The Zorio Family: May 2015

May! What a fun month!

Dawson's Kindergarten Readiness had their BIG end of year program! It was the Teddy Bear Picnic. All the kids had made these giant bears to decorate the pavillion. This is Dawson's.

Lots of cute Teddy Bear Picnic Decorations.

The kids wore bear ears and sang A LOT of adorable bear songs.

They even played kazoos! So cute!

After the program was over everyone had a "Teddy Bear Picnic" in the pavilion.

This was an adorable program, and I was so proud of Dawson for remembering the words and dance moves to SO many songs. (I unfortunately had had the stomach bug the entire night and morning before this performance which was outside in the heat, so I felt horrible that I was less than a fun Mommy at this event. BUT Dawson was so sweet and understanding and it really made my day to watch him and his sweet little friends perform.)

We've spent a lot of time outside this month!

Dawson has enjoyed some new apps on the iPad.

At the very beginning of May we had a couple cool days. I had filled this bucket up with water to take water to something in the yard. I turn around, and Carter is IN the bucket!! (he had obviously just finished a red Popsicle!) The water was cold and the air wasn't hot yet either! Silly boy!

We went to the zoo with Alana and Colt at the beginning of May. Fun morning. We spent forever at the sand, and the boys loved it! Nora Kate isn't pictured in any of the sand pictures because she doesn't like walking on uneven ground like sand and she also says, "ewww!" the whole entire time. She doesn't like how it sticks to her.

Red pandas Carter, Colt, Dawson.

We took some time to play in the Wee Play area and Carter had fun holding up the x-rays of different animals' bones.

(Side note, look at those leg muscles?!)

Petting a skink

More outside play time

Carter grabbed Nora Kate's hat and put it on his head.

She thought this was SO funny!

We attended Nora Kate's little friend, Jackson's 2nd birthday party! Here she is having a serious conversation with Jackson about how he has a COW in a TREE! Look at her point! haha!

Jackson's grandparents have an awesome farm with cows, chickens, tractors, etc. All three of my kids were in heaven! Nora Kate was determined to catch the chickens. (If you zoom in look at this chicken's leg...it was moving fast to try to escape NK!)

May meant lots and lots and lots of baseball for us! For the first part of May we were still having practices on Thursdays and games on Saturdays, but then we got to some weeks where we had a game Saturday AND Monday! Good thing Dawson LOVED playing! Many of the Saturday games were REALLY hot! This was probably the hottest game. Grandad had this stay cool towel-thing. We kept it in the cooler and when Dawson was in the dugout he would put it on to cool off! He was such a champ though he didn't complain about the heat!

Every kid loves to play in the sprinklers right?!

Mother's Day Matching

We didn't get any great Mother's Day pictures which was my fault-I should have known better than to wait until after church to take pictures! Dawson had already removed his coat and both boys had already taken off their ties...on our 4 minute drive home from church...also, I'm pretty sure they were barefoot!

But, what really matters is that I have these three precious blessings to make me able to celebrate Mother's Day, and I wouldn't have it any other way!

Driving the ride ons at Lolly and Pop's house while celebrating Mother's Day.

My parents have my first tricycle...so I had to stick NK on it for a quick pic!

It's not a trip to visit Pop without a John Deere ride.

The day I was getting over the stomach flu we were supposed to go strawberry picking with Cassie and Campbell, and we obviously had to cancel. We rescheduled for the next week and it was SOOOOO hot! We got some delicious berries though, and we got to see sweet friends so it was a win-win. Look at those pink cheeks on Nora Kate and Campbell. Carter doesn't get as pink when he gets hot, but trust me he was HOT! This was our second time picking berries in May, but the pictures from the first time somehow got out of order and bumped to the bottom of this post!

Dawson wanted to take CUPCAKES AND COOKIES to his class to celebrate his birthday. So we baked cupcakes and then made a painter's palette out of a cookie to top the cupcake with! He was thrilled!

Dawson headed to school to celebrate his birthday!

You're six?!

On the day he celebrated his birthday at school, I went to eat lunch with Dawson and deliver his cookie/cupcakes!

Candid pictures of the kids are my favorite!

Makes me so happy!

Dawson's readiness class had yet another field trip in May. This time to the Greenbelt Park by the Courthouse for a boatfloat! I had mentioned to Dawson how when I used to have field trips we had to have brown paper bags and write our names on them. He really wanted to do this!

Dawson built this boat at school to float!

There it goes!!

Watching it go under the bridge!

Picnic with this cool kid on the field trip!

Dawson's BIG birthday gift from us was this basketball goal. On the morning of his birthday he got up and got dressed ran out to see it! He was SO excited!

Birthday breakfast

On Dawson's actual birthday he said he wanted Carson to come to our house and stay the WHOLE day! Luckily this was okay with Carson's Mom, and these two sweet boys had SO MUCH FUN!!! They were so good and just played and entertained themselves. Nana delivered this GIANT cookie cake so they were excited!

We had some pool time!

Some stomp rocket time

And I felt like I got a glimpse into our future watching these two boys shoot hoops together like BIG kids!

Picnic outside!

And then while Carter and Nora Kate were napping they made lots of cool things with Legos.

Then they helped make cupcakes to celebrate Dawson's birthday with their baseball team that evening!

We took Dawson out to Mr. Gatti's for dinner on his birthday! He loves that place!

Then baseball practice! I love how Nora Kate would stand up front while Coach John and Coach Casey would talk to the team!

Then the whole team sang to Dawson and we enjoyed the cupcakes!

Nana and Grandad gave Dawson this cool post office for his birthday! He was so excited!

This month we went to mine and John's high school, Maryville Christian, to say farewell to the administrator who was there when we graduated. He is moving back to Texas. The newspaper was there, and a Carter and I ended up having our picture in the paper!

more baseball!

These two are such champs in the dugout

There were numerous time I had to be dugout coach, and they did great! I'm pretty sure Nora Kate was "mark mark"-ing on the batting line up here!

We celebrated Mom's birthday this month! The boys wanted to add lots of sprinkles after we made the cake!

Happy birthday, Lolly!

Finally it was time for Dawson's last week of school! It seemed like this day could not come fast enough for me! At the same time, he will never be in preschool again so it was a sad ending to this chapter.

Last year at the end of the school year he said he was sad to leave his class, this year all he talked about was being happy for summer! I think he gets it a lot more now too. AND I think it helps that he is so excited to go to kindergarten! So here are his LAST day of school pictures!