Usually the month of May is crazy busy with recitals, end of year performances and open houses, big tests and projects for the kids at school, all balanced out with the crazy strong temptation to just play outside all day long because the weather is perfect and the days are getting longer. May 2021? Mostly just the playing outside part happened. Homeschool for the win again.
While our family was cleaning the garage, our new family friends the Turri's passed our house on the trail carrying an inflatable raft. They were headed down to the pond on the way to marshland. We've lived here seven years and have never seen anyone get in the pond. People fish from the shore, but it just feels like trespassing to get on the water. However, there are zero "no trespassing" signs, and the Turri's gave us the courage to live a dream. The kids threw on their swimsuits, grabbed a kayak, and headed down to the water. They had a ball for a couple of hours, no police were called, and it may very well happen again this summer.
Brady and Carson love playing games, jumping on the tramp, and fishing in the creek on the trail, and are awesome about including everyone in their adventures.
We made it out to Brentwood for cherry picking again this year. What a delicious new tradition!
The Croce 4th graders traditionally take a massive field trip up to Sacramento to study California history. When Hazel went, they left at, like, 6:30 in the morning, and came home after dark, riding a bus. I felt bad for Jack to miss that experience, so my dear friend April Wilmoth and I recreated the trip for Jack and Jonah and the rest of our crew. We spent the day at Sutter's Fort State Historic Park, the California State Railroad Museum, and walking along the shops at the Old Sacramento Waterfront.
I was spoiled nicely on Mother's Day, complete with a lasagna dinner and a rotating massage crew. The kids serenaded me before church with the songs they traditionally would have sung with the primary kids during Sacrament Meeting, and everyone wrote me sweet notes. I am so utterly thankful for the privilege of being a mom.
Gemma's activity days group took a scooter ride on the trail with my house as home base. It was a hot day! Luckily, they had popsicles at the end.
We've been having a blast at our weekly park day. Everyone had so much fun at Knotts park (aka Squeaky Bridge park) that we opted to go two weeks in a row. One of my kids' favorite features there was Snail City. They pulled nearly a hundred of those slimy buggers out of the bushes and sorted and corralled them all afternoon long.
We went camping with our friends the Doctors and the Turri's. I got talked into it because the kids were sooooo excited and because there would be a lake for us to kayak on, which was tempting. But man, there's a big part of me that really wishes we had just come up for the day and then headed home. There's so much work before and after camping. We're probably not doing things right. I am usually super chill and calm, but I had to fight off a panic attack to get to "sleep" at night, and then fought off my exhaustion and wasn't feeling social at all the next day.
Anyway, the kids had an awesome time. I'm not sure about Todd. Gemma glued herself to the Turri's dog Oakley and was just in heaven. But me? If I'm going to go to all the work of camping, there had better be pine trees where I'm going.
Loving the mountains so much, and hating camping so much at the same time, pushed Todd and me to take seriously our dream of buying a cabin up in Bear Valley. We found one we loved, drove up mid-week, leaving Hazel to babysit the entire day (she and the other kids did awesome!), and put in an aggressive offer. We were devastated when it wasn't accepted. We hope something else that fits our criteria comes up for sale, but it's a small community, so that may not happen this year.
Todd was called into the high council and wanted his dad to ordain him to the office of high priest. Larry and Ellen came out for the weekend and brought Luna with them, which was a big hit! She's four now and super cute. We took them all cherry picking, Ellen treated me and my girls to manicures, and Ellen also brought New Zealand mud masks for us to try (Jack looooooved it).
Luna had "ride an elevator" on her California bucket list, so we rode the elevator at the downtown parking garage multiple times. The kids all jumped and giggled and ran, and it was the funniest thing to see how excited Luna was.
We took the crew to Holdener Park to feed the goats and check on the llamas.
It was a short and sweet visit. Now best of luck to Todd as he tries to rebalance his life so he has time for this more demanding calling. I'm excited that he's been assigned to work with our Spanish-speaking branch. I think he'll get a lot of joy out of the work he puts into it and the people he'll be able to interact with.
We've got fox kits on the trail near our house right now. We've been lucky enough to see them out playing at dawn and at dusk, and we often hear their momma at night and look out the window to see her in the culdesac. I love the open space around us. It's one of the best parts of living in Livermore.
Hazel had a violin recital. I didn't take any pictures, which is a shame, because her teacher encouraged them to dress up, and Hazel studied a YouTube tutorial learning how to style her hair like Lindsay Stirling in her music video of the song she played. It was cute!
Hazel has started babysitting. It's been a weekly daytime gig, which is a perfect first job.
The library is now open without appointments, so we can head over anytime. It's a relief to have parts of our life heading back to normal. We still have to get our temperature taken and take a squirt of hand sanitizer under the beady watch of the librarian door guard, but that's a small price to pay for a large load of books.
