May-hem

May was busy. 

Cinco de Mayo
I have learned since moving to Colorado that the Stoehr family love to celebrate or maybe it's just an excuse to get together with family, have fun and eat good food.

Lori hosted a Cinco do Mayo party complete with Fajitas, Horchata, Brazilian Lemonade, and maybe Spanish rice? I can't remember as it was months ago that it happened as I am writing this pot. 

She made sombrero sugar cookies for the kids to decorate and we had an adult dessert that I am sure was yummy. I was going to make the tres leches cupcakes but we ended up doing something else yummy that I can't think of right now. Heidi made a pin the tail on the donkey game, we listened ot Mexican music and Lori also wanted a pinata for the kids.  I offered to purchase it as Colin had his eye on this spaceship pinata at Target. Heidi, Lori and I filled it with whatever candy we had in our cupboards, some of which was from Christmas! lol. Too much candy!! 

 Gpa helping Sydney. 

Steph was in town with her kiddos. She's still got the guitar skills!

It snowed. 

We planted a vegetable garden. Most of these pics were taken by Colin. We decided to garden at Gma/Gpa Furber's for several reasons. First, they have a much more space. Second, they use well water, free. Third, we could do it all together. It was the usual production of preparing the land, several weeks before. Steve/Tyler brought in manure and tilled it in. Tyler dreamt up an irrigation system inspired by the Church's farm in Sandy, Utah. That took forever to create. It worked pretty well with the current irrigation system but needs tweaking if we do it again. Then the planting. Then the watering and weeding, mostly done by Gma. She's a rockstar gardener. I think she truly loves it and it gives her something to work on each day. Then the harvesting and enjoyment. Sadly, the zucchini and pumpkins did not get enough water so they weren't plentiful. Hopefully next year!

Sam's little paper mache man and art portfolio he made in art class.

I took Cecily to Kneaders the Saturday before Mother's day because I got to eat their yummy French toast for free!

 Mother's Day selfie. I am a mother.

Cecily working on her Star Student poster with Colin's help.

Once school was officially over, the day after, in fact, I rushed over to Utah with Jennie. Our great uncle Jack passed away and his funeral was the same weekend as the annual Knell Memorial celebration. I already had a flight for that Sunday to head over for a closing in Utah so I cancelled that leg of it and drove out with Jennie/Kids on Friday. We stayed in Mt Pleasant and drove to Provo on Saturday morning for the funeral. 

Jennie driving, while I rode shotgun to Mt Pleasant.

Levi looks a lot like Uncle Jack!!

Monday, Memorial day. All of my mom's 9 siblings! She's the oldest of 10. This is the cemetery in Provo, on a beautiful mountain overlooking the valley. My mom's parents are both buried here along with several cousins who passed away too young. Afterwards we went to Sarah/Kenneth's church building for the annual breakfast of yumminess!!! A transition from our usual...we used to always go to Uncle Abe's or Aunt Julie's house but there are so many of us now and the weather was chilly not allowing us to overflow outside we quickly changed to the church building, very conventionally up the hill. Afterwards, my aunt Mary drove me up to SLC. We stopped at Saver's and did some sale shopping! And I visited with a good friend, Julie, that night. It was a great day!!

Aunt Claudia and her husband, Joe Young.

 I stopped by the SLC Cemetery on my way to visit my BFF Jessica Slade. Here is one of my more prominent LDS relatives, Erastus Snow. It was lovely to take a few minutes to stop by. Also, I had some time to spare so I drove around the Avenues downtown. I also stopped to say hello to our old landlord, Dianne McKee and her daughter Lindsay. It was a perfect visit. Short but sweet as it was the last time I saw Dianne. She passed away a short time later of cancer. She and Lindsay were such a blessing in our lives. We loved living in their basement while we transitioned to non-student life living in a "big" city. It was wonderful to visit with Jessica and her husband until late in the night. It was sooo nice catching up and visiting with Jessica, it always is. I miss living so close to her. I had rented a car this trip (thank you to Mary for helping me pick it up....I missed the pickup window by 3 minutes and the lady wouldn't let me rent it so I had to get a ride from Hannah's Sean the next morning). Thank you to my friend Pam who let me stay at her house again.

It was a fantastic few days away. I always feel so fulfilled after I've spent time with my extended family. And...it was so nice to be on my own again! Refreshing indeed.

Flying back home! Goodbye SLC!

We ended with a piano recital on May 31. No photos, only video. It was just Gma Furber (teacher) and Gpa at Steve/Lori's. Sam, Joc and Cecily and Tyler each played something. It was nice and good practice for them. Not nearly as high pressure as Tyler and I had to endure in front of a larger audience with memorized music. But it was still good.