I'm glad I looked at the calendar today-- the kids had a Dr appt and I would've missed it totally. But, we made it...

May so far has been a total whirlwind... Kate's musical show was on May 1 and May 2. The week before that she had rehearsals until 7 pm. Can you guess how many math assignments she turned in during that week?

My Grandma (who will turn 91 in October) came to visit so that she could go to the show and "meet her great-grandchildren." Never mind that she's met all of them several times, except for the baby. She couldn't remember anyone's name, though. She has pretty good memories of Kate, though. One of her helpers drove her down and stayed with her in a hotel nearby. They showed up on Friday at my front door at about noon! I guess they'd been calling my old cell phone number that's been inactive for a long time now. They never made it down the list of numbers to call Mac's cell, or our house number! Anyway, we had a good visit but I just wasn't quite ready... And I was trying to get the kids lunch, etc., etc. It was a little stressful.

Then Kate had the first show on Friday night. I had my Grandma and her friend over for dinner. The kids were really excited to see her. It was very cute. The last time they saw her was at Grandpa's funeral almost 18 months ago!

Late on Friday night, my parents came to stay for about 9 days.

Saturday morning, my Dad and my Grandma hung out in my living room while I took all the kids to soccer... DH took home-call all weekend-- he ended up only having to work until early afternoon and during the late night, though, so he didn't miss much.

Saturday night we went to Kate's big show. It was loud! Josie did really well, especially considering it started at just about her bedtime... There was a huge line to get into the show, though, and there were about 400 people or so standing outside in the drizzle. So, Mac just cut in the line. As natural as can be! With our party of... 10. He just... merged. When we got in, I said, "Umm, did you know you totally cut the line?" And he said, "I wasn't going to wait in that thing." I think he picked up this trick somewhere in his medical training, because he definitely didn't do that when we were dating!

Anyway, my Grandma left to go back to NY on Monday, and the rest of the visit my parents totally spoiled me. My mom did dishes and laundry like a mad woman, like she always does. Somehow she manages to look like all she does is read paperbacks, but the work got done! My dad worked himself into a tizzy cleaning up our little yard. He planted hostas, he put in landscape edging, he mowed the lawn... He also put up a whole bunch of bulletin boards for the kids and he bought us a new bathroom light and installed it. They also went shopping for me and bought me all sorts of stuff at Costco- basic grocery stuff, but still!- AND they either made dinner for us or bought us dinner every night!

It was so great. I feel a little guilty for all they did. When I told Mac that I didn't think they should be buying us all this stuff, he said, "I'm sure we'll WANT to do that for our kids, too." Very true...

Other than that, I've been organizing out over 3000 photos! It feels good to clean out my digital files. I've been using Picasa 3 for editing and everything. It's *amazing*. It's a program that is so easy. I think it was designed exactly for me. I printed up over 1500 pictures and am working on getting them into the albums for the kids. They love to look through those...

At school, we are entering the wind-down phase. Kate has her first experience with comprehensive final exams in Spanish and Algebra. The twins have a fun musical show 2nd graders put on at the school every year. Kate did it way back when, even! Luke has all the end of preschool events. We already went to Kindergarten orientation... I just can not imagine sending him to Kindergarten. He's just... my baby. We weren't planning on Josie, she was a happy surprise, and so for the last 4 years or so I thought of Luke as my baby. And he still wants to hug me and give me kisses and tell me he loves me... Steven's getting a little too big for that.

Sigh. Sometimes I want to freeze time. Sometimes I want to skip forward 20 years.