Early May

We started off May by going with Mom to see Jeremy's spring concert.

I think these kids really love it when I take their pictures, right?

Jeremy and Naomi went with Mom to see The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, a ballet put on by Naomi's former dance company (she's taking a year or ten off from ballet).

Oh man, you guys. Silly string. (Thanks, Todd!) This is good good times for kids.

May marks race season, so Clifton ran in the Colorado Half Marathon in Ft. Collins finishing first in his division and fourth overall (out of 1500 runners, time 1:17:13)

Celebrating after the race. This guy just keeps getting younger.

Dave and Val came up with to spend a day painting while I was at work. I'm not sure how I got the really good end of that deal but I'll take it. Come home from work and find that your kids have been playing with Oma and your living room gets painted. (For the record, they knew we wanted to paint it. This wasn't their not-so-subtle way of telling us they didn't like the red.) So Sarah and Timothy spent the day eating snacks...

...watching the rain together...

....and playing with blocks together while Dave and Val primed our red, red room.

Timothy and Sarah even took potty breaks together.

I probably should've gotten approval for this from Dave and Val before putting it out there on the internet, but how cute is this?

By the way, this is the finished product.

Time for Mom to head back to Florida. Always hard to say goodbye.

But she left just in time to avoid waking up to this on Mother's Day morning. Why not?

The kids, with a little bit of supervision, made all three meals that day, out of their Princess Cookbook. They desperately wanted to do a meal in bed, and lunch seemed the least messy to me.

They picked out these cupcakes just for me. Or so they said. Mother's Day was *way* better than last year when we spent 12 hours driving home from OK with three tired and bored children.

May was also finishing up soccer season. Naomi came *this* close to scoring during this game. Because she's been generally timid, the parents from our team went nuts for her as she took her shot and only went wide by a couple inches. I love the parents and kids on her team this spring.

She and Clare really look like they're focused on the game, right? And their coach? Awesome. As a former NFL player with a masters degree in sports administration and an elementary school PE teacher and the father of a first grader, we thought he was probably qualified to coach soccer for seven year olds.

The Railsbacks take on their first family 5K down in Denver

Naomi actually made me run. She ran most of the way, and got a new PR: 43:55.

These races are mostly about the loot though right? And the photo ops. Like getting your picture taken with Miles. The other girls were having nothing to do with a massive horse.

And the tooth fairy, Just in case you were wondering if she is real. Pretty sure we solved that mystery for you. Also the tooth fairy is a toothbrush pusher. I think we came home with about 17 toothbrushes and just as many flosses. So if you visit and forget to pack them, we've got 'em for you.

I know other people's kids do this all the time, but ours just don't. Fall asleep in the middle of dinner. So this seemed picture worthy. 

Steve and Suzi took our kids for a night (thanks, guys, you're the best!) so we went on a hike at Devil's Backbone. I spent a good deal of the hike looking down because as we were starting our hike, someone who was finishing warned us about a pissed off rattlesnake they had just moved off the trail. (Flashbacks to a hike in CA, right Dornbos?)

I'm told if it wasn't cloudy you'd see Longs Peak here. We'll settle for the foothills.

Annika went to this super cute pirate party for one of her preschool buds.

There was some swashbuckling while slacklining going on.

We have had a crazy wet spring. It rained something like 24 out of 26 days in a row. This is nothing to Floridians, but you may have heard that Colorado is dry. And sunny. We don't know what to do with this kind of grey and dank. Except to overreact to our 1/2 inch of rain, put on rain boots and brave the elements. For the record, Naomi's wearing a 2T jacket since I didn't have one for her. She's a trend-setter. Trying to bring midriff rain jackets back.