We Love Babies

Paisley is completely infatuated with babies and who can blame her.  We got lots of baby time in this past week with the arrival of Krista's daughter, Maggie.

We also got to see baby Axel.  Paisley calls him "Axel Man" since Papa calls him Ax Man.  Pais will see a baby in the grocery store, on tv, on Facebook, or anywhere really, and will start yelling that it is Axel.

Fun Day

Fun Day is Riley County's version of a field day.  Ollie's first field day was full of fun and smiles!

Grandma, Grandpa, Grammy, and Paisley (in the background) were able to come watch Ollie.

Ollie got to eat school lunch on his birthday and for fun day today.  Definitely the highlight of his day.

Mother's Day

Motherhood is messy.

And challenging.

And chaotic.

And sleepless.

And still unbelievably beautiful.

My sister and I have a wonderful example of how to be a great mom.

My crew.

Zoo Field Trip

Oliver enjoyed a trip to Sunset Zoo with his preschool class at the beginning of May.

We had a bit of rain for about 30 minutes, but the rest of the day was great!

All the preschool students decorated brown paper bags and the zoo staff filled them with treats for the chimps.  They released the chimps to the outdoor area and it was like an Easter egg hunt as they all ran to collect bags.  Ollie was beyond tired at this point and cranky that he couldn't find the chimp that got his bag.

Girls Weekend

Riley and Ollie went to a swap meet so Paisley and I had a girls weekend with Kerby.  As always, we did lots of shopping and ate Mexican food.

Paisley is always down for Mexican food.

She, however, could not hang with us and our shopping game.

Signs

The Tuesday following Easter was my first day back to work since the miscarriage.  We had a four-day weekend, which was really nice timing.  

I was leading my class to lunch as I do every day and there was a broken robin egg all over the sidewalk.  It must have fallen from a nest in the above branches.  A child near the front of the line commented, "Ohhh, that poor little baby bird didn't even get a chance to live."

The comment hit me hard and I choked back the tears.

In my past 5 years of teaching at this building, I've never seen any broken eggs on the sidewalk.  A few days later, a second broken egg appeared.

This time, rather than sadness, I felt peace.  

God was giving me a sign.

He is in control and I'm going to have trust in Him.

Family Fun Day

With everything that has happened in the last couple weeks, I've been a pretty absent mommy.  With school being out on Monday, I decided to take the kids to Manhattan to do something fun as a way to make it up to them.

I'm kind of a 'go big or go home' kind of person so I went big and did everything we possibly had time for in one day.

Growing up my family had "Wellman Family Fun Days" where we would go and do things together as a family.  This was sort of my version of that, only poor Riley was at work and missed out.

We began first thing in the morning at Manhattan's City Park.

We then ventured to the library for story time.  I'd love to take them to this more often, but they are always in the morning during the work week.

Next up was Sunset Zoo!  I'm planning a preschool field trip here soon, so I kinda wanted to scope things out since we haven't been since last year.

 McAlister's is always at the top of Ollie's list so that was where we had lunch.

I think that Ollie likes McAlister's so much because it shares a parking lot with Orange Leaf.

Widgets!

My van had a couple recalls so we dropped it off and walked over to Widgets.  Unfortunately, it took much longer than they told us, so we left Widgets only to sit and wait for our vehicle to be finished.