The Baker Bunch: May

May is always a super busy month around here...the end of school, baseball in full swing. We find that we see ourselves coming and going many evenings! Here is a recap of our month of May!

Sweet Thomas!

Thomas "helping" Mommy!

To kick off the month of May, Bryce had kindergarten roundup! What a surreal feeling having him attend this big event that I help plan and execute each year! I cannot believe my baby will be coming with me to school in the fall!

Adding photos to his book during his school tour

He received an envelope of practice pages, books, etc to work on over the summer. He wanted to do them the minute he got home. I made him take a bath first, then he dug right in!

Reading!

I've also slowly been trying to decorate our house. It seems like such a daunting task! Thanks to my friend Sara for joining me on a shopping trip and helping me with her keen decorating eye!

Living room. Changed out the furniture and hung a picture!

Bryce has really become interested in writing lately! He wants to spell everything! One evening he wanted to make cards for his teachers, so he sat at the table forever writing cards for everyone at school. I didn't help him with ANY of it!

"Jesus is
alive
Jesus made
the blind man
come alive"

"Miss Homan is the b-
est
God is the be-
st"

And, of course, we are at the ballfields A LOT!

One nice benefit of working at the school my boys go to is that I "usually" get picked to go on field trips if I sign up. Mason's class went to the Coaterie theatre and saw a production of Elephant and Piggie - some very popular stories in my classroom. I was PUMPED to go on this, but only wished my class could go too. They would have loved it! After the amazing show, we went to a park to eat and play. It was an amazing day! Some of the kids thought it was very strange that Mrs. Baker was on their field trip!! One of them even said "Mrs. Baker, did you have to get a sub?"

Fun at the park!

Mason & Braeden with matching socks! They planned it!

Mason and Colt

Getting lined up

Lunchtime!

Liam, Colt, Mason

That evening we were invited to Erika's graduation party. She was in my kindergarten class, and her mom Joella was the boys' babysitter! It is hard to believe my kindergarten students are graduating! It was great to catch up with their family!

Zane and Jo!

I attended a LipSense training in Iowa with one my downline girls. It was really fun to connect with and meet many of the girls I only before knew on Facebook!

Bryce has been fun to watch in his first experience with baseball! He slides, taunts other players, kicks the ball, and does pushups while in the field!

Down and ready!

We've had lots of friend birthday parties to attend lately. This was a friend from Mason's class, Liam

Liam, Lincoln, Colt, Mason ready for Laser Tag

Mason on the Gravity Ropes

This birthday party was for his baseball/football buddy, Braden:

Ryan, Braeden, Mason, Blake, A boy I don't know, Zane, Bryce, Braden, Haden, Colt, Finn

?, Braeden, Mason, Braden, Blake, ?, Haden, Colt

Sports are our life!

Mason's team - Ambush

Zane's team - Storm Chasers

Each week someone from Bryce's team gets the Weekly Sportsmanship Award. Bryce was excited to get it, and we proudly displayed it in our front yard!

Mason's spring football team - The Defenders!

For Mother's Day, we had a game for Bryce, then went to Chicken N Pickle, one of our new favorite places to go. It was a nice, low key day for us!

Bryce knows his Mama well!

Where else would a baseball Mama be on Mother's Day?

Me and my boys!

Winner, winner, chicken dinner!

Playing washers

Pouting...

Bags

Mason actually posing for me!

Big sized Yahtzee

Pickle Ball

Each year in May we have an all-school field day.

Mason's class

Zane's class

Mason's baseball team was in a tournament called the Hawaiian HitFest. In tournaments there is always a dugout decorating contest. We have a mom on our team that's super creative with this, and she came up with all of this for our first game. It was great! We had one game Saturday, and lost our first game of bracket play, so we were out.

Back of dugout. Mini coconut bras and grass skirts on the boys. Surfboards surrounding the sign.

Coach Travis

Go Ambush!

Awarding the MVP of the game

Close up of the adorableness!

This same tournament day was Zane's birthday. He just really wasn't sure what he wanted to do. We ended up at Freddy's for lunch and then went to see the Diary of a Wimpy Kid movie at the theatre with the comfy seats! It's our new favorite theatre!

Check out the fry Mason found! Awareness ribbon!

Aah, relaxing!

I can't believe Zane is 12! Here's a little look down memory lane...

A day or so old

Preschool - age 3

6th birthday

One week Bryce's team was down a coach so Matt stepped in to help with pitching. I loved that he got to pitch to Bryce!

Goofy Bryce - Dabbing

And Goofy Bryce - with trophy on head

Go Rattlers!

First trophy!

May was a big month for big things for the Bakers! First, Bryce graduated from Pre-K! It is SO hard for me to believe all of our boys are done with preschool. Just such a big chapter in our lives, and now it's over! I have mixed emotions. Sad because they are growing and changing so fast, but so happy for them for their next great adventures!

Ready to graduate

With Uncle Adam and Aunt Bethany

With Grandma and Papa Baker

Our sweet graduate!

Nathan and Zane - who were in preschool together "back in the day"

By his poster I made

Cutie!

With his teacher, Ms. Homan

Playing with friends while waiting for it to start

Hiding his face from Adam and Bethany who were by the door

Then hiding from us and giggling

There he is...way in the back! We could barely see him. Later he said, "Mom, I was pointing to myself like Blake does (on The Voice)!"

Singing

He kept seeing me taking photos and just grinned!

Ready for his diploma

We need to work on his handshake!

Graduated!

This looks like he is smiling at me, but the girl with her hand on his shoulder kept messing with him and he was laughing!

Sweet smile!

He could see us all...and got goofy and giggly

Silly boy!

The next day Zane had his 5th Grade track meet. There were 5 of the 10 elementary schools there. They had some track and some field events. I was fortunate enough to be able to attend and really enjoyed it. We even sat through some rain, but it was all worth it!

Me and my boy!

Grandma was there with us too!

Zane with his 400m relay team!

50m dash

100m dash

The following day was Bryce's field day. I wasn't able to go to it, but Grandma went for me. A fellow employee was there and sent me a photo of grandma showing her field day skills!!!

Go Grandma!

Field day fun!

Bryce "talked" Grandma into going to Chuck-E-Cheese after field day!

The next day was Zane's 5th Grade Promotion day. How in the world is this kid moving on to middle school???

Ready for 6th grade!

Academic Award

Attendance Award

These 4 kids had 99% attendance in their entire elementary career! Pretty impressive!

Mathletics Award

My heart!

Track Meet Awards

Promotion Certificate

The day after that was the last day of school. That morning was the talent show. I had been working all year on getting Zane to enter the talent show with his Rubiks Cube. It took me all year...but he did it! He and his friend Garrett "challenged" each other to see who could solve it the fastest. They did such a great job!

Waiting for their turn!

Zane got called up to help these guys out with their act

And then the boys were up! The video was too long to upload on here, so I had to split it into 3 parts. But I loved the whole thing and didn't want to have to leave any of it out!

Zane's 5th grade class

It's a tradition at our school for everyone to line the hallways on the last day of school to cheer on the 5th graders as they take their final walk down the hallways. It's always pretty emotional as you see kids crying as they walk. I usually wear my sunglasses!