Mother's Day

Richie knows my love languages. Instead of buying me flowers, he cleans the bathroom; instead of perfume, he lets me take an extra long bath while he does the dishes. On Mother's Day, he spoke my favorite love language of all: sleeping in. :) I should add a few disclaimers here. Letting me sleep in is not a once in a blue moon occurrence. In fact, I think at least once a week I get pampered in this way. Yup,I got a good one. Anyway, I slept in on Sunday and woke up to a lovely breakfast sitting on my side table. I shared some with my girls, and then Richie whisked the kids away and wouldn't let them come in our room at all that morning. I took a super long bath, and basically spent all morning getting ready. That never, x a million, happens. It felt so luxurious. I walked out just in time for church and Richie had all the kids, plus his lesson, ready to go. Not that I don't love flowers and such, and not that Richie has never given that sort of thing to me, but he knows the best ways to make me feel special. :)




Grandma Garner bought all of her grand kids matching outfits a while back. We finally managed to get them all together, in the coordinating outfits and take some pictures on Mother's Day. I really like having an excuse to get in people's faces and take pictures. It was nice practice.

Butterflies

As a part of homeschooling this spring, I ordered butterflies. Well, I actually ordered caterpillars and we watched them transform into butterflies over a 2 week period. It was the coolest. I wish I would have been more intentional about planning activities to go along with the butterfly experience, but I was mostly just excited to watch it happen. We did check out loads of books about butterflies from the library and we made butterflies out of coffee filters, and did a worksheet or two which helped us identify and label the parts of a butterfly.
They started out SO tiny. I should have taken a picture in the beginning. We watched them grow into bigger caterpillars, and then eventually, they made their way to the top of their little cup, hang upside down and create their chrysalis. Then we moved them, very carefully, from the cup to the netted "cage" and waited for them to hatch. It was hard to wait, but such a fun surprise to wake up one Sunday and realize they were hatching! We kept them for a week and and observed them. The highlights were watching their proboscis' come out to eat, and watching them mate. :) Ha! We fed them flowers, and oranges, and sugar water. Then on Mother's Day, it was time to release them.



It was seriously so magical. They didn't fly away immediately, so we were able to pick them up and carry them around for quite some time. Miles thought it was cool, but after about 10 minutes, announced that he was going inside. Gwen, on the other hand, was in heaven. One of her very favorite things to do outside is look for bugs. If, perchance, a little white butterfly finds it's way into our yard, she follows it until she can't follow it anymore. She wanted all of our painted lady butterflies on her, forever. Totally, and completely magical.
They said that next year, we need to get tadpoles. :)

The rest of April

We went to see the "UP" house again! This time we went with Aunt Makenna, Ethan and Caleb.


The kids looked extra cute this particular Sunday. Story about Gwen's Dress: When we went to Colorado a couple Summers ago, I found this dress hanging in an old bookstore. I knew it was too big for Gwen at the time, but bought it anyway because I loved it so much. It's still a tad big, but it technically fits now. Hooray! It was also my VERY first attempt of a french braid on anyone. So...yeah. Big day at the Garner house. :)


When we only had Miles, I would take him to visit Daddy at work all the time, to help us break up the day a bit. With Miles and Gwen, we still visited his work pretty regularly. Now that there are 3, and we are well into homeschooling... we don't visit so often. I still think it's important for the kids to see Dad in action and I think it's important for his students to see a family who loves and cares for each other in action. I LOVED it when my seminary teacher brought his family in. It only happened once or twice, and although I had wonderful familial examples around me, I still looked to my teacher and his family as an example. I decided I wanted to marry someone like him, and have a family like his. So I did. :) On this particular day, Richie was orchestrating pioneer games for their D&C discussion. We came and played Annie-I-Over, walking on stilts, and stick pulls. Miles got to compete with his dad in stick-pull and won! He's still talking about it. The kid's favorite part was that the field was covered in dandelions. They picked and picked and gave several bouquets out to the girls in the class. :)


Hanging out with Uncle Jacob. It's always a treat when he comes by to play! Lindy's dirty face here is typical. She still isn't a fluent walker, so all of her pants are getting stained and ripped on the knees. She still picks all sorts of stuff and puts it into her mouth, including dirt, as pictured here. She SO wants to be at the same level as her siblings, but just isn't physically capable enough, and it frustrates her, and me, to no end. This little make shift ladder we have by the tree makes it easy for Miles and Gwen to climb up. One day when Richie was out there with the kids, he didn't have his eye on her and she climbed all the way to the top with no help. Surprise!


Our wonderful friends, the Christensens, came to stay with us for a night. Megan's sister was having her wedding reception here, so we got to have some Mike and Megan time, just like in the good ol' days. :) We stayed up way too late and talked, laughed and cried, until our faces hurt so bad from laughing so much. We cried happy tears, and sad tears. It was so therapeutic. We miss them so much. We finally got to meet their adorable son, Drake. Man, what a cute kid, right?