Ethan had a terribly sad day at school today. He was supposed to have his second field trip of the year today. They were scheduled to go to the recycling center and a butterfly garden. He was thrilled to get to ride a school bus for the second time in his life. Unfortunately, because of the wildfires his field trip got cancelled. It has been very smoky so all outdoor activities have been cancelled at school for the last couple days. I saw him on his walk to art today. He had a brave face on but when he ran across the field to tell me that it had been cancelled he started tearing up instantly. He buried his face for a second and then said, "I've go to go, if I tell you about it I'm going to cry!" Poor guy! Well tonight was Night of the Arts so he was happy to have that to look forward to. I also promised him that he could get McDonald's to make up for missing the trip. We RARELY let them get fast food so it was a pretty big treat for them.

This is the art work that Ethan selected to show tonight.
Here the boys are in front of Ethan's art work.
His class' science fair project was on display in the media center. Ethan is in the picture behind the gigantic Kix box!
This is his writing that was on display. He had a questionnaire to fill out about his mom for homework a couple nights ago and that is what they put up. I think they wrote the poem today or yesterday in class. You can't see it, but I have a nice dog and like to ride my bike.
Here Noah is enjoying the fabulous 4th grade musical performance. They were totally awesome. Our music and art teachers rock!

Today is Miss Sophia's 3rd birthday! The name Sophia is of Greek origin and means wisdom. Well, Sophia was born with what could be described as a Greek head of hair, but that is the closest she will ever come to being described as Greek. Now, Sophia does hold all the wisdom of a three year old! She is very stubborn, has extremely selective hearing, and does not take criticism or discipline well. On the other hand, she is very cuddly and sweet. She absolutely loves to help me in the kitchen and knows that I will cave to her every want. (This is probably why she is so cuddly with me!) Also, she has to work hard to do just about anything being the youngest of three and often the youngest of six! The older kids always make her be the baby, dog, or cat when they play! She is also the only true Floridian of the bunch. I'm not sure what that will mean, but I guess time will tell. Needless to say, we all love Sophia! Happy Birthday Sophia!!! Enjoy that big girl car seat!!!!

Ethan has brought home various art projects that he has made at school this year. He has an AMAZING art teacher and brings home some impressive stuff. He asked to hang them in his room and here they are...
These are his Van Gogh inspired pieces...


Here is the portrait that he made of Chris and me. (He said he gave Chris some hair to be nice!)Will asked that I also display one of his pieces on the blog.
He chose one piece to display at Night of the Arts this week at school. I can't wait to see it!

Um, in case you were wondering...
(Alex and Nat Wolff rule!)

The boys have finally thrown themselves into bed! They are all completely exhausted! We started celebrating Cinco de Mayo on Friday night with a trip to Tijuana Flats. Noah begged to go and somehow we allowed ourselves to be pressured by a 5 year old! Last night we continued the festivities when Aaron, Colleen, and Kyle (he's 5) came over to help us celebrate. The kids had tacos and then swam for a bit. After dinner the boys introduced Kyle to The Naked Brothers Band. The adults ate enchiladas. Aaron brought over some sort of margarita beer. Since I don't drink beer I was able to avoid trying it! I stuck to the wine. Today we were supposed to go to Universal with Aaron, Colleen, and Kyle but they called for storms in the afternoon today. After the gardens, we jumped in the pool to cool off. We played a few rounds of Marco Polo before the thunder started. After dinner we rode our bikes to the park to toss around the boomerang. Of course we all got soaked! I am certain this coming week will fly by. Ethan has two field trips and Night of the Arts at school. Off to watch the finale of Amazing Race!

Today we went to Sugar Mill Botanical Gardens. We are supposed to have some crazy weather this afternoon so we decided to get out of the house while we could. The boys had a great time. I found tons of plants that I liked. Of course, most are not labeled so I have no idea what they were! The boys had little interest in the plants, but they greatly enjoyed roaming around the gardens looking for dinosaurs!

They had a lengthy discussion about what was coming out of the fountain and decided that it must be pee!

If you look closely behind the boys, you will see yet another dinosaur. It was a giant ground sloth.

Part of the sugar mill ruins.

Noah wanted to take Pop-Pop Wayne on a tour of his garden! He is going to flip out when he gets to work in Pop-Pop's big garden for two weeks this summer! Here he is in his herb garden. He has two kinds of basil, two kinds of mint, rosemary, oregano, lavender, and cilantro.
Here he is in his vegetable garden. He has jalapeno peppers, red peppers, green peppers, lima beans, and plum tomatoes!
This is lizard catching central. The lizards love climbing on the pool screen and baking on the hot rocks.
This is actually the entrance to his garden. This is where we begin our daily tour to check on everything.

This is really the Hanzie clean-up area.
Here he is checking on his lantana. He likes all the colors in each cluster.
Well, that ends the tour. He is very excited to get some vegetables. Hopefully growing them will encourage him to eat them. He currently is only a fan of corn and broccoli!

If you look closely at our May calendar, you will see that summer break starts in just three weeks! We are getting very excited. This month will be a very busy one! Ethan has two field trips, Night of the Arts, an awards program, field day, etc. Will and Noah have graduation on the 17th! And of course there is Miss Sophia's big birthday bash! In addition, I will surely not let anyone forget about Mother's Day. It is hard to believe that the school year is wrapping up. This also leads to some decisions. I am having a hard time deciding what to do with Will and Noah next year. Will and Noah, along with Chris, really want to keep them in the same class. I am between and have a big pros and cons list for each! Ugh... Mrs. Walton, Ethan's wonderful teacher from kindergarten, also is for keeping them together- in her room of course! Their strengths are in completely different areas and I have a small fear of them beginning to feel frustration when they see the other succeed quickly at a specific task. They have been together in their years at preschool and this has never happened, but there is always the possibility. I have told them that they may be separated, and this of course has led to a high level of anxiety for them. Neither one of them wants to be in a different room. I am hoping that in the end I will suddenly feel really comfortable with choosing. Right now I am so torn!

Happy May Day!!! I told the boys yesterday that tomorrow would be May Day and that they needed to give a girl a flower. They all casually slipped out back this afternoon. When they came in they all were carrying various flowers from the backyard! Too sweet! Here is my beautiful bouquet...
Tonight Will and Noah have kindergarten orientation. I can't believe they are that old! On May 17th at 6:00 pm, they will be preschool graduates!

The wonders of gardening! Yesterday Noah came outside with me to pick some mint for the iced tea. We got some peppermint and some apple mint. Noah asked if he could try it. After washing the mint, I tore a leaf in half and told him to let it sit on his tongue so he could taste it. He tasted it and thought it was good. He spit out the leaf and as he was walking to the trash can to throw it out, he said, "So, when do the mints pop out?" I was confused at first and then I realized that he thought some Lifesaver mints were going to pop out from the leaves!!!

Today was Aly-Cat's birthday party. (Aly-Cat is in the pink.) She had a unicorn party. The boys had a good time playing on the playground and drinking orange and lemon-lime soda. They are always excited to get soda since we never give it to them at home. Although, in reality, only Will likes soda. Noah gets excited by the idea of reaching into a cooler to get one, but once he has it he barely drinks any of it!
As his goody prize, Noah chose this water squirter wand. Of course this meant that we had to immediately jump in the pool after the party! I actually got in myself since it was 90 degrees. I tried to convince Will to get in. I kept telling him that it was really warm. He put his toe in and said, "I think I need it to be 100 degrees!" He finally got in after 45 minutes. It was a bit chilly getting out since the air temperature was actually cooler than the pool. (The picture is of Noah. I just noticed that he looks a bit like Will in this picture.)
Chris took Ethan to his end-of-the-year Boy Scout picnic while we were at Aly-Cat's party. He had a great time and got his Wolf neckerchief. He was really excited. The boys crashed tonight. They woke up both Saturday and Sunday at 6:20. I have no idea why. Paige spent the night last night so I think they woke up early to play with her because they were excited that she was here in the morning. That still leaves no explanation for Saturday morning. I know they were excited for the carnival, but 6:20 in the morning!!! Only four more weeks until summer break. I'll have to train them to sleep in again! We got to be pros last summer!

Here is Melissa's sick idea to make Hanzie a "cowboy dog!" Hanzie wasn't nearly as amused as she was.

Today was the Spring Carnival at school. Ethan chose not to do any of the activities and work the games with me the entire time. Will and Noah had initially made that same choice, but then Chris talked them into doing some stuff. Will and Noah had a great time doing a zillion activities, but I must say, Ethan thoroughly enjoyed working the games. Our first station was Plinko. Here Will tries it out!
Noah showing his first few coins! He had even more fun exchanging all the coins for prizes!
Ethan, the happy worker!
Will taking a turn at the ring toss. This was our second work station.

Ethan taking a try between costumers.
Ms. Fernandez painted a pretty sweet snake on Ethan's face!

This week seems to be flying by! Monday after school we headed straight to the beach. Chris was home and the weather was too perfect to pass up. The boys weren't very interested in the water, but they did play in the sand for 90 minutes without a single argument! Chris and I got to relax for once. Chris played Frisbee towards the end. After the beach they HAD to jump right in the pool. I'm not sure how they supported this claim, but they assured us that it was a necessity. They swam while I cooked dinner in peace!

Here is Noah throwing all 36 pounds of himself into the pool.
I think Ethan must have been trying to leap to the other side of the pool! Will isn't pictured because he never left the spa.
After school on Tuesday, the boys along with Emma, Paige, Sophia, and Emily played Naked Brothers Band. They set up a mock stage in Will and Noah's room and took turns playing the various instruments and singing in the microphone. Of course I got a good laugh out of the whole thing! Ethan had his last Boy Scouts meeting of the school year later that night. I guess they picked up trash for community service/Earth Day. Noah decided to skip Boy Scouts and came grocery shopping with me. He wasn't too sad that he missed it when he found out about their task. He, unlike Malcolm, is completely repulsed by trash. Today after school the girls came over to swim for a bit. After dinner we did yard work. The boys are all exhausted and ready for bed. It will be bedtime in just 15 minutes!

Today we spent the morning and early afternoon at Universal. We left at 8:00 and were home by 2:3o, so it was like a typical school day. Most of you know that I hate leaving Hanzie even for an hour on the weekends! He suffers from the typical Weimaraner separation anxiety. Well, tonight when we were putting the boys to bed they were all missing pillows. It looked like a pillow robber had entered our house. I went on a search and surrounding Hanzie's bed in the toy room was one pillow from each of the boys' beds. I guess he was feeling lonely and needed a little something from each of them!

Tonight we went to the Eagney's for dinner. When we got home the boys came into the house and said, "Hey, that wasn't there when we left!" Chris and I went to check out what they were talking about and this is what we found...
Hanzie had decided to treat himself to some of Noah's pinata loot that he had gotten at the party today. He seems to have very carefully removed the wrapper from the Tootsie Roll and lollipop. I mean, yuck, who likes Tootsie Rolls or Tootsie Pops???

Today Will and Noah went to Katelyn and Julia's birthday party. They are twin girls in their class. They had a blast and the park it was at was absolutely beautiful. There were manatees, dolphins, and pelicans playing in the river. A dolphin jumped and did a flip right in front of us! We were in nature's splash zone and actually got splashed. The dolphin was only 10 feet from us, at most!
Julia on the left and Katelyn on the right opening presents.
Will had said that he absolutely would NOT eat another princess cake! Well, he decided that it was okay to eat one since they were princess cupcakes and not a cake!
I promise, we did not molest any of the manatees while watching them!
After the party we went across the street to the beach. I tried to convince Will and Noah to take a walk with me, but they didn't want anything to do with that idea. They told me there was no way they were going on the beach because a) they did not have swimsuits on and b) they had no sand toys with them! There were GIGANTIC waves and tons of surfers out. They said they would go back this afternoon with Chris to surf! Since a surfer was bit by a shark in that same area yesterday, I don't foresee that happening today!

Time forThe Naked Brothers Band! The girls are over for a bit. After a short coloring project, they all begged to watch their favorite show. We found one "on demand" that they hadn't seen. They are all very excited!

We have made it through 3/5 of the week! This week has actually been quite nice. The weather has been comfortable and the boys have been in good spirits. Yesterday while Chris and Ethan were at Boy Scouts, I took Will and Noah for a bike ride to Melissa's to try out her new basketball hoop. There are a couple reasons why I don't like to ride with the boys without Chris. The first being that outside of our immediate subdivision there are no sidewalks and narrow streets. I spend the entire time in a panic that someone is going to get squashed by a car. Clearly that didn't happen yesterday. The second reason is that I feel overwhelming guilt for leaving Hanzie alone while we are out enjoying the fresh air! Will and Noah did very well and carefully listened to my zillion calls to stay to the side of the road and we made it home safe and sound. Today I came home from school with a massive headache that I had the entire day. The boys asked to get in the pool. I was pleased with that suggestion. Swimming is one of the few activities they can do without constant disputes. I warned them that the pool was only 80, but they still wanted to get in. Ethan and Will swam for an hour while Noah stood on the side shooting them with a water gun. Noah begged and begged to turn on the spa. Chris loves some spa time so I told him that he had to wait until tonight. So, after a bike ride to the park to throw around the boomerang, they are in the spa. You would think that I would be out there relaxing since I am finally recovering from my headache. Sadly, actually going through the trouble of putting on a swimsuit, drying off, etc sounds like a bit much for me. Not to mention, Noah pointed out that we have the biggest mountain of laundry that he has ever seen in his life. And let me tell you, the child has seen some rather large piles in the past! So, I have busied myself with that task!
Enjoying some spa time!

Like the rest of the east coast, we had some wild weather this weekend. Saturday it was 87 degrees, sunny, and breezy. We spent the entire afternoon out in the 89 degree pool! I even got in this time. It was so nice Saturday night that we decided to play Rumikub out on the pool deck with Mike and Melissa. Of course, no sooner than we had all the chips set up it started to pour! We toughed it out and played in the rain under the lanai. Sunday it stormed the entire morning. After the storms passed the sun came out and it got very windy. It actually was a very comfortable, although windy, afternoon. This morning when we got in the van to go to school it was only 47 degrees! That is unheard of this time of year. So, today we spent a good part of the day shivering. It was 71 when we got home from school and the kids went straight out back to catch lizards. They caught a few. I only let them cage them for a few minutes before I demand their release. I'd prefer that they didn't catch them at all (unless it is a catch and release rescue from inside the pool screen), but there is something about little boys and catching lizards. Noah got a bug habitat in his Easter basket so they have been catching lizards to enjoy the lovely, plastic rock terrain. It also makes the loudest bug sounds imaginable. Hopefully lizards are hard of hearing!

Oh, and Noah has convinced all the girls at school to call him Alex. They are already quite popular with the girls, and today the girls shouted, "Alex, Alex, Alex, Alex!" on our entire walk from the playground to the car.