The Lovely Month of May

Our favorite, most stressful month of the year!

We celebrated my birthday by taking the kids to Morro Bay. It was beautiful, but sooo much colder than we thought it would be so we ended up paying a ridiculous amount of money on tourist sweatshirts. James had a blast combing the beach. He found 3 intact sand dollars! I can't tell you how many years on the beach I've spent looking for just one! Beginners luck I guess. There's a really cool playground with a play ship. We got some fish and chips and had a really great time.

The next week, Paul and James went on their first Father & Sons Campout. They went to the beach again and had a blast. They saw a rattlesnake and James was taken by surprise when a freezing cold wave knocked him off his feet. They smelled of campfire and tracked lots of sand into the house when they came home. I read an entire book and snuggled Amelia (and kept a baseball bat at my side just in case) the whole night.

my happy baby

Then James started complaining of a sore tooth. At first we thought it was a case of popcornkernalitis, but after careful inspection I realized that the back of one of his molars had a pretty bad cavity. I hadn't noticed it before because it was on the backside of the tooth. So we made a trip to the dentist. They weren't able to get the bitewing x-rays due to his super sensitive gag reflex, but the dentist said his mouth looked really clean and that there shouldn't be any problems. We made an appointment for the next day to put a crown on the tooth (gah!). We went in and they gave him a "sleepy" drink and had us wait for it to make him drowsy for about an hour, then they took him back and got the x-rays and discovered FOUR small cavities between his teeth. The dentist was shocked because his mouth had looked so good. Needless to say I felt like the worst parent in the world that day. But the dentist was nice enough to take care of all of it while we were there and James was asleep. After that I had some errands to run and while I told James not to bite his tongue or cheeks, I failed to mention that he should avoid gouging holes into his face with his fingernails. For some reason it never crossed my mind that he might do that while his face was numb. But he did do it. It's been a couple weeks now and he's still got a big red mark on his face.

For Mother's Day, Paul made me dinner. James brought home a packet of wildflower seeds from church and insisted that they were sunflowers. Amelia made it through two hours of church without melting down! It's the little victories. Mostly I just snuggled my babies and thanked my Heavenly Father for them. I have the best job.

We went to the YW camp fundraiser at our ward. They had a family dance, pinata and taco dinner. James had a blast dancing! He said he wanted to dance with a girl but he couldn't find one, but then a girl came up and "looked into his eye" and he knew he would dance with her. She's his best friend now.

taking a swing at the pinata

For our anniversary we had a special FHE and anniversary dinner where we talked about eternal families. Paul brought me flowers and that was that. I think it's funny how when we first got married we both felt the need for grand gestures and now we are just happy to have a quiet evening and go to sleep early when the kids go down. I wonder what it'll be like when we're actually old! 

My parents visited for Memorial Day, which coincided with Paul's birthday.  We went up to Sequoia National Park and visited some humongous trees. It was beautiful. We got a year pass so we will be going again. We loved the smell of the trees and fresh air and the cooler temperatures. We stopped for ice cream in Three Rivers on the way back. It was such a great day (despite the A/C in our car giving up the ghost)! Amelia misses her grandma. She got spoiled being held 24/7.

Amelia loves her grandpa

Amelia is in her stroller in front of us...we didn't abandon her for a photo-op

At the ice cream/candy shop in Three Rivers

still picking at his face

We went to dinner at the Black Bear Diner. Kind of a fun place after our nature filled day in the mountains.

On Sunday we celebrated Paul's birthday (and James got an early present from Grandma and Pee-pa). Paul wanted a patriotic cake so I obliged. I was nice and didn't put 38 candles on his cake.

It's been a super fun, super busy month (as usual)!