Conference, April Fool's, and Happy Double E!

As before mentioned, Chris headed out for a few weeks starting at the end of March. The first week he was gone we went hog-wild with all the activities - we had something every single night: soccer, birthday party, piano, activity days (talent show - see Aly performing "As I have Loved You" with sign language in picture below), "Enrichment" or whatever that's called now, and more soccer. This was both good and bad. For one, it was good because it kept us busy so we weren't missing Dad too much, but by the end of the week, the tiredness was starting to set in, which led to much whining, complaining, and meltdowns. We were driving home one day and I mentioned that the girls really needed to get some sleep, to which Lise replied (with attitude), "The only reason we're tired is because you make dinner so late." That was so not the right thing to say to me at that moment, after I'd been chauffering the girls around to all of their activities, which was why we always had dinner late in the first place! I almost cancelled all of their activities for the following week (obviously I was tired too). Luckily we all just decided to sleep on it and felt much better the next day. I should also mention that as time went on everything evened out and the girls did become huge helpers. Aly and Lise helped out with their younger sisters a ton, and also helped me by cleaning out the nasty minivan and weeding/raking the yard. So yeah, I guess I'll continue to be their chauffer.

Another thing about Chris heading out of town is that I get to take over the finances. This is a huge mental mountain for me every time I have to do this. But, of course, the first step is just to get started and then it all works out and I have a huge sense of accomplishment when I'm done. I've had lots of friends who run tell me about the feeling of accomplishment they get when they finish a marathon or a half marathon. I get that same feeling by paying bills. :)

But other than work and bills, we also had a lot of good things happen while Chris was gone too, not the least of which was General Conference. I was not as prepared for this one as in times past, but we still had conference bingo for the kids and the girls watched the whole first session with me, as well as every time the prophet spoke. Aly even took some notes - very impressive. It was so nice to soak up the Spirit. I love General Conference! During this weekend we also got to hang out with some other families whose hubby's were away as well. We did Crepes Saturday night and we had another family over for Breakfast Burritos and the Sunday Morning Session of Conference. Lots of fun and yummy food (I think I'm feeling hungry as I write this . . . )

And now for some updates on the girls. As mentioned above, Aly is really turning into a great helper around the house. While Chris was gone she made dinner for me twice, once on movie night (hot dogs, veggies and dip), so I could read to the girls their American Girl mystery book while she made the meal. That was such a nice service to me, I can't even tell you. Aly is also growing like a weed. Her crazy growth spurts plus soccer led to 3 bowls of cereal in the morning and seconds and thirds for dinner. And every time I turn around she needs new shoes, shorts, and dresses. What happened to my little girl? I am sad that time has passed, but also very excited for the fun times ahead.

Here is a picture of Kate with one of her elaborate lego zoos. So creative. As per the Kate update, she managed to cut parts of her hair again that were down to her nose (see above picture) to 1" long because "I didn't want bangs - they were bugging me in my face." Doesn't she know that to not have bangs you have to not cut them?!? We were so close to being able to pull them back too! Also, ever since Kate bonked her head on the playground at school one day and was given an icepack, she has been obsessed with ice packs at home as well and thinks she needs one every time she has even the slightest encounter with another object. She has also loved having sleepovers in my bed while Chris was gone (She and Lise would trade off), and is now into sleeping in a sleeping bag on her floor. I don't know what she has against her bed - I think it's just a control thing. Her quotes of the week are as follows:
* Kate, calling to me from the bathroom where she's going potty, "Mom, do mermaids go potty?" As I'm wondering how to answer this question, Lise saves me by replying, "That's been my question for my whole life. I thought they just pooped and pee'd in their tail until it filled up." And that answer was good enough to satisfy Kate, so that was the end of that discussion.

* One day on the way home from soccer Kate was getting mad at Kylie for talking while Kate was trying to say something. I told Kate that is what she does all the time, and should we try to play the quiet game? Kate lost 6 times.

*Conversation between me and Kate:

Kate - Mom, Towel and Vowel rhyme.

Me - what's a vowel?

Kate - I don't know

Me- A, E, I, O, U.

Kate - You're an expert, Mom!

(I need to remember these moments for when she's a teenager and thinks I don't know anything - oh, hold on, we have those moments now.)
* And my personal favorite for Kate this time - We had just finished reading about how King Benjamin's people had brought their tents to listen to his address and I was giving a quiz to make sure they had been paying attention:

Me - Kate, when the Nephites went to hear King Benjamin speak in his tower, they couldn't bring their houses with them, so what were they in?

Kate - A bad mood.
- I love it. -

Here is sweet little Kylie in her home made "play kitchen". Whenever she plays with the play food she comes over to this little section of the stairs. It has the perfect little seat for her, a table, and some cupboard space. So cute. You wouldn't think that this darling child would be the one to play an April Fool's joke on me, but she was. I woke up Sunday morning to find that she had pooped in her diaper, taken it off (and dumped the poop in her crib), and then put her jammie pants back on over her poopy bum. Lovely. Luckily she had not started playing in the pile-o-poop in the crib. After two Sunday's straight of this happening, however, we moved back to one piece pajamas.

Other things Kylie has been up to are learning to kick a ball (we have a bouncy ball she likes to play with at Aly's soccer practices), making sound effects for cars (vroom, swish), and playing "Ring Around the Rosies" with anyone who will play with her. She'll come up to you and grab your hands saying, "ashees, ashees." How can you say no to that?


Lise had been wanting a popcicle so bad since the weather had turned warm, but since I hadn't been able to get to the store yet, she made her own in the freezer with a Stawberry/Kiwi Capri Sun. Yum-may!

Lise is still on her gymnastics kick - so much so that she made her back muscles sore and we told her she had to give them a rest for a few days. Lise has also declared that she's a monkey because she "likes the monkey bars, likes to climb trees, and likes gymnastics." I think she's upside-down more than she's right side up. And I never, ever, would have done anything like that when I was little, I can tell you. :)

Lise has also been obsessed with birthstones lately, googling them on the computer and making out her own birthstone calendar. She even informed me that Jesus' birthstone is a diamond, since he was born in April.

And speaking of April, the week after General Conference was the week leading up to Easter, which of course meant Easter Egg Hunts out the wazoo. Above is a picture of the grass Kate grew at preschool (they've been learning about seeds and Spring) and her little chick and hand-towel bunny. Excellent decor for our front porch.

First we did an Easter Egg hunt with playgroup at a retirement home. The elderly ladies loved watching the little kids find their eggs. Kylie ate all of her candy in like five minutes and then had fun running around in the grass with the other kiddos. Apparently the sugar fast did her no good whatsoever. :)

Next Kate had her Easter Egg mad scramble at preschool. Those milk-jugs-turned-into-bunny-heads-as-Easter-baskets creep me out. But I love the bunny ears they made for themselves (Kate wore hers for like a week and wanted to wear them to church on Easter, but I put my foot down on that one. I should have checked her feet though, because we got all the way to church before I realized that Kate didn't have any shoes. Oh la. She didn't mind one bit going to church without them.)

And our final Easter Egg Hunt was on Saturday, er, I mean, Easter Eve. Lise came up with this. She came into my room that morning saying, "Happy Double E! - It's Easter Eve, get it?"

This Easter Egg Hunt was much more orchestrated than the previous ones. We hooked up with another family and everyone had their own assigned color of egg to find, which were hidden by degrees of difficulty accordingly. This made the hunt last a little longer, which was fun, and then we had Papa Murphy's Pizza and let the kids play while we relaxed and chatted away. Lots of good fun.

Kylie was blue . . . look she's already got a candy in her hand from the last egg she found. No waiting for that girl!

Kate was orange . . . I do not think that any of her candy made it to the car on this event either. It was already in her tummy.

Lise was yellow, her favorite Easter color, and is totally posing for me in this picture since I could never catch her in action with the camera.

And Aly was green . . . the easiest color to camoflauge in the backyard. She thought she could outsmart me, but no, I had to tell her about the one I hid under the kiddy pool. hee, hee, hee.

Spring Break Baby!

So yes, Spring is officially here - shorts, flip-flops, A/C on. It has been beautiful weather, so we've visited quite a few parks. Kylie is a little dare devil, but she can take the hit and doesn't cry if she falls, so that's okay with me. She loved going down this slide and also walking up and over the edge of the park (see video at the end of this post.) So of course I kicked off Spring Break by making the kids do yardwork (and took a picture in the first five minutes when everyone was still smiling.)

The kids helped out for about 1/2 an hour and then headed off into the side yard to build a fort.

Oh, and the reason why they're all in their swimming suits while "working in the yard" is because I promised (bribed) them that if they helped me we could go swimming in the neighbor's pool. The water was FREEZING (no heated pools in Florida), and it was only like 75 degrees outside, but it was the principle of the thing that mattered. The girls each jumped in and then spent most of their time lounging on the side. Actually I think we spent most of the time in the water trying to re-screw in this waterfall thingy after Kate played with it and made it fall out.

Saturday was Aly's game. Aly is still loving soccer and I've seen a lot of improvement in her skills too: passing, dribbling, team work, etc. She usually plays mid field, which gives her a lot of play time - perfect! She loves it so much that if anything ever gets rained out (which has happened a couple of times) it ruins her whole day.

Can you tell the kids were chomping at the bit to get in the water/go to the beach? We had friends over, and since we couldn't go to the beach, the kids had a waterfight and made our front yard the beach. I think they might have mentioned they were playing mermaids too, or something like that.

When Stawberry picking got cancelled, me and a friend went to the park to let the kiddos play. Kate and Lise were fighting in this tree and I said, "Man, that would be such a cute picture if they weren't fighting." So I asked them to say cheese and they performed beautifully. Don't they look like they're having fun? (Oh, and P.S. I was still able to get strawberries, thanks to my other friend, and so I did make a ton of jam during the course of the week as well - I stayed up until midnight one night finishing it, because we were too busy having fun during the day to do it!)

Other things not shown are that we went to another pool party at a friends (water still freezing, kids still crazy and jumping in), and the kids had another art lesson making treasure boxes. We decided to be done with art for awhile though, piano and soccer just don't leave room for much else.

We did the McDonald's playplace with friends one day when it was pouring rain. I think those older girls are getting a little big for it though! Kylie loved pretending she was playing this video game, but one time she misjudged her distance and totally landed on her head and got a fat, bleeding lip. Poor baby. But she was back up on it in five minutes, so yeah.

On another rainy day (it was a big storm) we went bowling. And the best part is that CHRIS GOT TO COME WITH US! He had been gone the week before and was set to leave for three more weeks, so luckily we got to hang out with him during his one week he was around. We all did much better on our bowling this time, with a fair amount of strikes and spares. Kylie loved just dancing around and going up and down the stairs. The other crazy thing about this bowling experience was that when we got our shoes, Aly got a bigger size shoe than me. She's in a size 7 women's!

And last, but not least, the girls finally got their wish and we made it to the beach. It doesn't get any better than that. And I think it was up to 80 degrees by this point, so they actually swam.

I should also mention that I had a wonderful Spring Break because of how much fun time I got to spend with my hubby that week. I got a lunch date after an FRG meeting, a "Yippee! The kids are in bed" date, cuddling up with "Once Upon a Time" and smoothies, and a Friday night date to see "Hunger Games". I just love hanging out with Chris. He is so much fun - we were actually be-bopping and laughing our heads off at the restaurant after the movie because our waiter told us he was "cleansing his pores" from the steam coming off of our apple crisp a-la-mode dessert. Lovely. I love being married to my best friend.

As you can see, we all love and miss our husband/daddy. We can't wait to see you soon!!

I love how Kylie always "sticks the landing" and wants everybody to cheer for her. It's so cute how proud she is of her accomplishments and how much she enjoys life. Love that little girl.