the three amigos.

These three cousins are T-R-O-U-B-L-E!  These pictures were taken in mid May when Teenie and the boys came down for her good friend Heidi's wedding.  On their way in to town, we had them stop by our house for dinner.  Mom was still teaching piano, and you can imagine how crazy it is when these birds come to town, so we thought we'd kill time eating at our house before they headed to Oma and Opa's.

Look at how filthy they can get in a matter of an hour or two!

 Inevitably, they just start stripping down, little by little, until...

 they end up in the tub!

They are like wild animals sometimes, and they always keep us on our toes.  But we adore them!  How could we not?

mother's day 2013.

For Mother's Day this year, we made the rounds like usual and had a fabulous and surprisingly relaxing day!  We started off at Jeff and Janet's for brunch.  We had a little bit of time before brunch so we enjoyed the patio and the gorgeous weather.  Here's the proof!

 I love Clara's smile in the next two pics with Daddy.  So calculated...funny!

 A Mom's Day kiss from my girl!

 What can we say?  She loves bubbles!

 Clara shared some loves with Grandma!

 And as always had fun being silly with Pop!

 Here's Clara that morning in front of my our clematis!  You should see it now!

 Later that day, we headed over to my parents' house for dinner.  I enjoyed a Mother's Day G and T with lime!

 And Emily brought this lovely cake to celebrate our Mom!  It was stunning!

 Here's my pretty Mom showing off the baked goods (to clarify...not baked by any of us!).

 Right?

I've been meaning to blog for quite some time!  The end of school is always crazy!  But tonight, my Mom reminded me that it had been almost a month between blog posts, and I knew it was time to update.  When I jumped on the computer, I realized the next set of photos to blog about were our Mother's Day photos.  And the timing was just right...we lost Janet's mom GG (short for Great Grandma) yesterday evening.  I'm so glad Clara got to know her!  She'll be missed!

white water rafting.

Kurtis and I rarely leave Clara with anyone when we're not working.  We figure that we miss seeing her for 40 hours a week, so our evenings and weekends are pretty precious.  But we got an offer we couldn't refuse!  My good friend Lee, who is finishing up her exchange teaching year (she's from Scotland) invited us to raft the main Payette with her.  We knew it would be cold, but we had wetsuits to wear, and we had a fabulous time!

Thank you Lee for the invitation!  It was such a fun day!

another recital.

Clara had another practice recital at a nursing home.  This time, they dressed in their outfits for the song, "It's a Small World".  She is a little Dutch girl, and couldn't be cuter!

 She's always checking that she's standing on her spot!  There are stickers for the girls to stand on so they stay spread out!

 She's got one signature move...here it is...

 and here it is again!  She forgets to watch her teacher, and just does this a lot of the time.  Oh well!

She was pretty happy at this recital!  This is surprising, considering just a day and a half later, we were battling the pukes, fever, congestion, and headaches!  I just hope we didn't pass our germs along to the residents!  I promise, the dance posts are almost over!