Good Riddance 2011/2012!

Aw, May - the only month to rival December in sheer exhaustion.  Here are some high lights to the ending month of the worst school year in Smith Family History.

Sweet Miranda turns 9.  How lucky we are to have this loving, funny and  perpetually smiling girl in our family.  Her friend party was wild, fun and so loud that the boys couldn't take it and left for Taco Cabana.  Nice support boys. :)  We do love all of these cute girls though.  If only they came with a volume button!

Miranda has always wanted to go to Lin's Chinese buffet so we grabbed Sydney and Aunt Emily and made an evening of it.  We all ate way to much, but boy was it fun.

The annual piano recital was a resounding success.  The kids did great although Aaron was really mad that I didn't telll him the recital was that day and he didn't have time to put the final touches on his piece.  He still did pretty darn well, though!  I'll post videos when I have time to wait for the extremely time consuming video upload. 

Bethany has officially been promoted to sixth grade as of yesterday.  She thought it was very embarrasing that I made her take a picture with her teacher - but whatever.  The girl in the middle is one of Bethy's best friends, Taryn.  They were cute as buttons.

 Here she is with her graduation certificate.  Look out Desert Ridge.  Here she comes!

And here is Bethany with her other best friend Alia and Alia's sister Ari.  Ari just graduated from La Cueva and is headed to BYU on scholarship this fall.  Go Ari!  What a great role model for these two cute girls.

And this is what Amber thinks about the month of May.  Amen sister! Now if we can just get through Chad's last final this morning and Aaron's 8th grade promotion tonight, we will be able to officially bid this horrible year adeu and never refer to it again except as a tragic cautionary tale of what can occur when your teenagers unofficially boycott homework for two entire semesters.

Silly Bears

So this is how the Bears pass the time during a rain delay  What a bunch of dorks! :) We couldn't even concentrate on the presentations last night at the awards banquet because we were too busy  watching. Finally Coach Pineda told us all to "Stop watching that damn video" and pay attention. Aw, good times!

Silver Blues

The Saturday afternoon before my sanity trip to Texas, the La Cueva Baseball Boosters threw a carnival to benefit the National Kidney Foundation.  We had a jump house, a snocone machine, a dunk tank - good times baby!  There are three kids on the team who are also pretty mean jazz musicians.  So, I enlisted them to provide entertainment for the affair.  They call themselves the Silver Blues and they are actually quite awesome.  If Chad would just get his crap together turning homework in-wise, he would be such an absolute beast.  Are you reading this, Honey?  They already got a gig at a graduation party and tons of compliments from parents and coaches alike.

 Justin, Joey & Chad kickin' it mad.

 It was kind of funny to watch the players clean up the field in the middle of a concert.

 Joey is the drummer.  He isn't even on the team, but he still came to support the cause.  You rock Joey!

Nick, Justin, Joey & Chad playing "Don't Stop Believin'".  It's hard to believe Nick, Justin & Chad have been playing in band and baseball together for five years.  And it's hard to believe how good they've gotten at both.  Aw!

Sanity Trip

Well, Mom finally snapped after a year of tremendous teen boy stress and decided to take a spur of the moment two day trip to Devil Town (i.e. Childress Texas) to spend some time with Aunt Jane and Cousin Sammy.

Look who we found on our way go walking in the goat graveyard.  That was one seriously big bull frog.  Bethany, of course, wanted to take him home.

Jane graciously offered to let us stay at her house even though we totally just showed up at her chapel during Sunday School unannounced, but the kids simply had to go swimming.  So here they are enjoying some "quality" cousin time at the Quality Inn. :)

Sam and the girls all played hookie Monday and spent the day at the Childress park eating Dairy Queen,  feeding ducks and rescuing turtles.

Jane and I just chilled out on the park benches until...

The kids discovered a turtle floundering in the water attached to a fishing line tangled in the reeds.  They quickly called for the moms and we worked for what seemed like ever trying to get him out of the lake.  I finally just walked into the muck and grabbed him out.  Ewww!  The poor thing had a fishing hook impaled in his cheeck and he was terrified.  We couldn't find anything to cut the fishing line with so I pulled the line out of the reeds (again after what seemed like ever) and tried to remove the hook.  After that didn't work, the kids were practically in tears.  So, we just loaded up the car and took the poor guy to the vet.  Luckily the veterenarian just took care of the problem lickety-split and sent us on our way without a bill.  Aww! Thanks, Dr. Awesome!  Of course Bethany wanted to take the turtle home, but we convinced her that he'd had enough trauma for the day and we returned him to his marshy home where hopefully he recovered uneventfully.

And then it was time for the grand finale of our trip  - Sam's baseball game!  This is his first season playing and we thought he was quite awesome.  We even saw him get a hit.  Go Sam!  I predict a fabulous career ahead for this great kid.  After the game, we loaded up and braved hailstones as big as golf balls, saw a tornado chaser truck off to the side of the road and killed five million moths on our windshield as we travelled home relaxed and ready to face the last month of the most horrible school year in the history of Smithkind.  Three more weeks people and I will never think of it again!  On the plus side, I did get an A+ in chemistry so it wasn't a horrible school year for everyone.  :)