Endings and beginnings

For once, I actually have a huge backlog to put up here.  Usually I can't wait to edit my pictures and write about it all, but there have been a lot of little things that have kept us (and my camera) busy.  Let's see if I can get them in order.

First up, randomness.

I taught the kids how to dropspin.  I love that kids think anything Mommy and Daddy do is awesome.  Well, and waving big sticks is always fun.

I've been doing a lot more photography sessions lately.  That's been a lot of fun!  Kaitlyn was helping me nail down my settings one day before we got started, and despite the crazy hair I love this picture of her with Muffin.  She adores that teddy bear.  A lot.

Tyler had his dance festival at school.  Figuring out what Tyler does at school isn't always easy, since he can't explain things very well.  But he kept telling us that "everything is awesome".  And when he class started dancing to the song "Everything is Awesome", I burst out laughing.  There was my answer!

The song is from a Lego movie, so every kid got to color in their own Lego person to be whoever they wanted.  I think Tyler tried to make his a Ninja-go.

Kaitlyn's grade danced to "Under the Sea".  I loved that in every picture I took, nearly every kid is doing something different.  Kindergartners are not known for their coordination - just the cute waves to the moms in the crowd!

That evening we got to see the new Curiosity Museum with some cousins.  It was a lot of fun!

Jasmine slept through half of it, but fell in love pretty quickly once she was fully awake.  (While half awake, she hates everyone and everything.)

Kaitlyn's competitive spirit reached a new high on this thing.  It talked about how monkeys hang upside down for a long time, and then let you test how long you could hang without touching the bottom.  She lasted 6 and a half minutes, and had a huge line waiting to use it by the time she was done.

And Tyler liked all of it, but once he and Daddy found the room of Legos, they were in heaven.  Actually, I think his favorite was the giant climbing gym we did first.  I had to peel him away after a couple of hours so we could see more of the museum.

The next day, Kaitlyn had her gymnastics show.

She was SO excited about that medal.  She kept asking me if I thought she would earn a medal again this year, and she wasn't even deterred when I explained that everyone gets one.  It was still awesome.

Let's see . . . next was the Fireman's breakfast.

That was a busy day- we split up to go to two separate baptisms, and Daddy took the kids to Cabela's and then shooting guns with cousins afterward.  I'm not a fan of that stuff, so I was rather happy he did that without me.  Instead, I took Jasmine to use our summer passes and go skating, and everyone met us there later.

And all of that brings us to the next Monday, when we all started new things!  Daddy had his first day at a new job.  He got a job up in Murray (a 40 minute drive, sadly) that he is really excited about.  He had to cut back a bit on the other businesses he has been running, but this job was worth it.  And at home, we started summer school.

We only have one week under our belt, but I think this might be my best step yet as a mom.  As I mentioned with our trial run over Spring Break, we didn't want to shell out the money for summer school this year, and I don't like the public school version, so I decided we would give it a go.  We don't stay on schedule each day, but I decided I am totally okay with that.  Every day we have reading time, lesson time, piano practice time, and chores time, and that is way better than we did during the school year.  They made cookies, we went to the pool, and we're going skating again tonight.

I let them draw from a hat of activities and things to create, and the picture above is from our color walk.  They had to look for colors while we wandered the neighborhood, and that was a big hit.

Another day, we used the Kiwi Crates my mom got us and made jumping frogs.  And that was a HUGE hit.

Coloring them and creating the catapult was fun, but launching them was the best part.  They loved seeing if I could get a picture of it flying.

And then Jasmine decided it was time to tackle her brother.

And despite the fact that neither girl is actually dressed for the day or has their hair done, I think this is my favorite picture right now.  Squish time!

I am constantly amazed with what Tyler puts up with from that girl.  She was sitting on him as hard as she could, and he just laughed and laughed.

Tyler makes the best faces sometimes.

Here's hoping we love summer school as much in August as we do now!

School is winding down

May always seems to fill up quickly.  My favorite part is our recent tradition of having my mom in town for Mother's day.  Sometimes I feel a bit silly about it, but I gotta say, my momma is probably my best girl friend.  We chat on the phone a LOT, so having her in town to go shopping and hang out and have my kids get to know her is awesome.  I'm even more happy when my Dad gets to come too, but he had to work.

It was really nice that Christopher was able to work from home for a day and watch the girls so that we could have a fun day in Salt Lake.  We shopped the outlet malls, tried out restaurants we saw on Food Network, and then dashed back home in time for the pinewood derby.

The pinewood derby had been postponed a few times, but they finally found a track for us to rent.  And Christopher kept telling me that he didn't want to make the car too early, because he didn't want the kids to wreck it.  So a couple of days beforehand, the kids helped cut and sand their cars down.

And then they got to spray paint the cars.  The nozzle was a bit too hard for them to push down, but they tried.  Green is for Tyler!

And then, the night of the derby, Daddy went to put the wheels on .  . . and they wouldn't fit.  This was discovered with about a half an hour to go.

See the car Tyler is holding?  Yup, not the car he made.  A car we had lying around the house from an adult pinewood derby date night.  When he was weighing in and people said "oh Tyler!  Is that your car?"  He would just kinda look at them strangely and say a slightly concerned "yes".  I don't think he liked the switcheroo, but he wasn't fully aware of what happened.

So he DID make a car, had fun with Daddy doing that.  And he had fun racing a car.  So what if they weren't the same car?  He was all smiles.

Notice Jasmine in this picture.  She thought seeing the cars whiz by was hilarious.  Everybody was smiling at her reaction, because she busted a gut every single time.

My mom told me that after raising five boys, she honestly had been very sick of pinewood derbies.  She was sick of the attitudes, the competitive boys, the dads that wouldn't let their kids touch the cars and protested rules and so on.  But I gotta say, our pack is awesome.  We didn't see a single bit of that.  Everyone was honestly cheering for each other and laughing at it all.  Even the Dad with the winning car (who makes custom cabinets for a living, so I think we could have called that before we arrived) only had a small little fist pump you had to look closely to see.

And everyone seemed genuinely happy for Tyler - who was the happiest boy I ever saw when he got a third place trophy.

He spent a lot of time admiring it and talking about it.

Daddy said it was the first time he made a winning car, so he was pretty happy too.

We had a few days of just hanging out and working in the yard before Kaitlyn had her "Kindergarten Celebration".

She told us it would last "as long as regular school", but they actually just sang cute songs for 15 minutes.

In fact, I better post one for Grandpa to see.  Here you go.

This was Kaitlyn's teacher, Mrs. McAllister.  When asked to list three things she loved about Kindergarten, she said that "I love my teacher", "Mrs. McAllister is really fun", and "Kindergarten is great".  And I don't blame her.  She was a person who just sounded like the perfect Kindergarten teacher from the instant you met her.  The sweet, calm voice, and the cheerful disposition, with the cutest laugh.  I'm so glad Kaitlyn got the have her!

After school that day, we headed up to the cabin for the weekend.  We got the cabin ready for spring, and Grandma broke out some bubble wands for the kids.  (Jasmine and Tyler dumped them all about ten minutes later, but it was a fun ten minutes.)

And then Jasmine decided to give Grandma rocks.  Jasmine really does like repeating a sequence of events over and over and over again, as Grandma discovered.  I'm pretty sure they were doing this for over a half an hour straight, but as long as Grandma would paitietly tell her where to put the rocks, Jasmine would return to shout that she had more ready.

Oh, and you'll notice in the video that Jasmine started out the week calling her "Am-Pa", but by then just called her Pa.  Yup, that's my mom - Pa.  She has quite a few words, but when she feels like there should be more to fill in a conversation, she just adds nonsense in between.

Once my aunts arrived, we had lunch and took a walk.  I never get tired of the views up there.

While we were walking, my mom spotted what looked like a moving speck of dirt.

And despite my protests, this lizard was quickly adopted by a very adoring little girl.  Now named Liz the Lizard, he (she?) is attempting to live in an old fish tank with all the ants my kids can find to feed it.  Given how much it has been carried and played with by all of our neighbor kids, I feel really sorry for the little critter.  But we've never let our kids have a pet of any kind before, so they are on cloud nine.  Hopefully we can keep it alive . . .

My mom spent the rest of her vacation with her sister in Salt Lake, and then flew out right as Kaitlyn was getting ready for her ballet recital.

We laughed at how serious they all looked.  No matter how many people told them to smile and have fun, most of them looked very straight-faced at their teacher off to the side to remember their steps.

I love how these activities stretch her.  She gets to have fun and work hard to learn new skills.  And her teacher is great- she just opened up a studio in her basement.  Since she had a class that needed one more student, she let Kaitlyn join in return for me making accessories and costume bits  and alterations for all of her classes.  Deal!

Love the girl next her posing!

Of course, the hilarious part was that her class was doing two dances - the tap song first, and then the ballet song.  They brought me the costume change parts, and so one she was done with the tap dance, we switched her over.  But then when they all got up there, her teacher stopped them- because Kaitlyn was still wearing her tap shoes!  She had switched shoes in the hallway before the show and left her ballet shoes out there.  So everyone had to wait while she ran out and found them . . . a bit embarrassing.  Thankfully it was a small (and patient) crowd.

Whew!  A lot of videos for this post!

Now we just have one more week of school, with all the dance festivals and parties that entails, and it will be time for summer school at home!

Easter

I was reflecting this year on why I am really not into the Easter bunny.  I actually have wonderful memories of hunting for eggs as a kid.  My parents were really smart about it- everybody came downstairs to find their basket and empty carton in a different room, and you had to search that room until you filled up your carton again.  That way the eggs could be hidden on your level (easy or hard), and no one lost any eggs (in theory).  So why didn't I want to do that with my kids?

I mean, it has quite a bit to do with how much the silly stuff distracts from the real meaning of the holiday, but I'm not nearly as against Santa Claus.  I think Santa and all of the presents still has a good spirit to it though- we focus on thinking of others and giving to others.  But why should I spend Easter morning, after the kids have had between one and four egg hunts in the last week, doing yet another round of searching for candy?  My kids do not need any more candy- we still have Christmas candy, for crying out loud!

Anyway, the egg hunt with family the day before is always great.  I don't mind egg hunts as social activities on days other than Sunday.

Christopher grew up with a trampoline, and he would really love one for our family, but our kids are just going to have to enjoy them at their cousins' houses.  Because when I look at this picture, I just remember the statistic that the chance of an accident on a trampoline goes up by 75% once two or more people are jumping at the same time.

Moms are so mean sometimes.

Daddy was more than happy to get up there with them.  But once the rest of the cousins had run off, he lay down for a nap.  Christopher has been putting a lot of hours in renovating our newest townhouse lately, so he was looking to relax.

And, one by one, our kids wanted to snuggle with him.

Did I mention Kaitlyn lost her second tooth?  Those are BIG events to her.  She wouldn't stop talking about how wiggly it was for weeks, and went through multiple drafts on her tooth fairy note.

I like this cutie :).

My sister-in-law brought the parachute again to keep the kids occupied while the adults spread the loot out on the lawn.  I just love how intense Tyler gets!

There were so many eggs (Grandma always goes overboard!) that they ended up just sprinkling everything across the grass.  "I felt like I was feeding chickens!"

Jasmine, as usual, was absolutely thrilled about it all.

As we were dozing off that night, I was rationalizing what we would say to the kids if they noticed the Easter bunny hadn't come to our house.  Last year tried to go without, and told them he would come while we were at church.  This year I figured we could tell them that he knew our eggs weren't dyed yet, or that he knew we had already hunted for eggs.  Of course, Christopher has always talked about the year that the Easter bunny brought a Nintendo.  His mom found a good deal and wanted to give it to the family, but didn't want it to just be a random thing that appeared one day.

So when we came downstairs that morning, I found a surprise at the bottom of the stairs, with a note from the Easter bunny that we should use it to play some Easter songs.

I can't tell you how happy this made me.  Our old digital piano broke a month ago, and it has been a long month without it.  I hadn't played much for years, but Kaitlyn taking lessons has kinda brought me back into playing too.  And then one day, for no reason at all, our piano made a hissing, staticy sound when we turned it on.  And when we pressed a key, it made an angry, hissing, staticy sound.  When we called up a repair guy, he told us that basically most of the digital pianos out there are meant to last about 5-10 years.  (Seriously?)  So our 8 year old piano was just dead.

We do like having a digital one, though.  It is always in tune, and it has a volume button.  This one even came with headphones.  So we realized that we either needed to commit to another thousand dollars every decade or so, or spend a bit more and get one meant to last a lot longer.  We've spent a lot of time debating that over the last month, and frankly procrastinating dropping all the money on something that should have still be working in my mind.  Grr.

Anyway, this thing has been a world of difference so far.  Christopher keeps mentioning that he isn't a piano person, and didn't expect to be impressed, but can't believe how awesome this one is.  Kaitlyn and I have been playing constantly all week!  It really is wonderful therapy for me, too.

Unfortunately, we only got the piano two days before her piano recital.  All of the rest of her practicing for this one has been on our awesome neighbor's piano or during her lesson itself.  But I think she still did a great job!

You can see the video of it here.  The piano store she performed at is running a contest, and whoever gets the most views on their video wins a free piano.  I can't imagine that happening, but she liked dressing in costume for her song to make it more fun!

Back to Easter morning, the one tradition I do love is Easter dresses.  I want it to feel even more special than the average week at church- and wow, our choir made it amazing this year.  Anyway, these were actually really simple to put together.  Kaitlyn and I liked this knit fabic at the store, and so I just whipped up the pair of dresses and happily found there was enough for a skirt for me, too.

I love how much Kaitlyn enjoys matching her sister.  I was worried that with a four year gap, she might not be interested in her baby sister, and that might happen someday.  But for now, both of the older kids practically follow her around to play with her.

Let's see, what else have we been up to?  Kaitlyn has been student of the week this week.  She has been over the moon about that.  She told me it took a lot of work to be chosen (since you have to be quiet and attentive!) but she was so excited she could hardly contain herself.  She got to make a poster about herself to hang on the door all week, bring in a "sharing item" each day to tell the class about, and today she got to bring in her favorite book for the class to read together.  I think her favorite day was bringing in Jasmine for her "sharing item", though her adored stuffed animal Muffin might have been a close second.

Oh, and I made this coat closet this week!

Please pay no attention to the laundry all over the background.  I'm not entirely finished yet- it needs a back, but that wouldn't fit in my Pilot with kids in tow.  But this is a huge improvement anyway.  We used to have a couple of coat racks on the wall, but the hooks were too close together for backpacks.  Once we had two backpacks up there, along with winter coats and my purse and everything else, the kids gave up and started just dropping their backpack on the floor, since it would just slide there anyway.  Not how I want the entrance from the garage to be.  These are basically skinny, open lockers, and I do lose some space in my laundry room making it, but now they can hang everything up!  And now my purse is up high on top, out of the reach of my toddler!  (She adores taking out all of my credit cards and money.) I had fun breaking out my old wood-burning tool to write their names on the front.  I might put it up on casters soon, so that I can wheel it out of the way to do laundry, but overall, I'm just happy everything is off the floor.

And now, it looks like I need to go do some laundry . . .