A Table For {Seven}: Half Of May 2012

May was a crazy, crazy.... CRAZY month. I was telling Andy (as I re-read through my planner from this last year) how stressed I start to feel just from reading through all of the things we had to accomplish before we left Virginia. It was a busy month. But, it was wonderful too. We had a lot of good-bye's to say, and we had a lot of things to finish up before we left, including: Girl Scout's, piano lessons, field trips, school activities, soccer (which is another post), packing, and etc, etc.

Here are some pictures to document our busy-ness:

Laylah wanted me to chaperone her last field trip. It was fun to get to spend the day with her and her friends. We went to a local animal sanctuary, and it was a pretty boring field trip, but it was good to spend time with her one-on-one.

Here is a sampling of some of our goodbyes. I tried to take a lot of pictures of everyone with their friends. These next few are my kids with our neighbors next door and across the street. We became close with them and between the 6 of us (3 married couples) we had 10 kids (half of those are ours, haha). We miss our good neighbors and the fun barbeques, firework nights, family dinners, and relaxed nights talking while our kids ran around like crazies.

Jonah, Connor, Bear

Monrovia, Kaylynn, Laylah, Isabella, Daphne, Camilla

Jonah, Connor (from down the street), and Connor

Movie night with best friends

Jonah with his best friend Jason

Daphne and her best friend Grace

Laylah and her best friend Alex

Laylah with her other best friend Tessa

We got together with some of our good friends, The Archibald's and Cesar's, for a barbeque a couple weeks before we left. It was a great night with yummy food, good conversation, and wonderful friendships.

Bear and his best friend Collin

Laylah and Lorin

Ian and Daphne

Playing in the backyard

Jonah, Murphy (the Archibald's new puppy) and Collin

Christine, baby Devin, Kent (who was also our fabulous dentist!), Andy, baby Magnus, Jill, and Mike

The 3 ladies- I miss those 2 dearly!

These ladies are my wonderful ward friends. I miss them so much. We all got together for lunch a few days before we left. Nicole, Julie, Me, Danielle, Ira, Kristy, Marcia, and Jean.

Andy and Laylah went on a Daddy/Daughter date to Camp Pamunky with Laylah's Girl Scout troop. They had a blast fishing, canoeing, hiking, having lunch, doing archery, and other fun camp stuff.

Laylah and Grace

A few days before we moved, the kids' school had a "Muffins with Mom" day at school for Mother's Day. it was fun to have breakfast at school together

The line to get in was super long! And we were even early!

We finally made it, phew!

I gave all of my kids' teachers a gift before we moved. I miss their school so much. They all had such amazing, caring teachers. Anyway, I thought their gift turned out cute.

Two days before Andy left with the moving truck, it was Mother's Day. He made me this amazing breakfast in bed. It was wonderful. The rest of the day was crazy because we picked up the truck and had a ton of people from our ward come over and help us put all of our big stuff into the truck. It was a bit of a hectic day, and Andy felt bad that it wasn't the usual relaxing Mother's Day. But it was okay. His gift to me was the greatest. He took the two youngest boys with him when he left so I would only have to take the three older kids. After hearing about his journey to Utah (more on that later), it really was the best gift he could have given me. Thanks, Love!

Amongst all of the craziness of packing, moving and sickness (me, Daphne, and Bear picked up strep from somewhere, and I really thought I was going to die), Bear fell and hurt his foot. He wouldn't walk on it, so we took him in for an x-ray. Luckily, it was just a sprain. But, there's always gotta be one more thing, right? Stress to the max.

As a reward for selling Girl Scout Cookies, both Laylah and Daphne's troop went to Build-A-Bear and had $25 to put towards whatever they wanted. Laylah chose a horse, and Daphne got a dog. They both got a cute little outfit, and it was fun to be able to go with them.

Daphne's troop was going to go after our move date, so her troop leader gave us the money and Daphne went with Laylah's troop. Here they are registering and naming their new stuffed friends.

This is Laylah with her troop leader, Suzanne. She was fabulous, and we had such a great experience with Girl Scouts because of her.

The second grade did a school play called "Lemonade" and Jonah had a great time performing. It was really cute, and they sang and danced. I'm a typical mom and love watching my kids perform anything.

I did not get great pictures, but I got some good video, thankfully.

If you can't tell, he is right smack dab in the middle of this photo

This is Daphne's closing ceremony for Girl Scouts. She was pinned for her first year as a daisy, and they did some songs for us, and he troop leader gave an overview of the year. She also read a darling poem about little girls growing up that made me teary-eyed. That reminds me, I need to email her for a copy of that...

Daphne and her troop leader, Rissa. Rissa and I have several kids about the same age, and we became fast friends when we moved to VA. We miss her family dearly.