aMAYzing Randoms

. . . get it?  AMAYzing?  Pretty clever stuff, right?

Damn straight, it is.

Anyway, here you go - a bunch of random crap from the busier-than-usual month of May.  May it fill your heart with merriment and splendor.

Enjoy:

Foot massage/bath and this frickin' pose after a long day walking around a Disney resort.

Since Alayna's school - and society in general - deems Mother's Day more important than Father's Day (probably 'cause women are a fickle species), they held a special Mother's Day concert for any mom that was able to get the time off of work (seriously - who schedules a concert at 9:30am on a weekday?)  Here's Alayna with some of her first grade classmates.

Singing sappy Mom's Day jamz to moisten up the mom eyes in the audience. . .

Alayna and her pseudo-beau.  No idea what's going on here.

This is Alayna's first grade teacher, Mrs. Hall.  She's considerably awesome.

While packing up crap in our master bedroom for our impending move to Michigan, I stumbled upon the legendary Baby Leroy, who had been hanging out with the dust bunnies and random clutter underneath our bed for the last couple years.  I was given this doll as a baby so that I 'wouldn't turn out to be a huge, friggin' racist.'  Hah.

Kris has these kids trained.

As you can see, this year's Teacher Appreciation Week was a step up from the Rock Year.    Maybe.

Remember when I talked about how Abby got a bike for her birthday from Grandma and Papa John?  Well, consider this a spoiler for Alayna's birthday next month.

ORANGE WORLD

Goofin' off on the Voigts' back patio.  We've been hanging out with them a lot more lately, seeing how they practically helped raise our kids over the last seven years, and we're moving away in less than two weeks.

I want to get a set of lights like this for our next house. . .

Winston Churchill would indeed be proud of my students' impeccable quoting. . . 

Abby really, really sucks at this game.

For the last two weeks or so, both of our kids fell ill with some sort of bizarro super-flu.  Abby had it first, knocking her out of commission for a solid four or five days.  On the tail end of that disaster, Alayna got sick, and she, too, was sick for nearly a week.  Fortunately, Kris had a crap-load of sick days left over so she was able to take the time off during the week to watch Abby assume this pose (see above) in random rooms around the house.  Lucky for us, Alayna got sick over a five-day weekend. . . so we kinda lucked out, there.

Watson enjoys the holy hell out of this window (in my Study, facing the street.)

Working on those biking skills. . .

See those paper chains in the kids' beds?  This is before we 'caught them up,' but my mom made those for the girls to help them count down the time from their last visit (back at the end of March, when Mom and John drove the first truck back up to Midland) and when they'd return (in mid-June.)  Every night, before the girls go to bed, they're to rip off another paper link from the chain. . . but after awhile they forgot, so we had to count backwards from June 11th and catch them up.  Now they're on top of things.

A photo, courtesy of Mrs. Hall, of the First Grade Spelling Bee (Alayna went pretty far this year, but eventually the weird, mega-smart kid that reads at a third-grade level took first place. . . the nerd.)  You can see Alayna there in the blue shirt, behind the yellow-shirted girl.

Yesterday we went over to the Richards family's house for a grill-out/pool party.  Their twins - Brady and Holly - are old friends and classmates of Alayna's, and Holly was in Alayna's girl scout troop as well.

Taking a break from swimming for a snack

They built this pirate ship in their backyard with the help of a contractor friend of theirs.  For $2000, thereabouts.  Seriously.

. . . so of course we hung out on that sum'bitch.  Who doesn't love pirates?

Hanging out on the stairwell that leads up from the galley to the main deck.

ARRGGH

Inside the ship

The sky looks like pure death, but miraculously it never rained.

Abby fell off these inflatable beds - or off the side of the pool - on a couple different occasions, sinking to the bottom of the pool.  We were able to grab her every time, but it more or less solidified our intentions of getting the girls swim lessons this summer.

Hot dog time. . .

Someone accidentally let go out of a helium balloon at one point, so the kids got a kick out of watching disappear into the sky. . . bound to return to earth to wreak havoc on some animal habitat.

I will definitely miss Florida sunsets. . .

Once we got back from the Richards party, we found a bunch of the neighbor kids out in full force, and so Abby insisted on riding her bike.  Watson was hell-bent on going outside (note the state of this once-great Study of mine - it's been reduced to  a storage capacity.)

We've been working with Watson on obeying commands off a leash, so Alayna ran him back and forth between a few houses on either side of ours.  He ended up doing pretty good.

Wonder Woman.

No idea what's up with the random knee pad.

Waiting to back up (that's Alayna's friend, Theresa, in the foreground there.)

She no longer requires assistance of any kind while riding her bike - she takes it around the block without issue.  Our only qualm is that she prefers to ride barefoot most of the time, which causes plenty of scuffed up toes. . .

That bike Theresa's riding is like a super-up PowerWheel moped.  I so want to get some of those for the girls. . .

. . . aaaand, rounding out this week's installment of randomness from the House of Houghs - Abby's VPK class picture from Sunchild Academy.  You're welcome.

- Brian