Some other events in May.

Festivals: I have a special set of skills that involve always locating you.

 I will find you and we will visit you. 

Seriously, how does his guy manage to "drive" a fire truck every single weekend?

Also, bounce houses. 

We did get to spend some time with this precious Baby brother/toddler Levi. He is even cuter than this in person, if that is possible. As the baby of all the babies, he regularly gets extra attention & love, usually in the form of worms shoved in his face or someone not much bigger than him trying to pick him up.

Their childhood in NoniBop's backyard is one of my favorite things. 

Our neighborhood had an "End of School" pizza party at 1:30 on a Thursday afternoon, which is clearly the best time to accommodate all parents. Luckily for me, Nicole came into Knoxville and took Anderson and her girls. Anderson had fun & proved once again that his favorite thing about going to the pool is catching butterflies. 

Because it is possibly Anderson's FAVORITE place in the world, we made another visit to ijams. This one was a little impromptu & I texted Noni asking her if she wanted to go with us...in about 10 minutes. In a move that is no surprise to anyone, she said yes. 

We think she was our good luck charm because we found SO many fun creatures in our 4 hours there! We had a running count that included both adult & baby turtles, salamanders, tadpoles, froglets, frogs and a snake!

In a hilarious twist, we even crashed a wedding set up that was still there since it was a Sunday morning.

 It was a very festive place to have picnic. 

And, in a move that can NEVER be topped, I managed to snag a snake, which would be cool enough in itself, but it happened to be in the process of eating a frog!! Seriously, it was really pretty awesome. In the process of the snake frantically trying to figure out why it was in a net, the frog got out and Anderson was so proud that he rescued him. 

One of our favorite events in May was Jack's sleepover! The boys did a week long camp & Jack came home with us one night. Poor guy-I made him run errands with us!

But, then he got to chase my boys with a shovel, so I think it was a nice trade off. For about a week after this, every time I picked up Max, he asked if Jack was coming with us. He loves a visitor. 

Boys & fire. 

Another day, another festival. 

This one involved Bop doing balloons at a park and, as always, we got to see his celebrity status!

Also, there was a really cool bugs/spider tent and Max was so pumped to hold giant cockroaches & various other icky things. 

Lily even got in on the action with the tarantula!

But, let's be honest, who needs a bug tent when you can find your own roly poly with your cousin?

I looked up & had a little minute of realizing how grown up our kids are when I saw them taking turns pushing each other on the swing. I realize there are many other things that they do to make them have grown up status, but this seems to be exceptionally big to me. 

Overall, one of the BEST parts of May was when Anderson found his spirit animal at the bird exhibit.  He is obsessed with birds and has been for a few years. At the exhibit, he was answering all of the questions about red-tailed hawks and asking a few pretty good ones when the bird guy told us about this female red tailed hawk. Apparently, she was born with cataracts & had to have implant lenses made for her! 

ARE YOU KIDDING ME??

When I told them about Anderson, they were SO nice and asked a bunch of questions about his implant lens/eye and even let him climb under the tape and go into the exhibit to take pictures with her. He was literally over the moon and I was so grateful to this bird for taking one for the team because cataract perks are few & far between.

Our last day of May was spent with our favorite Watts' girls-swimming, playing and, of course, eating!