APA Spring Break, Jane Braces Off, Cheer Tryouts

Charles and his friend Beau like to make videos, and they like to cook together. So they often will combine the two. On this particular day, I needed some cookies for an activity, and I asked the boys if they'd like to bake them. They were happy to oblige and they made 6 dozen Lion  House chocolate chip cookies.

Elisabeth and Charles are in a different school district than Annabelle, Jane and Nora, and because of that, sometimes our days-off don't line up. This wouldn't be great if we were trying to plan a vacation, but we don't often do that in the middle of the year,  so it works out well for us. I actually kinda liked having the smaller groups at home, and being able to do age-appropriate activities for each group when they were off. We started off each morning with normal chores and an extra chore (since we have extra time), and then we'd have something fun planned for the afternoon. But we always had to be home by 3 or so, because that's when the others get home and the crazy after school schedule begins where we're driving kids to all their activities.

Jane got her braces off on the first day of her spring break! She's most likely going to get them on again once all her adult teeth have grown in.

We walked to Walmart one day and picked up a treat.

While there, I noticed they are making some new barbies, that don't have your typical barbie look...a little overweight, with bigger thighs and smaller chests :).

A friend of mine, she was a neighbor last year until she moved to Montana, published her first book! So I bought a copy off Amazon and read it. It's a clean historical romance, so if you're looking for something in that genre, pick it up.

This is me always trying to be better with my food habits. I make plans and schedules for foods and then I try to stick to it. The weekends are the hardest, partly because all the kids are home all day and eating constantly, and they're wanting treats, and partly because I've accidentally trained my brain to think weekends mean more food and more fun food. It's a work in progress.

Tuesdays our theater has $5 movies, and mini popcorns for $1.50, so I took the girls to see Dumbo.

During the elementary kids Spring Break, Elisabeth had cheer tryouts. They needed a head shot turned in with her application, so we snapped this one and printed it at Costco. She also needed teachers signatures in each class for the two days leading up to try-outs (after they'd learned their routine and cheer; probably to make sure they weren't skipping to practice), and she had to have a teacher letter of recommendation, along with her transcript (over 3.0 GPA required; she's fine with her 3.9) and attendance from the year. 

Wednesday night was cheer tryouts. They had to stay the entire time, while all 65 girls tried out, and for any call backs. By 930pm, she found out she made the team! Here she is with our friend/neighbor Emma, who was on Varsity last year, and made it again this year. We were a little surprised Elisabeth made it as they were only taking 37 girls, and 45 were returning (they had 2 big squads last year, between JV and Varsity), because it means she made it over some returners. She worked hard on getting her standing back tuck, which we knew was important, and she nailed it during tryouts!

That weekend was General Conference. Saturday and Sunday we hung around the house and watched it together. I love conference weekends. And how nice is it that we can watch from the comfort of our own homes, in our sweats if we want. I remember dressing up, while growing up in Seattle, and driving to the stake center to watch a session of conference.

Nora lost a big, important front tooth! She looks so stinkin' cute with that missing tooth!

A couple of months ago, we started a family scripture memorizing challenge. We pick a short scripture to memorize, we read it each morning together as part of our family scripture study, and if the kids have it memorized by the weekend (Nora gets a little help from us), then they can pick out a treat (around $1) for the weekend. Sometimes I"ll post them on the fridge so they can see them during the week. IT has worked well so far. Something fun: as we listened to general conference, 3 of the scriptures we had memorized were read aloud, and the kids all started reciting it with them! I guess we picked some good ones.

This is an amazing Creamy Coconut Korma recipe I came up with recently. And we've made it a couple of times since. I have it posted on my realfoodsmom.wordpress blog if you want to go look it up.

Romney's visit, Jane's Birthday

At the end of March, we were lucky enough to have the Romney's come stay with us for a couple of nights. Becca and I talk regularly, and I don't mean just texting or Marco Polo, but actual visiting on the phone. I only do that with two other people: Scott and my mom. I wish we lived closer so we could hang out more, but we'll take what we can get!

Baby Rain is growing up fast! The kids took turns holding and playing with him all weekend. He got lots of love!

They came this particular weekend because Blake's mom, who lives in Colorado, just turned 70, and his aunt and uncle, who live close to me, were having a big weekend party with a 'women only' brunch Saturday morning (which they kindly invited me to; this picture was taken just before our brunch), and Saturday night they had a dinner social, and Sunday morning another family brunch. But we got them Friday night, and most of Saturday which was nice.

While they were at their dinner social, we had Jane's friend birthday party. We thought it might be a bit chaotic for my sister and their family to have all these cute girls running around for a couple of hours, but it worked well to do it in the in between time. The girls painted princess wands and played several games. I love having older kids who I can rope into helping with the games.

Jane's favorite treat is a kreme filled donut, so we picked up donuts from Krispy Kreme, most of which were free because our kids (ages 12 and under) brought in their grades, and they get a free donut for every A grade, up to 6...usually it's just glazed, but they were out of glazed, so they let us pick whatever we wanted. She also special requested Little Caesar's Pizza and Breadsticks...we only do breadsticks for birthdays.

Jane, Annabelle and Nora have been really into the Lego Friends, and Jane got several new Lego sets for her birthday; one from us and a couple smaller ones from friends. The girls spent some time together setting them up and playing, and I even talked 14-year-old Elisabeth into joining them for a bit, the sweetheart.

Charles and Elisabeth had about a month or so in March where they were both learning new songs on the guitar, and Elisabeth was learning how to play them from the internet.

I even got short videos that go with these. I'll see if I can attache them here somehow, but if not, they're on our family youtube channel.

This girl Saige is one of our favorite people. She lights up the room! We've known Saige since she was about 2 years old. She was our next door neighbor then, and now she's not next door, but she's only a block over. She has a seizure disorder and doesn't have many words, but she is a joy. She sits with us at church, every other Sunday (she doesn't like to go with her family, so we switch off taking her with another family in our ward), we babysit her occasionally, maybe every other month or so, and when her hair needs to be done nice for a event/holiday/photo shoot, she'll come over and we'll curl her hair, as she is more willing to let us do it, than her family who she is obviously super comfortable and casual with.

Nora's friend is doing mini Miss Utah along with a Jr Miss Utah and was raising money through a dance class. Nora attended and here's their cute group.

Just a random, interesting car Nora and I parked next to at our library.

Jane's friend party was a few days before her actual birthday. On her birthday, she opened presents in the morning and we had cereal (a treat in our house), and then I pulled her out of school during her lunch and we ate lunch at Chuck-a-Rama and then went shopping with some of her birthday money.

Love this little lady!

Poem Recitations, Writing, Band Concert and Temple Trip

About a month ago, the girls were given an assignment at school, to pick and memorize a poem or speech to recite after their Spring Break. Jane and Annabelle chose the same poem by Shel Silverstein called Obedient. It's a cute one, and they both had it down perfectly. 

Nora decided to memorize Goodnight Moon, which is one of our favorite bedtime stories, and which I she recently did a book report on. 

She did awesome and memorized the entire thing! It's tricky trying to remember the order of all the rhymes. She asked me to take a picture of her sleeping in front of the tri-board I  she made. So what I'm wondering is: do the first grade teachers know that when they ask their 6-year-old students to do a triboard book report, or a diorama for that matter, that it's mostly a project for mom and dad? They probably do. I guess it's good; she did write out all the answers on the board, in cursive, and I felt pretty good about the way my 'goodnight moon' construction paper image turned out. Being creative, or creating anything, is fulfilling.

Speaking of being creative, I'm working on another book. I say 'another' because I wrote a book, several years ago. Well, a first draft to a book. That I never edited, and never tried to get published. It was a clean, romantic novel. I'm going to get back to that book one day. Anyhow, I'm back at it again. For the past several months, I've set aside time each morning, 2-3 hours, where I work on my book. I should be done with the first draft by the end of May, or at least, that's my goal, since that's also when the kids get out of school for the Summer. This is where I write. At my desk, in front of a window, in my bedroom. I keep the desk pretty clear, minus my laptop and a notebook where I jot down ideas for the book, and my water. Oh, and my paper that reminds me why I'm writing a book(we need more good, clean entertainment and something that will make us smile and laugh), so that when I'm not feeling motivated(50% of the time), I can read through that paper and remember why I'm spending so many hours doing this.

And my reward for writing each day, is that I can wear my sweats while I write. But once I'm done writing, I have to change out of my sweats and put on "normal" clothes. Normal meaning jeans or nice pants, you know, the stiff sort of clothes that you can't wait to get out of, at the end of the day. I've decided that I really love sweats and all clothes that are soft and comfortable, so I'm in the process of updating my wardrobe, replacing some items with cute, and presentable 'leisure' clothing. I don't consider sweats to be presentable. My dad, who was from Mexico, dressed up, every day. Even if he was staying home. Daily he wore a white collar, button-up shirt, with a sweater vest, nice khaki pants and polished shoes. I wonder what he'd think of his daughter who loves to wear sweats every day :).

I love this picture of Nora, giving our next door neighbor, Myla, a lift on Charles' electric scooter. Life doesn't get much better than that.

Charles has been in the band for the past two years, playing the percussion, which he really enjoys.  Scott and I have played with the idea of getting him a nice drum set, but then I remember how loud our house is without drums, and that thought soon vanishes. We really enjoy for him to play too, at the school.

The weather has gotten nice enough recently that Scott and I will go outside to exercise a couple of times a week. I actually do long runs on Saturday year round, with a neighbor, unless there's so much snow on the ground that we cannot safely run, but that doesn't happen very often. But in the winter, most of my weekday exercises, and Scott's as well, are done in our basement where we have a treadmill, a bike, some weights, and a tv so we can do workout dvds or we can watch the Hallmark channel while we run/walk/ride. I prefer the latter, but I find I just don't push myself as much while watching Hallmark movies. So I've made a deal with myself where I can watch Hallmark two days a week, but the other 4 I've got to be a little more serious about my training and exercise. This picture was taken after a 4 mile, tempo run we did together.

Elisabeth is growing up so fast! So is Charles! It's hard to believe that she's almost 15. She'll be driving next year! And possibly dating; but let's not think about that. She has a good group of friends that she likes to spend time with. A lot of time with. Here they are outside of the Draper temple, just after I dropped them off, and just before they went in to do baptisms.

Another mom picked them up when they were done, and took them to Rita's for frozen custard and Italian ice. She's a cooler mom than me. I should step up my game. I could handle $1 cones. 

Piano Recital, Family Scripture Study, Half Marathon Training, Get Out Pass

Annabelle's good friend from school, Sariah, was doing a photo shoot (along with some of her family members) for a neighbor who is building a business, and Annabelle was at her house just before and they invited her to go along. I thought he did a good job.

Elisabeth, Annabelle and Jane had a Spring piano recital. This was Elisabeth's first recital with this teacher. I'm not gonna lie, it was nice to have all three girls in one recital, instead of having to go to multiple recitals. 

 They all performed beautifully.

 Anyone else's family scripture time look like this? Nora has been reading in handstand position, and we have to continuously remind kids to, "please sit up,". We do our family scripture study time at 630am, because that's when we're all home every day. Saturdays and Sundays are later. Sundays we go longer and we each study something from Come, Follow Me and then come together and talk about it. The other days of the week, we read from the Book of Mormon.

 My BYU roommate, Natalie, asked if I would want to run the Salt Lake Half Marathon on April 13th (which is my birthday). I registered, so now I'm all in. Here's a picture of the history on my watch, which had my last three outdoor runs (I don't record the ones on the treadmill, because it's not very accurate, and I don't go that long on the treadmill anyway...usually just 2-3 miles). I like to have one or two long runs that go over 13 miles, so when race day arrives, 13.1 doesn't seem so daunting.  Even though I've run 4 or so halves, I am a little nervous about this race. I've never done the Salt Lake half, but I've heard this one is a bit more challenging as there's some uphill and flat, and not as much down, like the Provo run. I don't have high expectations; hoping to finish under a 9 minute pace, but I think I'll just be happy to finish, and glad I got a good run in on my birthday when I'm  going to indulge on foods. Natalie and I may start together, but she's like Speedy Gonzalez, so she'll lose me fast.

 We got Get Out Passes for Charles and Elisabeth for Christmas. We've used them a few times so far, but 2 out of the three activities seemed like they were for younger kids. The boys didn't seem to mind on this last climbing place; they rocked it when put up against the 3 year olds in there :). I'm excited for them to use the Lagoon pass, and Cowabunga Bay...those alone will be worth the price.

Russell M Nelson Favorite Foods for Bookclub, added shelf to pantry

As mentioned previously, I picked Russell M Nelson's biography for book club this month. When you pick the book, you also host, and provide some refreshments. I hoped I would find some ideas as to foods he likes in the book so I could have those available. Food was rarely mentioned, so it was tricky, but there were a couple of references. It was mentioned that every general conference, during priesthood session, His wife and their daughters made donuts. When the men returned home, they'd all eat donuts while the men shared what they'd learned during that session of conference. 

The only other thing that was mentioned was that, "In the general authority lunchroom, Elder Nelson generally confines his disciplined palate to a bowl of soup, while many others prefer roast beef, mashed potatoes and gravy. He never criticizes what others eat, but he is aware of the need to discipline  the natural appetites of the body." pg 367 It sounds like he eats pretty healthy. So we had a fruit bowl (no added sugar, just fruit and lemon juice, and a can of peaches in it's juice), veggies with hummus, and mini donuts...not homemade because I didn't want to put in the hours or have the mess. 

 The past two Saturday afternoons, Scott and the kids have been working on this pantry. There were three shelves, spaced way too far apart(see all the unusable space in the first three pictures?), and the the bottom shelf we needed to raise, as our buckets were too tall to fit underneath.

 The first Saturday was spent taking off the bottom shelf, patching and painting holes, and then making new ones that were a few inches higher and putting the shelf back in. The following Saturday, they added in a fourth shelf, just under the top shelf. Then we reorganized and put everything back in. Much better! I'm so happy we don't have three huge buckets in the middle of the pantry floor taking up space, and I'm so glad we put another shelf in there!