First half of April

April Fool's
I'm not a huge fan of April fool's day, but I saw this idea online the night before and figured it was easy and harmless enough, that I could manage it. I told the kids I had brownies for them upstairs after quiet time. They ran up, and were sorely disappointed to find a pan full of "Brown E's". THey felt much better when I showed them the real brownies I had made. Ha!



Conference
This was probably the least effective conference for me. Maybe ever. Richie was gone all day Saturday (as he has been most Saturdays for the last month or so) working on his Masters, so it was just another day with me and the kids. Except that I felt obligated to get the house clean and make sure they quietly listened to conference. HA! What a joke. This is a picture of our attempt. I pulled out butcher paper and stamps and thought it would keep them listening for a while. I think it lasted about 5 minutes. (I love Miles's face here! Cracks me up)


Planting Strawberries
One Monday, during the witching hours from about 330-530, I was struggling to get dinner ready while the kids ran circles around me. Grandma Garner showed up out the blue and told me she had strawberries to plant! We've tried strawberries before without much success. At first I thought, "I love strawberries, but I have zero time to plant them and our garden space is running out." Luckily Grandma took charge and brought the kids outside with her, found places to plant the strawberries and I got to finish making dinner! What a relief it was. The kids made a memory with their Grandma and hopefully we'll get a few yummy strawberries to nibble on this summer.


School
A few pictures as proof that we're still plugging away with school. Gwen's practicing sight words by gluing letters from magazines over the letters I wrote on the index card, and Lindy is becoming a pro at stickers! :) I'm just hoping I can make it till the end of May. Every day we finish our allotted school work is a big accomplishment to me. I don't know how I'll do it once baby gets here, right before the school year starts.





It's a boy!
My ultrasound was at 730 at night, which worked out great so that Richie could be home with the kids. The tech was running over an hour behind, but I rather enjoyed my quiet time just reading and resting. I wasn't feeling anxious at all, to find out the gender. We had pretty much come to the conclusion that we were having another girl. And that was great! However, when she was checking everything, the baby turned just right so we could see the evidence of his gender, without any confusion! I just started laughing and told the tech how excited my older boy would be. I didn't make it home until around 10, and I figured everyone would be sleeping. But Dad, Miles and Gwen were all still wide awake, anxious to hear the news. I brought in blue balloons and candy, and it took the kids a minute to figure it out, but Richie was immediately overjoyed. He was yelling so loudly, I had to tell him to be quiet so as to not wake up Lindy. Miles said, "A BOY??? Oh I've been praying so hard for a boy!!!" :) Gwen wasn't as excited, although she's come around to the idea now. Lindy has no idea. We are SO excited to get another boy. We have a bunch of names to choose from, and are working on switching rooms around so that we'll have an official boy's room and girl's room.

Easter 2016

We try and focus a lot on the reason behind Easter during the week of, but looks like I only got pictures of the other stuff! During our Easter week, we acted out the triumphal entry, ate our "Jesus meal" (foods He would have eaten), and our Passover meal, and tried to have little devotionals each night. On Saturday after Gwen's party, we dyed a few eggs. Check! On Sunday morning we hunted for eggs and got a few fun things in our Easter baskets. Then Richie and I had to speak in church. Thank goodness Taysom was staying with us that weekend so we already had someone to wrangle the kids in sacrament. (Thanks Tay! That is no small job!) For dinner that night at the Garner's house, we ate a Jewish meal, complete with sitting on the floor and eating with our hands. Then Grandpa read a book with the kids and hunted for symbols of Christ around the yard. It was a beautiful week!


I wanted to get the classic picture of all the kids in their Sunday best on Easter. It didn't happen. The girls were even wearing their matching sailor dresses. I begged Gwen for just one picture, but she decided to throw a fit instead.


Dinner at Garner's

The rest of March

St. Patrick's Day. It's always fun to have an excuse to listen to Irish music all month long. We managed to have lucky charms that morning with green milk, and typical green smoothies. Later that night, we had our homeschool friends, the Kishpaughs, over for an Irish dinner. We had roasted potatoes, corned beef and cabbage (still not my favorite), Irish Soda Bread and donuts. :)


Miles had his first ever piano recital! He nailed it. He played "Old McDonald" and "The Prince(ss) Waltz". He didn't like the fact that the song he was playing was called a princess waltz, so his teacher graciously changed it to prince. :) I've been noticing that Miles has some high anxiety tendencies, and practicing piano can be a high stress situation. So I was extra proud that he hung in there, worked hard and performed so well.


My Mom came up just to help me with projects. Isn't she great?? She specifically worked on our bathroom. It was nearing completion when the flood in the attic happened last year. When the ceiling caved in, it ripped a bunch of paint off the walls etc. So my mom came in and re-textured some walls, re-grouted the bathtub and vanity, re-painted the walls, and painted the entire ceiling in the bathroom and in the hallway where we took out the old swamp cooler vent. The only thing left for me to do is paint the trim. I can't tell you how grateful I am! Even the smallest task has seemed daunting to me. I would look around the unfinished bathroom and just want to cry. But now, I think painting the trim might be doable for me. :)
She also helped us take the ripped and hashed plastic covers off our dining chairs and scotch guard the fabric. We'll see how long they last before they are totally hammered. We've already had blood and chocolate on the seats so...I guess we'd better start saving up for new covers on the chairs, sooner than later.
She did a million other little things while she was here. I'm sure she went home absolutely exhausted. But we are so grateful she came! We were all in tears as she drove away. Thank goodness she left us some Easter surprises to help soften the blow. Classic Mom. :)


Homeschool Group Day. We ended up hosting twice this month. The second time was kind of thrown together. We were talking about ancient China, so we played with tangrams and built great walls of China. It was one of those projects that you do for the process, not to keep forever. So here's a picture to prove we did it. :)


This girl and her personality are one of a kind. She is the comedian frequently in our family. She makes us laugh every day. She's especially on her A-game when she has a captive audience at meal times. This morning, she was just pulling one funny face after the other.


I wanted to document these two pictures Miles drew/wrote specifically. The first is one of MANY love notes for his girl Ava. He told me it said, "I am filled of love for you Ava. I love you Ava. Love, Miles. P.s. We are awesome." (I'm not sending this one. I'm keeping it for him to see later.) The other picture is possibly my favorite picture he has ever drawn. It cracked me up every time!! He showed it to me and said, "This is me shaking my bum at you. I have a shirt on but no pants!" And then we both started laughing uncontrollably. Note the nonchalant expression on his face.



Miles and Gwen have started "sneaking" in to Lindy's room at night and sleeping on her floor. When I asked why they said, "To keep her company". Ahh, makes my mother heart happy.