May Days.

I can hardly believe that tomorrow is the last day of this month. It went by so fast!! We are down to 6 days left of school. The kids' last day is Friday, June 7th, and then we have a full week of in-service days, so I will be working until 4pm on Friday the 14th and then I am a free lady! Wahoo! I'm so excited.

It has been a very busy month full of birthdays (Papa, Canyon, Tim, Mandie, Barry, Rick, Andrea, Grammi, and - tomorrow! - Chad), family dinners, house guests, report cards (a 5 week work in progress), crazy weather, and quilting projects.

This particular project is actually on hold right now. I've been spending most of my time on another one which I will post very soon. 

We have had some beautiful weather this month, followed by some cold, dark, rainy days in recent weeks. Fortunately, the first week of June looks promising weather-wise and I think our sunshine will be back for a bit.

On one of those spectacularly sunny days (we had a weekend that was in the 80's followed by a Monday that reached 90!!) we met up with Jon and Caitlin at Houghton and the next day went to Newport Beach for a picnic with Tim and Annika.

What a beautiful weekend that was!! I was sort of hoping that it was the official start to summer but I should've known better. What's Memorial Day weekend without a little rain anyway? Besides, it's always tough to finish out the school year strong when it's just one warm sunny day after another. Believe me, there's a reason even people like me start skipping class at the first sign of a little Seattle sunshine :)

Steven and I hosted family dinner that weekend for Steven's and Papa's birthdays -- it's way more work than I thought! We had fun though and it was really great to have the whole family over to our place. We had fish tacos and German chocolate cake. Yum.

The first full week of May brought teacher appreciation week. I think my favorite part was the beautiful bouquet that showed up on my desk on Monday morning. All of the families brought in bunches of flowers and then they worked together to piece them into bouquets for each of us. One of my students, who regularly announces that she wishes Mrs. Lentz were her mom, special ordered my flowers and I definitely had the prettiest bunch. She told her mom that I like orange and she worked really hard to keep mine coordinated. Loved it. My other favorite thing was the tin of Paris tea that was in my gift basket. Spot on. I know that same student picked that gift out for me as well -- glad to have her on my team! A few things to note in the picture above: the potted lily is now dying on our balcony (I'm not good with plants), that walkie-talkie is our PA system (no joke), one of my students painted that horse for me and brought it to school with a little adoption certificate that says it's an Arabian even though she painted it just like an Appaloosa, and Paige, my pen cup is the SF mug you brought back for me from a Quest trip many years ago.

This was also the week that a parent of one of my kids came up to me and said, "I don't understand. At the beginning of the year we couldn't get [him] to pick up a book and now he gets in the trouble all of the time because he won't put them down! What did you do to him?!?" Haha! Such a big compliment! It made me feel so good. It's true, that student gets in trouble everyday for getting too distracted by books and not doing his work, but it makes me so happy to see how he devours books that I just don't really say anything.

We took a little trip to Century Link (can I still call it Quest) Field for an early Mothers Day celebration.  Steven had to work and I felt terrible going to a Sounders game without him, but we did have a really good time.

Aren't we cute? Oh my gosh. So grown up. I can't even handle it. Weren't we just a mom and three little girls a little bit ago? It's crazy.

Um, wow. Coconut cream pie in a jar. Perfection. And not only did it look incredible, it tasted amazing as well.

We also shared a gluten free cherry pie and a slice of peach pie.

You should probably check this place out.

Following a Sounders win and a little pie, we went back to Mom's to help Tara get ready for her senior prom. Doesn't she look great?!

Mother's Day we, of course, spent playing board games with my mom and then had dinner at Uncle Scott's house. Jeremy and Ronnie were in town for the weekend and spent the night with us that night. This is what I woke up to the next morning:

Yes, it's true, the boys had been up until 3am with board games, an xbox, Jameson, and the quesadilla maker.

We had more houseguests the next weekend when Paige, her boyfriend Rob, her friend Katelyn, and Katelyn's friend Teresa came to stay for a few days. We kicked off the weekend with a Sounders game (another victory!). We split up for dinner prior to the game and Steven and I got to celebrate Tim's birthday with a big group of friends at Red Robin on the pier. Tim and Annika went with us to the game as well.

It wasn't a warm day but the sunset was incredible!

What a view!

Normally, the cranes are not my favorite and I try to steer the camera away from them, but I thought they looked pretty cool silhouetted by the bright clouds.

Paigey!! I still think we take the best "roommate photos." We could certainly do without those three in the back though... I so loved having Paige here! It was exciting to finally show her our new house and to get to meet Rob. I love hosting anyway but it was really such a treat to have my bestie in town for a few days. I even took Monday morning off work for a little date at La Reve with Paige. It was wonderful. Very grounding. There's something so assuring about spending quality time with a girlfriend who really knows your heart.

Friends! We love those two.

Last weekend we had dinner with Scott and Chloe. The food was absolutely incredible (nothing new there!) and the company was even better. Scott made pork enchiladas and I brought a flourless chocolate torte. It was a lovely evening. Always love a good dinner date with the Vegas. Steven worked most the rest of the holiday weekend but I did get to go to the Mariners game with Papa and Grammi and Uncle Barry on Monday. It was really cool to be there on Memorial Day. They honored veterans many different times throughout the game and we got to hear some really interesting stories. Baseball has that "all-American" kind of feel and I always think the field looks beautiful with big bright American flags everywhere.

Steven and I have taken a bit more time to start planning our big vacation. I'll have to make more time for planning once school is out because there's still so much to do!

Other than that, I've just been scrambling to finish the school year. We have a lot of fun stuff coming up next week including a French themed day, field day, and the year end celebration, which is a formal event! I will be wearing my dress from Ashton Ball freshman year :) Ha! Always fun to dress up!!

Other random highlights from the month:

> Scott's homemade hot sauce. Changed my life.

> Iron Man 3 - loved it. Pepper is my favorite.

> Ellen Degeneres's Clumsy Thumbsy. Freaking hilarious. We laughed so hard we cried.

> We got a new MacBook Pro -- I felt like a traitor doing it but, I secretly love it. Shhh! Don't tell. I am endlessly grateful to Microsoft (and my Dad, duh) for all it (he) has provided me over the years. He no longer works for them so that makes me less of a traitor, right?

> One of my students announced the other day that this is the 1st year she's ever not wanted summer break to come and she wishes this school year could just keep going. It made my heart happy.

> Dark Chocolate Coconut Almonds from Costco. Holy cow!

> I am planning to use my crockpot for the first time tomorrow.

It has been a crazy spring and I am ready to welcome the summer months! Have a great weekend! And HAPPY BIRTHDAY CHAD!!

The Laundry Room.

My husband is too good to me. We already know this, of course, but I had a very fun surprise for me when I came home from work today. One of the first things he said to me when I got home from work was, "Hey, can you move the laundry from the washer to the dryer while you're upstairs? I forgot to do it earlier, sorry about that." Ummm... okay. I wasn't offended or anything but I was a little surprised. I mean, I had just gotten home from work and as far as I knew he had been home all day. He could've at least put a beer in my hand before sending me upstairs to do chores! But then I opened the laundry room door and saw this:

If you've never done laundry in my laundry room, you have no idea how awesome this is. In fact, it probably looks pretty stupid to you because you will quickly notice that I still haven't purchased any shelving or even a proper hamper for my laundry room... oiy. But what's really awesome is that the washer and dryer used to be on the long wall (the left-hand side of the picture) and it always seemed so silly to me because the room is just narrow enough that if you have the washer door open, you can't get between it and the wall to get the hamper or reach the detergent or anything. It was all squishy and inconvenient and uncomfortable. Our next door neighbor Andrea and I have been complaining about the ridiculous design since we moved in and have talked about making this switch many times. We just weren't sure how it would fit or how it would work out since all of the hook-ups are on the long wall. When Canyon and Andrea told us that they had switched their laundry room last weekend I gave Steven the puppy-dog eyes and said, "Oh please can we do that?!?" I knew he liked the idea but was shocked that he took the initiative to do this all on his own while I was at work today!!

Now I can take full advantage of my incredibly spacious laundry room -- I can't wait to do laundry! Next step: get a sink and some cabinets in there so it is really organized and functional.

I'm also super excited to start organizing my craft room over the summer. I've been waiting since JANUARY to get the craft table I've had my eye on, which should be in stock at Costco sometime in early July. We sold our rolltop desk on craigslist last week and I have all of my sewing stuff down in the "craft room" now on a folding table. It was nice to get it all moved out of Steven's room - finally! I felt like such a terrible wife allowing all of my girly crafty stuff to take over his mancave space. It's nice to have it all situated downstairs. Now if only I can get my craft room to look like Lissy's studio: http://hugsandpunches.net/studio-tour-organization-tips-with-lissy/ That girl's got style! Her home is so beautiful and I'm not sure if I'm talented or creative enough to decorate on that level but I'll just have to keep working on it.