Mountains, May, and Mother's Day

 May was full of some amazing moments!

For Mother's Day, the kids drew me some exceptionally stellar cards. I love Kate's "jellyfish" family!

Jon had the kids list some things that they love about me. It just made me melt! By far the best gifts ever. :)

For dinner we had a garlic herb salmon over brown rice with asparagus and homemade artisan bread. It was so delicious that I forgot to take a picture before we ate it all! My mom came over to share dinner with us, and we wrapped up the evening with a rich dark chocolate cake with dark chocolate buttercream, which was all made from scratch. It was seriously the best, and will be the only chocolate cake recipe I ever use for the rest of my entire life.

I even made cupcakes out of the extra batter so that the kids had easier to devour hand-held desserts. It was a hit!

My mom also got me this gorgeous bracelet: *swoon*

And I got this really awesome card from Jon's parents in England. A lady in their ward hand makes them!

It was really great getting to spend the day together :)
Mom, Kate, Me, and Wynn:

The most surprising thing about Mother's Day was that it was a nice and sunny morning (we even got to take a family walk after church) and then hailed like crazy during dinner! It was extremely windy with marble size hail coming down for at least 5 minutes. It was nuts! Thankfully things cleared up again for mom to walk back home :) I'm glad we didn't have anywhere to drive that night.

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May also brought a fantastic weekend at the first annual Ammon Scottish Festival, where Jon competed in the Highland Games :D This was at the coaxing of his good friend Stephanie that he works with at Porter's. She's legit.

Jon was super out of his element, but he kept trying! He got a marked distance/height in every event, which was cool. It was really fun to watch the games and spend our day outside. We only got rained on a little bit in the afternoon. Totally worth it. :)

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Near the middle of the month, my mom and I took the kids to Utah for a few days where we visited my Grandma Carolyn (the kids' last-living Great-Grandparent). We had an excellent time exploring Provo and enjoying the company of my Grandma :) We were also able to see my Uncle Carl and cousin Nathan Hardy. The kids had a blast!

View of the original Provo Temple from Grandma's porch:

This cracked me up! I asked Kate to make sure she took off her shoes and put them by the door... she took me very literally. ;)

Gram playing blocks with Kate:

Uncle Carl hiding under the coffee table with Kate and Tortoise:

Family selfie! (I love Kate's arm around Edwin. She totally did that on her own)

One of my favorite parts of trekking down to Utah was getting to see the Webers who now live in Springville:

Their backyard opens up to this awesome park with a stellar playground and mountains just behind :D

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When we got home from Utah, my dad came to visit for a day. (ignore Kate's evil glare here, and the fact that my dad is sleeping...) It was a whirlwind trip, so I wasn't very good about taking pictures.

We have been so blessed by friends and family this month, we have really felt the love!

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May wrapped up with some picnics at the temple:

date nights:

space helmets:

Helping make dinner:

and FINALLY some warm weather, which means the return of evening walks and excellent Idaho sunsets. There is just no way to accurately capture how fantastic the sky is here. It is incredible:

I guess you could say we've had a pretty nice month! Idaho is treating us well :)