Birthday's, Bridal Showers, 7 years, is just a little bit of what's been going on!

Well its been over a month and it's been so busy lately that I have failed to update. I seem to have gotten in this habit of making catchup post that end up really long... maybe one day I will slow down and update more often!

Over the past month, we had Mother's Day, I turned 31, I helped give a bridal shower to my Sister-n-law, celebrated our 7th Anniversary, helped give my sister a surprise 30th birthday party, ended my first Awana year as the Cubbie Director, and Spent a week at the beach! Wow, that was a really long sentence!

The month of May always seems so busy to me since my sister and I both have May birthdays, John and I got married in May and there is always Mother's Day. This year for my birthday, my mom took me out to lunch at Crescent City and it was really yummy! She also gave me this really awesome purse she got me while they were in Italy. John and Mallory got me some sweet cards, a new camera, a gown, a new hose for the garden, and several other things! All in all it was a great birthday!

Mother's Day came next I think and we decided to have the family over to our house Sunday night for dinner. My Dad cooked Salmon and we also had baked potatoes.  The kids played in the kiddy pool my mom bought and we enjoyed a fun time together. My grandparents, my parents, and my sister's family all came. I also made my first Key Lime pie! It turned out really yummy!

Next up was a surprise party for my wonderful sister Katy! She turned the big 30 this year and her husband Craig wanted to give her a surprise party. Since I figured it would have been really expensive to rent a restaurant, we offered our house and told him we could grill hamburgers. Somehow we managed to keep it a surprise from her and she was totally surprised! My friend Carmen made her a really cute cake for me that was choclate, which is my sister's favorite!
The week of this party, my sister calls me and asks me if I can come down Thursday and keep her kids so she can work. Normally, she has a babysitter whose house they go to, or my mom would keep them, but both of them were out of town, so I was next in line! Now, I will tell you this really stressed me out thinking about all I had left to do in order to get this house ready for her partys . I mean at this point I had not even bought food, or her gift yet! However, I couldn't tell my sister no! So, Thursday morning Mallory and I loaded up the car and headed 1 hour south to Lucedale, Ms for a fun day with Ethan and Caroline! I will tell you I had lots of fun with all three of our kiddos, but was not prepared for how chaotic and crazy tired I would be at the end of the day! At one point I was so proud that I had all three of them taking naps at the same time for 30 minutes! At this point I propped my feet up on the couch and didnt' move! Just to give you the ages: Mallory and Ethan are both 2 and 1/2 and are 10 weeks apart, so they are almost like having twins! Caroline was 9 months old at this point, so that puts her about 22 months apart from Ethan. My sister suggested I let them go swimming in the kiddy pool in the afternoon, so I took her advice and after it taking me 25 minutes to get Ethan and Mallory ready with sun screen and all, we headed outside to the pool. Not to my surprise, Ethan just runs and lunges in, however Mallory saw all the grass and pine straw in the pool and didn't even want to get in! Lets just say after finally coaching her in the pool we were not out there 15 minutes and she was ready to go back inside! Thankfully, Caroline was content this whole time sitting in the stroller chewing on her toys! Sadly I spent more time getting them ready than we were even outside in the pool! HA! Oh well, Ethan had a blast anyway!I definitely earned a new respect for parents with twins and kids that are really close together!

Our first swim of the year at Grandmothers! She was a little nervous!

Ethan trying to pull her in the pool!

Surprise!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 Up next in the month of May, was Awana awards night. I said a few words and then gave out a few awards I came up with, and had the kids come up to recite their awana Bible verse , sing our song, and do our cheer for their parents! They kids did a great job and were so cute! This was my first year to teach Awana and our first year to have Awana at our church Hardy Street Baptist. I started out with around 5 kids and ended up with around 8 to 9. It was so much fun and I learned so much! Each one of those Cubbies made a huge impact in my life! It was such a joy to hear each one of them recite scripture and watch them blossom through out our year! I tried to add some fun each week with crafts, bible stories, cheers and a cubby song I made up! My wonderful husband also helped me do a cubbie puppet skit each week for the kids. It was so much fun and I am going to miss the kids that are going to move up to sparks next year! I thank God for giving me the wonderful opportunity to impact these little kids lives each Wednesday night. Truthfully, they impacted my life even more!

Also, this month I helped give my sister-n-law, Krista, a bridal shower in Cordova, Al where John's family lives. It was so much fun to decorate for. We had a really good turnout, but there was just way to much food left over! Krista got some really nice gifts and I am looking forward to the wedding coming up on June 30th! I will try to post some pictures of the shower. It was great to see all of John's family again and they enjoyed seeing Mallory more than anyone else!

Lastly, we headed for the beach! However, since this post is already really long, I am going to save that trip for another post! So you will just have to wait and see!

Anyway, this is a recap of our busy family and what's been going on! Ready for it to slow down a little bit! Enjoy the pictures! Oh and I forgot to even mention, somehow in the middle of all of this we found time to plant a small garden! I am loving watching it grow and was have already gotten a few squash so far!