May 2010

Ashley is excited for less activities. She has more time to play with Kaylee. They are cute girls. Justin is trying so hard to earn money. He has 63 cents so far. He was disappointed at Target yesterday morning when he discovered that 63 cents buys nothing. Not even candy. He has discovered the mail. If you want to make his day, mail him a letter. He checks the mail diligently looking for things for him.

Mia playing with her new tea set. She's also wearing Katelyn's Dora outfit in a size 4T. All my other kids still let me pick out what they are going to wear. Not Mia. She is one opinionated person. It's frustrating every morning to get her dressed and every evening when we choose pajamas. Mia has been sick so moments like this when she plays alone have been so great. She had a 102 fever all day yesterday and I finally got her on an antibiotic. She is feeling better today. At the Doctor's office she weighed 23 lbs. When will this girl grow?

Ashley had immigration day at school where she got to dress up as one her ancestors and pretend to go through the entire immigration process. Dressing up was the best part. She said they mainly waited in a lot of lines since that's what immigrants had to do. Seems strange to me. We borrowed this outfit from the Carlsons. She was supposed to be from Denmark.

Katelyn on top of the couch. She needed me to take this picture. She gets to move up to level 2 gymnastics next week. She is so excited. She is so close to a level 3. She wants it so badly. She does a beautiful round off back handspring on the floor. 20 pull-ups in a row consistently, although she has done 23 in a row. She does this great back walkover thing where she starts and ends with one leg extended. She says that her splits don't even hurt a bit anymore. She's working hard.

Ashley is getting baptized in July. She is so excited. We ordered this dress online and waiting to get her pictures taken so we can mail out invitations. She is mostly excited to get her own scriptures. She's read the early reader Book of Mormon cover to cover. She is ready for this next step.

Mia helping me clean the bowl. We love these financiers. They are as easy to make as cookies, but gluten-free and the whole family likes them. It's nice to have a treat we can bake together again.

Cute spectators at Katelyn's music program. Ashley was excited to get out of class for the program. She is nice to support Katelyn.

Katelyn did a great job at her school music program. She got to play the bells and sing songs. She gets nervous up in front of people, but did a great job. She is so cute. Her teachers Mrs. Myers and Mrs. Brewington love her and we all love them. I hope Justin and Mia get them as well.

April 2010

Teacher Appreciation Week was a little crazy for me this year as I somehow found myself in charge of it for Katelyn's class, which has two teachers. We worked it out. In addition, we made these cute cookie flowers to give to all our teachers. We have a lot of teachers to appreciate.

We made oobleck one day with two of Justin and Mia's friends. They are really Justin's friends, but Mia feels just as included. She loves her friends. They made a mess. I used to do this kind of thing all the time with Ashley and Katelyn. Not so much with Justin and Mia. Next year I can see us doing lots of this sort of thing.

In our Sunday Best. Justin has something around his mouth.

I really do love these people. April is so far away now that I can't really remember what we did. Here is what I remember:

Getting new carpet. This was so exciting, but a ridiculous amount of work. We could have moved for all the effort it took. I have a really organized home now. It needed to be done. I love our new carpet. It took the carpet guys all day long. They left at 8 pm. Then Hans had to cut off closet doors and bedroom doors since the carpet was too thick for them to close. And then I had to put everything back. It wore me out. It took me an entire 4 days to like the carpet since I was so bugged at how much work it took - mainly because I had paid people extra to move our stuff, but turns out we moved most of it anyway. The carpet upgraded our entire house. Now I just need Hans to finish baseboards around the new dining room wood floor.

Finishing up with the Running Group. Not so much the finishing part because I enjoyed the whole process immensely. I got to know women better who I have always admired. I coached 5 women in running. They started from nothing. No running. At all. And on May 1st they ran the entire Garden of the Gods 5K. Not an easy one. It is so hilly. They are inspiring. I hope they keep running.

Soccer. Spring soccer is a joke, yet somehow every year I sign up. This year it was Hans saying he would do it, but I should have known better. I've done it. We go to three practices a week and two games every Saturday. All while freezing. It's cold today - May 14th. It's absurd. The pool is open at Villa.

Yoga. I taught 6 classes last week and five this week. In addition to training for the Boulder 10K I have spent a little too much time teaching yoga. I enjoy it. Villa is SO nice. Hans came with me once to take a class and told me that it was so nice he might even consider working out while he was there. That's saying something, I guess.

End of year activities. I have done art nights, music programs, field day, mother's day teas, teacher appreciation, and more. I still have 2 zoo trips, an end of year program, spain day, immigration day, and 2 soccer games, a practice, and soccer parties before I can call the 2009-2010 school year done. I am excited. I love having my kids around all day long. I am being sincere when I say this too.

Patience. I've learned quite a bit of patience this month. I hate learning patience. Mainly it has been with Hans and his rather large calling at Church in a newly blended ward and with Hans at work dealing with an endless disaster of accounts from his previous employee. He is stressed.

I think that is all. I did sign up for the St. George marathon and somehow got in. Out of 11,000 applicants I got in. Ugh. I was not so secretly hoping to not get in. But I did. Now I am beginning marathon training on June 12th. I have decided that I am going to enjoy the next 4 months of training and be miserable on one day of running 26.2 miles. Last time I was miserable for 4 months of training and happy on one day of running 26.2 miles. This was my compromise to Hans. I set out last Saturday to run 6 slow miles and couldn't take it. I ran 1 slow mile and the rest all really fast. But it felt good. So now I will be back to all my posts about running.

April was a good month. Now I will hopefully write about May before it's the end of June.