Cute chicks!

We have had our chickens now for a little over a year. They are so well loved! But we may be down to only one laying, and she is the meanest one! I am ready for some new hens, and I want to get more eggs soon. So last Saturday I surprised the kids, and maybe Dave too, and said, "We are going to get some baby chicks today". They were sooo excited. And boy, are they cute!! They were only hatched a few days earlier. It will be around July when they start laying eggs

for us.

Maddi's chick is nugget.

Audrey named hers Pepper.

Kimee's chick is a Sussex and so she named her Yorkshire, Yorkie for short. My chick is a Delaware and so that is what I named her, but we call her Deli for short:)

Spring Break 2017

We had a pretty mellow spring break this year. The highlight was babysitting Tillie. Everyday we went to a park, sometimes two in one day!

We also did a bit of relaxing.

I spent quite a bit of time getting bids to replace our sewer line (not fun). And also bids for shutters in the front room (more fun). I took care of some medical things and made appointments for more. We had one day with friends from school and one day with neighborhood friends over (including swimming in the swim spa). The kids had lots of fun this week and I really enjoyed the time to work on my to do list and not be on a strict schedule.

April Fools

Audrey planned out some funny April fools jokes. She got up really early and put a bunch of random bugs and plastic animals in surprising places like the microwave and butter dish. Maddi taped a big bug above my head while I was still sleeping. It turned out better than they expected because after a while, the tape failed and the big landed right on my cheek! One of my favorite was this note Audrey put on Kimee's desk.

Mystery solved!

We had a big problem in this old house for the past week or so. We started to smell sewer gas coming from the kitchen sink. We did a little research, made some calls, and spent some time cleaning out & bleaching the pipes. We left the window open all week so we wouldn't pass out from the smell.

After all this work, we could still pick up the smell. It was very frustrating!

Tonight I was standing at the sink and noticed the flower pot we have had there for a few weeks. I thought maybe the soil had gotten moldy or something. I picked it up, smelled the soil and then realized this awful smell we have been trying to eradicate for a week was coming from the beautiful bloom.

Christmas Break 2016

Even though I only had seven days off of work, I still managed to get a lot done during Christmas break. Mind you, my focus was not on getting things done. It was on plain old relaxing and having fun with my kids. I like to think back on all that we did so I know that the break was 100% worth it.

Just for fun

• went to a BYU basketball game
• watched the entire season 5 of Once Upon a Time
• lots of fires, movies and popcorn
• made yummy homemade treats
• swimming in the swim spa
• had school friends over
• read a book The Keeper (almost finished)
• watched some adorable neighbor kids so their parents could get home improvements done
• date night- saw Rogue One in the fancy recliner theater while kids had a sleepover at cousins
• went to Peppermint Place on it's last day and bought a bunch of candy at 75% off

Things that were accomplished:

• Balanced the checkbook and set up a Roth IRA account!
• Finally redid the caulking in the shower. Yahoo! That's been on my list for about a year.
• Made a few dreaded phone calls (RC Willey, PG City, Arctic Spa Store)
• trip to DI
• hung up pictures on the walls downstairs
• Kimee got to go to the temple, practice her ensemble piece, and almost finish her math homework.
• Audrey practiced basketball with dad and is almost finished her Faith in God.
• Maddi learned a bunch of tricks on her string and cleaned her room.

Two birthday girls!!

We had a really fun few days for Kimee and Audrey's birthday. Each girl had three days in a row of festivities. It started Wednesday with Audrey's school friends party.
Beaux, Aspen, Kyser, Nan, and Jensyn were able to come. We drove around doing Random Acts of Kindness for strangers. Their favorite one was the Ding Dong doorbell ditching.

Then Thursday, the 21st, Dad took the day off work so that he could spend the day with the girls on their birthday. We started the day off early making breakfast bake and singing Happy Birthday to Kimee at 6:41am. Dave took Audrey and Maddi to their last day of volleyball camp. Then we all went to Kimee's (and Stephanie's) summer orchestra concert at PGJH. The Henrie's came too.
After the concert, we all went out to lunch at Costa Vida. It was a blast. Then we came home for a little rest.

Thursday night, we went to Pizza Pie cafe for dinner and then came back in time to get ready for the party.

Thursday night we hosted a really fun combined neighborhood friend backyard party. We did smore's, watched a movie in the backyard,  and swam in the swim spa. There was: Sean, David (and Sarah for a little while), Isaac and Eliza, Isabelle and Landon came to hang out with Maddi, Michael, Axel, Stephanie, Caroline (Anna was sick and couldn't come). We had sodas and I made popcorn outside. At the end, we sang Happy Birthday and had a big Costco chocolate cake.

Everyone asks me if I am OK with having a teenager. But the fact is, Kimee has acted like a teenager for a few years, so it just seems like I have been waiting for the formality of her actually turning 13.

We discovered that Kimee and Audrey are the SAME HEIGHT!! No more "big" sister for Audrey.

On Friday morning, Hadley and Emma came and picked up Kimee and Audrey for their annual birthday shopping spree. They were SOOO excited for this adventure with their cousins. They shopped at the mall and went to lunch at Applebee's.

Friday afternoon, we went to the Manila pond with the Henrie's. It was lots of fun. We got out the new inner tubes we got at Costco. Friday night we took a break and ate leftovers and watched a movie while mom and dad read their books:)

Saturday was Kimee's final celebration with her school friend's party. We did the Random Act's theme and it was lots of fun! For Kimee's dinner choice, she wanted Big Island Sam's for her birthday. So we went there after her party. YUM!!

Next year we will be taking the year off of birthday parties (hooray) except for Dad's big decade celebration.

Summer To Do List- June

One of my biggest worries about summer, or any break from school, is that I won't get everything done on my To Do list.
This summer, my goal was to keep it simple and really focus on what I really wanted to get done.
June was amazing! I got so much done. Even in just one day, I was able to check so much off my list.

JUNE
Fun Stuff:
Huck Finn day
camping
Lagoon x2
cousin sleepover
lots of swimming
girls camp
dentist- no cavities for anyone, yeah!!!

My Projects:
camp prep
make cards
flex spending solved
classroom painted
Kimee's sax

House Projects:
pocket doors painted & fixed
trim on mirrors
finish painting trim
paint bathroom ceiling
carpet repair done
kitchen decorations

CHOIR Concert

This year has been a new adventure for Maddi, Audrey and Mom:) For some crazy reason, I decided to help out by conducting the struggling school choir. It added a lot of stress into my life, and "choir" became an overused word in our house. However, the girls loved it and so did their friends at school. I loved it too, during choir time when I was singing fun songs with the kids (just not all the prep or the concert stress).

After our spring concert, we went to Smoking Apple for a yummy, relaxing dinner.

Audrey

Audrey is so excited that she gets to be a lunch lady at school this week. Today she got to serve out mini corn dogs. She couldn't believe how quick you have to work. Three of her best friends got assigned to do it with her. How lucky is that! She is excited because on Friday she gets to serve the Valentine's Day cookies. How fun and yummmm!

Amazing Day

We had such an amazing day today. Actually, it started last night. We had our good friends, the Seamons, over for swimming and s'mores. At the end, their mom cam to pick the kids up and we sat around the fire visiting for a little while. She mentioned that she was going to take Caroline in to do baptisms at the temple in the morning. Kimee said how bad she wanted to go and how we hadn't been able to go yet. Mary said she would be happy to take her. It was Caroline's first time going. So this morning Kimee and I went with them to the Timpanogos Temple at 6am. It was perfect. Kimee and Caroline were baptized together when they turned 8, and now they got to be together for another special first. It really was so perfect for so many reasons.

The beginning of this story is that a few weeks ago, I was really stressed out. When school started, I was so on top of everything. I actually thought for a few days that I wouldn't get my normal totally and completely overwhelmed feeling that I get every year when school starts and I think I cannot survive as a working mom. And then everything started going south- Audrey crying every night about not wanting to go to her new school and Maddi was having major clothing issues. Every day, by 8am, I was already completely emotionally drained. I was almost in a daze for a few days. Luckily, I already had the first week of school planned. But with teaching, you can never stay on top of things unless you spend 24 hours a day at the school. So within a few days, I already had a huge pile of stuff to do. We had to go in for 2 movie nights at school the next week, one on Monday and one on Friday to try and catch up!

Anyway, that first week that I was so overwhelmed, I really wanted to escape. I kept trolling Worldmark Reservations looking and hoping for something. Actually, I had been doing that for a couple of weeks, ever since I got back from girls camp. As soon as girls camp was over, I was so relieved. All those months of preparation and thinking about nothing but camp were finally over. And I was ready for my summer vacation to start. I wanted desperately to go somewhere to escape my stress and the chaos at home. On Friday night, I went to lay down for just a minute, and I had the thought to go check for bonus time. Miraculously, there was a Friday/Sat open at Wolf Creek. I quickly reserved it and even found a sub for my class so we could leave around noon to do some fun stuff on the way up and beat the Labor Day weekend traffic. It cheered me up a lot to know I just needed to get through two weeks of school and I could be up in one of my favorite places in the whole world. Unfortunately, Dave couldn't get work off and Kimee did not want to get check out of school. I didn't want to fight through traffic and get up there late. It was a painful decision, but I went ahead and cancelled the reservation this Monday. I was sad about it, but was glad it would save us money and committed to myself that we would have just as much fun, if not more, staying home.

We have had "Hiking the G" on our Fun List for months and months. So when I cancelled Wolf Creek, I decided we were going to fit in some things that we never have time to do. Saturday morning was "Hiking the G". When Kimee and I got back from the temple, we got everyone up, packed up our water and snacks, and left around 8am. We had a great time hiking up to the G. The weather was cool and breezy and we were in the shade or cloud cover the whole time. There were no injuries or complaining. We were worried about Maddi being able to do it, but she did awesome in her too big dress shoes and she was at the front of the pack for almost the whole time. Not to be forgotten was when we went through the forrest of bugs. Even though we stopped a lot to rest and marvel at the view, we made it up there and back in pretty good time. Enough that we were able to come back, eat breakfast, and still make it to a baptism for a cute girl in our ward.

After the baptism we started getting ready for our amazing BYU football game spread. We had planned to have snacky foods for lunch, yummy treats, and watch the BYU game as a family. Audrey and I went and picked up buffalo chicken wings and Cravings cupcakes. It was so fun to watch the game together. I don't remember the last time I have watched that much of a game and really been aware of the score and what was going on most of the time. The team did really well in the first half and then struggled in the 2nd half. Several players got injured. It looked like we were going to lose. Kimee and Audrey weren't watching the game anymore. But with just a few minutes left I called everyone back and said we have to watch the end of this game. They missed a field goal and other chances for a first down. The announcers kept talking about how Nebraska hadn't lost their opening game in over 50 years. With 1 second to go in the game, BYU's freshman second string quarterback throws a 50ish yard hail mary pass, and the receiver barely gets in the endzone to win the game. IT WAS AMAZING!!! It was one of the coolest endings to a football game you could ever imagine and we were watching it together as a family.

Today was such a special day, I don't want to forget about it:)