More April Adventures

The second week of April Reilly's school had their "Spring Sing." They did a Disney theme, and all of the classes did a couple songs (Not too bad, since there's only one class per grade) plus a few special instrumental numbers. It was a beautiful evening, and they were handing out free popcorn and snow cones. His charter school's campus was closing at the end of this school year (after 19? years) so this year's Sing was a big deal. We weren't too emotional, since we'd only been there about 4 months, but at that point I was still super stressed about WHERE my kids were going to go to school the next year. Anyway, the songs were fun. What the kids lacked in beauty (singing-wise), they made up for in enthusiasm. If you're really, really, really bored, here is the Youtube video of a few clips from the night. (I put it up for Grandmas; Reilly's class is at 1:24)

Other fun happenings in early April:  We got a juicer, which we've been using several times a week ever since. Jeremy has mostly taken over the juicing, and he has been doing his best to boost our immune system with all the fun combinations he comes up with.

We finally painted some frames and put up a bunch of "ancestor" pics that we've talked about off and on for years. Plus, we got a plant at Ikea several months ago that was -really- outgrowing its pot, and I just finally re-potted it in this nice big red bowl.

 Jeremy built a tent with the kids one evening and they watched a movie in it. They thought it was pretty awesome, and a day or two later, Jaina and Katy made their own version of a "tent..."  They spent a lot of time together while Reilly was at his afternoon kindergarten. Another picture of where they found our little Christmas tree (that somehow escaped being packed away with the rest of the decor) and decorated it with their My Little Pony stuff. They were very proud.

Also, it was about this time that we found out we were expecting in December. I knew that before long I would be pretty sick, so we tried to fit a couple things in before that happened. One activity we had been putting off was a trip to the Phoenix Zoo. A random sweet lady I met at a Barnes & Noble once had given us two buddy passes to get in free, and we also got Culture Passes from the library, that gave us two more free admissions. And since Katy was still under 3, we all got in for free! It's probably a good thing, because in April it's already pretty toasty, and my kids weren't super impressed with the heat, the hills, and the lack of animals that were out. It was still a spring schedule, and the zoo didn't open until 9 or 10. We were there close to opening, but lots of animals were already out of the heat, sleeping. There was so much walking for not that much to see! It made me miss the Niabi Zoo we would always go to when we lived in Iowa. It was like $5 to get in (half price on Tuesdays), had all the "good" animals, was flat, and wasn't too much walking. It was perfect for toddlers/preschoolers!
But we still had a good time and saw some neat animals. The elephants weren't interested in being looked at, the one orangutan was entertaining, they got to see some really tiny monkeys pretty close up, the giraffes were neat, and they loved the Little People farm playplace. The petting zoo only had goats, but they enjoyed petting them, and enjoying the washing stations (for their hands) even more... I don't think we'll be hitting the Phoenix Zoo again anytime soon, but when we do, we'll probably try to go in the winter months. (I should add that we realized our stroller's tires were flat soon after they took this picture of us, and we had to take it back to the car. Katy, especially got overtired from all the walking in the heat...)

And a few more fun shots. The one of Katy is her being in trouble for getting into my make up...

Girl Time (April 6th-7th)

Jeremy has some appointments down in the Gila Valley on the Saturday of General Conference, so after watching a little bit of it with us, he took Reilly and drove down there. So Jaina, Katy, and I had some fun watching Conference together, shopping the half-off sale at Goodwill, eating out at Texas Roadhouse (since I had some free kids' meal tokens), and having ice cream. I'll let you guess which was their favorite.

We also made a huge mess of the family room. Well, most of that was me, because I got out all of my old paper-scrapbook stuff to finish off a few long-neglected pages that I couldn't digitally for whatever reasons. (Mostly professional pictures we had had taken.) We're talking 4-5-year-old stuff.  But every time I get all that stuff out (usually at Conference time) I remember what a crazy-ridiculous mess it was, and how frustrating it was to get anything done, and I am so grateful for digital scrapbooking! (Even if I'm about 2.5 years behind there as well... working on it!)

Sure do love my girls!

Easter Weekend Eggstravaganza 2013

Jeremy's parents, sister, and our niece came down to spend Easter with us. We had a great time! The day before Easter we got together with Jeremy's Aunt Nicole and her family for a birthday celebration at Chuck E. Cheese over on the other side of town. Our kids hadn't been to their favorite birthday hangout in at least 6 months, so they were pretty excited. After we had had our fill of fun, we drove back home and had some quick dinner, and after that Nicole and her boys rejoined us for an egg-dying frenzy. There were SO many eggs involved! Jeremy had even put together some natural dyes (from different foods like red cabbage, coffee, turmeric, etc.) that we tried out. That was fun.

Easter morning the kiddos all got their little baskets and put on the cute clothes Grandma had bought them the day before. We managed to get a couple pictures in before we left for church. It is -so- hard to get a picture of all of those kids smiling/looking at the camera at once! It was a pretty day outside, and not too hot, though, which was really nice!

After church they had a little egg hunt with a bunch of the eggs they had dyed the night before. I think they did it at least four times, and we were careful to keep those eggs separate from ones we might actually want to eat over the next few days...

Monday was even more excitement! I think since the year year BOB turned into Chase Field, Jeremy's dad has gone to the Opening Day game. And if we're in the state, he's always tried to take us all with him. This year the kids were all a little older and the weather was just right, and it was a little nicer than when we went 2 years ago (when Katy was a baby, and it was super cold!). The kids' favorite part was riding the light rail and all the snacks, I think, as well as the playground. Oh, and the fact that some of their favorite people, JR and Jenny, got to come with us too... I think Reilly was the only one that enjoyed the game itself. The poor kid (with his non-sporty parents) has very little idea of how everything works, but he was happy to cheer for the Diamondbacks whenever anything good happened! The game was kind of a late one, and by the time we got home, everyone was a little exhausted. Fun times though, and good memories!

March

After seeing how many "real" journal entries I've made so far this year (oh, about 3) I've decided I can't afford to neglect my blog... And really, I neglected most things during the last half of March through about, oh, June. Blogging is not something I can do easily from the iPad, because all of our camera pics just go on the desktop. But I am feeling much better most of the time now (at 17 weeks along), so I'm trying to get back on top of life.
In March we tried to recover from our awesome Disneyland vacation, Jeremy worked a lot, and we took a trip to Pima during part of Spring Break, which was about a week and a half after our trip (yes, we took Reilly out of school - he had almost all of his make up work done before he went back, and we forgot about it completely while we were traveling). I wouldn't have even remembered that we went to Pima/Thatcher except that we have a lot of pictures from it. We spent some time with both families, but our fun got cut short towards the end when both Reilly and Jaina ended up sick with fevers, and I think, upset stomachs. Katy managed to avoid it entirely, thankfully. Jaina also ended up experiencing her very first earache/infection in the aftermath of all that. Fun times for Spring Break.

It's always fun to go to the bowling alley and watch Grandma and Ashley on Mondays!

Katy and I both made "cakes" for each other. The one I made is stage left.

In other news, we also got called to nursery in February. There are 3 nurseries in our ward, and we are in the oldest classes (Katy's) with some team teachers. We usually have anywhere from 7-13 kids. It's normal to have 10-12 - our ward is pretty active! Actually, we haven't been going to nursery since early April, I think, because I was too sick to make it through most of sacrament, much less the rest of church. But I think we're going to start going again now. I'm sure our team teachers will be appreciative...

And my kids will be happy they don't have to miss any more primary, because that happened a few times too, when Jeremy was out of town or something, and I couldn't make it past sacrament...