soon…

Endless papers and tattered end-of-the year folders and binders coming home to be cleaned out and filed away:

(more on how we file those away back HERE)

An out-take from Lucy’s cereal-box-book-report-skit:

(which I talked about back HERE along with Golden Scholar and other end-of-the-year stuff…)

On to our traditional Mother’s Day Hike:

…where Bo got positively DRENCHED in burs, poor girl.  (back HERE)

Then on to talk to this boy right here:

Which was the highlight of May by a hundred times.

Here we were waiting for the call:

…and the best notes from my girls to top it all off.

A surprise letter arrived in the mail the next day directly from Hawaii, complete with my “one word” for the year written up so beautifully:
I am one lucky mother.

(Mother’s Day wrap-up HERE.)

Surprise visit from some of our dear friends we’ve known forever who moved to Virginia and then Texas.

Love them.

Dinner with Dave’s cute aunt and uncle:

(Lucy “earned” this dinner from the little birthday auction the month before and made sure it happened…which I’m so glad about!)

Yep, another one…

Grace has moved in more and more into Elle’s old room ^^

Lots of time on the tennis courts:

(more about May tennis back HERE)

A long hike to get ready for the BIG one:

(prep hike is back HERE)

We came home to this sweetie nephew who my girls were taking care of for my sis-in-law while we were gone:

They were moving in May which was crazy with a torn achilles tendon injury on top of all they were dealing with, so we were so glad we lived close enough to help a little here and there.

Our job charts sat like this for the last two weeks of school:

Boo for us on that!

Instead, our girls took on skating with a vengeance.  Somehow that took all precedence over jobs in May.

Grace took these pictures of Claire, and helped her figure it out, as they had Elle on FaceTime often giving them tips too.

Love that sister bonding going on over skating.

It was all good, except for the forgotten job charts and the fact that Grace hurt her foot just like Elle did….hoping it heals up as well.

Missionary farewells for both Max and Elle’s friends…

In preparation for doing some good reading with my girls this summer I started following this lady.  My sister uses her program for home schooling and I’m trying to get inspired.

I am always glad for good book recommendations so I figured I’d post that little list…

More birthdays in Young Women:

Dave taught the girls to change a flat tire:

(Which was the result of “Jell-O gone wrong” that I wrote about back HERE)

End-of-school teacher notes and gift cards always take some time:

A little graduation party for the one niece checking off her high school career this year:

…complete with swimming:

…and games…this cute kid who married my older niece is seriously Lucy’s favorite person in the world.  He is always found at the end of a family gathering playing a game with Lucy.  It is the sweetest.

My high-school-friend-from-England came to visit again…quick stop-over flight here in the desert.
I forgot to get a picture of our little morning brunch meeting, but here are the sweet gifts she sent the girls:

Then it was on the the last day of school:

(more on that back HERE)…

…and off to hike Rim to Rim of the Grand Canyon.

I wrote all about that grand adventure back HERE.

Dave and I headed straight from that adventure to meet up with our kids and all of Dave’s extended family for our annual trip to the mountains (back HERE).

…and an extra little mother/kid time up there (back HERE).

The sky was so beautiful on the way home, filled up with heaviness.

Meanwhile Elle decided, in the middle of getting ready for finals over in Hawaii, to head to the Big Island for a few days.

This is pretty much all I got from her:

But I’ll take it.  (We always touch the temple…more about that in random posts, but one is HERE.)

Then back to start on Summer Goals and also Summer Jobs:

More on that soon, but here’s Claire in her completed closet-clean-out feeling quite happy with herself.

 YESS!

And now here we are in June…next week it is forecasted to be 118 degrees.
Fun times 🙂

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10 Comments

  1. Loved your daily posting this week. I love all you share about your fam- my oldest is L's age, so I esp love reading about your life with older kids. Also, 118! You make living in AZ look like a dream, and then you throw that in there 😅

  2. Could you share what your binders include in the closet Claire cleaned out with date ranges? Is it printout from your blog, or pictures, or journal? Still working on our family systems and i love the look of yours! Thanks!

  3. Those binders are all the SCRAPBOOKS I have done over the years if you can believe it. Biggest pain in the world, but I used to be so into scrapbooking. I wish I could change them all over to blurb books though…so much easier to manage and those suckers are so huge that it's hard to get them out! But we do, at least the first year of each kids' life, every year on birthdays so we can reminisce the good old days:) Other than that, they sit there all organized but gathering a little dust!

    1. Hi Shawni,
      Please could you do a post sometime on your scrapbooks?

      I love how you've labelled them.

      One tip I have is to put pix etc into divided page protectors & acid-free page protectors – it makes it so simple.

      Also, please be careful with Bo's paws on the pavements/paths in the hot weather, as hot pavements can oven burn dogs paws. Bo is so cute by the way.

      Hope you're now getting too hot – 118, wow!!!

  4. If you're trying to teach healthy eating habits what about moderation? denial followed by binge dies not seem like a way to create good habits or a healthy relationship with food. This is the stuff eating disorders are made of. (

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