Pinewood Derby

After last year, where the Derby was delayed a few months and Daddy was still putting the car together right as the event was going to start, I was hoping that we would start earlier this time.  Daddy is still sure that if we put the car together too early that the kids will destroy it.  And once again, he found out how bad his supplies for the car were in the hour before the event itself.

Last year, Tyler was lucky that we had another, really good, car to loan him.  This year, he wasn't so lucky.

He liked the Angry Bird design . . .

he was excited about getting his car in the race . . .

but he had to try really hard to not be sad when his car kept losing.

The girls thought it was great fun, though.

Daddy did make Kaitlyn's car drive-able as well so that she could be in the "free time" at the end.

He still had fun though!  Maybe we'll do better next year, but that isn't even the point, anyway.

Kaitlyn the runner (and Tyler, too)

I have to say, this was something I didn't see coming.  If you asked me a few months ago, I would have told you that Tyler has a lot more endurance than Kaitlyn.  Whenever we went on bike rides or hikes, Tyler would just keep going and going and going, and Kaitlyn would eventually start sobbing that she was just so tired.

I didn't count on her having the most awesome First Grade teacher I have ever imagined.

I'll need to make another post about the rest of the year Kaitlyn had.  The relevant part for now is that her teacher started running every single day during recess with her students in February.  I would have thought she would need that time to prep or, I don't know, breathe.  Be away from the tiny people who talk A LOT for five minutes.  But no, she taught the kids to run with her every single day at recess.

I remember on the first parent intro day, I sat next to a mom that was excited that her fifth child had managed to get Miss Hull just like all of his big siblings had.  She told me that if she had the money in a perfect world, she would steal Miss Hull and hire her to teach her kids at home every day.  I now know exactly what she means.

Anyway, Kaitlyn told me that she was getting better and better at running.  I wasn't sure exactly how much I believed her until we got to the 5K school fundraiser at the end of the year.  We all signed up (Kaitlyn made sure we did), and I was a bit nervous about how I was going to run with Tyler and Kaitlyn while Daddy watched Jasmine.  Thankfully, Miss Hull was there and offered to run with all the students from her class that came.  I was nervous that Kaitlyn wouldn't be able to run the whole way, since she hadn't before, but Miss Hull reassured me.  "I've never seen Kaitlyn give up at anything!  I'm sure she'll do amazing!"

Way to know my child better than me.

Miss Hull emailed me the next week that  "she surprised me on the 5K.  During a lot of the race she was even in the lead of all of the girls and I.  Her encouragement and excitement helped us all.  It was fun!"

 The part that really amazed me is that, her first time out as a 7 year old, she beat my personal best time on a 5K.  I worked my tail off to get a 30 minute race, and she snuck in just under me.

It wasn't enough though.  Kaitlyn wanted to run another one!

The school district had an end of the year race, and she was excited to run that one, too.  She ran with her teacher again, and made it two minutes faster at 28 minutes.

Tyler, by the way, also ran every day at recess, though not nearly as many months as Kaitlyn did.  I was amazed that all of the teachers were thinking alike.  He got a shoe print on his chart for every mile he ran, which was 5 laps around their yard.  By the end of the year he had 20 miles marked down!  And he was a trooper on the races.  When I ran with him, he would tell me that he was really tired, but kept coming with me anyway.  We had to walk a little, but he made it in 40 minutes.  And when he ran the next race with Daddy, Daddy refused to let him walk at all.  38 minutes!

I guess running is in the genes in our family.

Since they both loved it so much, I signed them up for a track club in our city that started the next week.  Tyler only lasted five minutes, because the size of the crowd and the number of instructions they were telling him was too much for him.  But Kaitlyn loved it!

I have to admit that we all decided we didn't love the track meets.  I didn't realize how much sitting there is in relation to how little racing she got to do.  In fact, when the meets weren't convenient for us, we just skipped them.  She wanted to be in track for the practices, but she wasn't really into the competitive element enough to make the races worth it. I would have taken her if she wanted to go, but I wasn't enjoying them enough to push her into it.

It was sure cute to see her run, though!

She has told me that now she wants to try a 10K.  Crazy girl!

Moab trip (last April)

We hadn't been to Moab as a family for a few years.  The wife of one of Christopher's mountain biking buddies emailed everyone to come down and surprise her husband on a weekend trip, and luckily enough, it worked out that we could all come.

We had no idea that there was a big event in town that weekend, however.  And that meant that the hotel rooms were amazingly expensive.  So I contacted our neighbors and asked if the offer to borrow their trailer still stood, and off we went!

My children are total goofballs sometimes.

Christopher has always wanted to try camper trailers.  We have talked before about renting one to take to Yellowstone or somewhere else.  And he fell in love with this very, very quickly.  I think he was looking up used trailers on KSL the very first evening we were parked in the campground.

It is a really nice way to get the camping experience in lots of locations and still have the necessities.  We haven't tried camping with the kids mainly because, well, it seemed like too much work.  Kids don't care about sleeping on the ground, but it turns out that adults do.  I always wished that I had gone camping more as a kid.  But now I see my mom's point.  Mattresses are nice.  Flushing toilets are especially nice.  And a kitchen is even better.

Nothing beats a hot dog on a stick, though.

Jasmine doesn't like being forced to do things our way.

Huh.  I think I know where the goofball-ness comes from.

We picked a good weekend to bring a trailer, because the rain came down pretty hard most of the time.  Miraculously, it cleared up most of the times we had plans outside, so it didn't bother us too much.  It just gave us more excuses to stay in the trailer and make our own fun, listening to it come down.

The only thing I didn't like about that weekend was the neighbors.  A group had rented some of the little cabins near us, and they were blasting their music until midnight or later the first night.  Awful, pounding 80's hair bands.  The next night they were at it again, with tons of people shouting and running around.  Around 11 pm one voice rang out above the music.  "NO way!  I'll f-ing play the music as loud as I want!  You go ahead and call the f-ing cops, you f-ing . . ." - well, you can fill in the rest.  The music did get a little quieter, but they also set off a ton of fireworks and other nonsense.  Not cool.  They even had kids in their group.

Sigh.

Anyway, back to our happy family in the cute trailer.

Notice the little foot behind Tyler, by the way.  Jasmine dozed off in my arms, as I recall.

We got to Moab a day ahead of Christoher's friends so that we had time to hike around Arches as a family.  I love having a National Parks' pass!  And a camera.

But most especially, I love hanging out with these little people.

Daddy spotted me taking this picture. I was trying to match a picture I have of Kaitlyn at about that age in the same spot.

All Daddy noticed was the pose.  "You look like a mermaid!  Hey, Jasmine, go like this!", he said, posing for her.

And she did.

I just want to tickle that little neck.

Then and now.  We didn't spend as much time hiking as I would have liked to, but the kids were totally done and that was fine.

Daddy went biking with his friends one morning, so I took the kids on our own bike adventure.  We started at my favorite park, and then biked on a path down to the center of town for lunch and a really awesome banana split.  The trail had a lot of tunnels and bridges, and that made it nearly an obstacle course for my kids.  They only bike on flat, paved paths, thank you very much.  But we made it.  We even made it up the flight of stairs at the end, with some team work.

They earned a nice reward!

I'm trying!

I always wondered how long I could manage to keep up a blog.  Almost everyone else I knew that used to have one has quit at this point.  But I really do love this version of a family scrapbook or journal.  I am, without a doubt, the person that reads this blog the most, because I am constantly looking back at the old posts.

Lately I got so behind that I just didn't even want to try, however.  I even made a list of everything I needed to put on here, and then Jasmine found scissors and tested her skills out on that paper, and I just gave up.

And recently, I realized that I stopped actually taking pictures of everything we do.  I wasn't excited to go home and write about them on the blog, and I just stopped bringing my camera.  That is totally unacceptable in this house.

So here goes!

April.

Easter.

Even if we never eat all of the eggs, dyeing them is too much fun.

I think my favorite part of the holiday is the egg hunt with all of the cousins.  The chocolate was pretty melty this year, but there is always way more candy than all the baskets can handle.

Kaitlyn was VERY concerned about going up to the cabin for Easter weekend, because she wasn't sure that the Easter Bunny could find us up there.  I found that a little odd, since the Easter bunny didn't even come to our house very often (he seemed to know how much candy and egg hunts we had some years and let it go), but rest assured, the Easter Bunny found us.

The cabin needed a lot of work this spring.  We aren't even done, exactly, but we got the lawn clear as fast as we could.  Those trees were so big, and I've really missed them.

At least we don't have to buy wood for a long, long time.

We did take some breaks from the tree hauling process, at least.

 Peek a boo!

Daddy nearly got us lost on that hike, as I recall, but I don't think the kids ever noticed.

We even found some friends to come up during Spring Break!  One of the best parts about Tyler's school, for me, was actually meeting other moms.  In Public School, the bus whisked him away to a void, since I wasn't actually allowed to be in the classroom (for confidentiality reasons).  Connecting with other moms and having friends that Tyler can play with is so wonderful to me!

Oh, and I even finally found a solution for our old table up there.  I have been wishing that I could replace it, since it isn't our style and is a bit broken, but I'll settle for at least fixing the top.  I always tried to have a tablecloth on it to cover the ripped up stain.  I have decided that gel stain is the best product in the world.  Five minutes and an old sock later, it looks new.  Almost.

The oddest part about this spring was how early we were able to drive our car up there.  Usually, the snow doesn't all melt until late April or even May.  But I think we drove up in early March.  We just didn't get much snow this year.  It wasn't good for the "snow pack" that gives us water the rest of the year, but it was nice to have a mild winter.

Catching up on March

March is the main reason that I am behind on my blogging.  During March, it was once again time to renovate an entire condo as fast as we could.

It was hideous.  It was so bad that I didn't want Jasmine to touch any surface in there.  The walls were covered in stains, the freezer had meat in a frozen, nasty mush, the carpet had stains every few inches . . . it was just disgusting.  Thankfully, new paint and flooring always does wonders.  This time I tried out gel stain on the cabinets, and I am totally in love with that product.  It was so much easier than the painting was last time!

So most of our spare time in March was spent there.  When you are trying to finish everything in the entire place, there is always one last project, it seems.  I am very grateful we have good renters in there now, because my husband breathed a sigh of relief getting the last lady out.

In the meantime, March 14th was the "Pi Day of the Century!"  The date was 3.14.15, so at 9:26 am and pm we had little parties in our house.

I may be a math nerd, but I don't actually like pie.  I don't know why people like that crust.  So we had breakfast casserole Pi-e on Pi-rate Pi-zza plates.

I also used ribbon to show Kaitlyn how the circumference is "3 and a bit" diameters.  It turns out, however, that 1st graders don't know how to divide, and division is kinda key in the whole thing.  We'll try again in a year or two.

Since my father-in-law was a math professor at BYU for 40 years, my mother-in-law hosted a Pi day party that night for the family.  Everyone else brought pies, and I made a nerdy fruit Pi-zza.  With Pi-napple.

Let's see, what else did we do in March?  Oh, we went to a Rock show.  It passed off a belt loop for Tyler in scouts, and was free, so I decided to bring the kids down.

Thankfully, they loved it.  This guy wandering around with a dinosaur skeleton was a big hit.  And for $1, they got a grab bag of rocks, and got to have one polished for them.

A busy month of work, unfortunately, but I'm just glad it is done!  We own three rentals, and we have now renovated all three.  From here, it should just be minor things as we go instead of top-to-bottom renovations.