April 2021

Jaron got to participate in 2nd Grade Market Day.  The girls had to do it from home last year so it was fun to see him actually get to do it in school.  He created a ping pong ball toss game and said lots of people came to his store to play the game.  

I didn't have any tricks or anything planned for April Fools so when Brigitte called me up and asked if we wanted to come to their mixed up dinner with them we were all in.  She made the kids menu's so they didn't know what they were ordering so they ended up ordering dessert first, a fork 2nd, etc. and it was all mixed up.  The kids had a lot of fun and a cute way to celebrate.

Just because most pictures on this blog are not of me since I'm taking them most of the time.  Just a cute selfie of me and my girls.

We had a great Easter.  We had the usual Easter baskets, egg hunt and fun.  We then went to church and then we actually got to go to my parents for Easter dinner.  With most adults at least partially vaccinated, we were feeling ok about it.  Even though not everyone was there, it was our first get together with multiple families since the summer before.  It was so fun and just felt like life was getting back to normal.

I still like to take pictures of my kids asleep from time to time.  I'll go check on them and they'll just be so cute or have their stuffed animals lined up just perfectly.

My niece Eliza, who I always call my cancer buddy because she had leukemia when she was 3 right before I was diagnosed with Hodgkin's Lymphoma.  Well she got her mission call to Australia, so once again we are on similar paths.  She is the cutest and know she will be such a great missionary.

We put together a cute little neighbor birthday party for our neighbor Lisbon since her mom is still on bedrest with triplets.  It was fun to have them over and they played a few games, opened presents and sang to her with brownies.

Each night we read scriptures together as a family.  A lot of nights this is exhausting and someone is always mad at someone else but this night was cute as I looked over and saw Siena holding her dad's hand.

Another season of soccer.  His friend Daniel's mom was their coach.  Daniel has been on his team for a few years.  His friend Graham, Parker and Noah were all on his team as well.  It was a fun season and Jaron did really well scoring multiple goals most games.  He's really taken to soccer and absolutely loves it.  He was pretty proud that he even got a hat tricks of hat tricks (3 goals for 3 consecutive games.)

The girls also played another season.  They had such a great coach that was so encouraging, patient and really good at teaching them moves and plays to use in the game.

Siena set a goal to learn and cook a dinner all by herself.  A couple weeks before she helped me while I made dinner and then this night she took the lead and made most of the dinner herself.  We had lasagna, rolls, jello and she did a great job making the lasagna.  She loves to cook and is starting to be able to make things herself, especially baking items.

Aria had her end of year orchestra performance.  I wasn't sure what to expect but was pleasantly surprised at how good they sounded.  They put it all together and it was fun to see her play in a group.  She really enjoyed going to orchestra this year and is already excited for next year.

We signed the kids up for the Provo city kids marathon.  They had to run 25 miles on their own leading up to the race and then the night of the race they came to Provo and ran the last mile.  It was a fun way to get them exercising a little and it was the first race they had participated in.  They loved the t-shirts, water bottles and bounce houses there maybe more than the race but it was a fun night with the Pace's and also Graham Alley and his family.

Spring Break 2021

 For Spring break this year we took a trip to Northern California.  We hadn't seen Shane's mom since December 2019 and with covid and her husband Jim not able to travel easily since he's on oxygen we decided we needed to take a trip to go see her.  Plus Jaron had never been to grandma's house and the girl's had only been there when they were 1 years old.  It was time to see where grandma lived.  The one thing that made this trip is the kids are listening to all the Harry Potter audio books.  They listened to this non stop our whole trip without complaint and a million how much longer!

We drove out all one day but made a stop at the salt flats.  The kids thought it was pretty cool to walk on salt and I even convinced them to try some.  haha!

We got to grandma's about dinner time and grandma ordered us some pizza.  We went on a walk over to Shane's elementary school and walked around his neighborhood.

The next morning we took a drive to Butterfly Valley.  There were some Pitcher Plants (which are carnivorous plants) we wanted to see.  We ended up seeing these really cook sandhill cranes that had the coolest and loudest honking and trilling sound.  We eventually found the Pitcher plants and it was fun to see them. It was a super fun morning exploring around this place.  

We visited Grandpa Glover's grave and even though the kids and I never met him I thought it was important to show them his grave.

The kids slept upstairs in their attic room and thought it was pretty fun to have the whole upstairs to themselves.

The next day we woke up and drove out to the Redwood Forrest.  We drove through a tree, and went on some pretty fun hikes/walks.  We started on the south end and drove up north stopping at various places to see different things.  

The 2nd day we went on a fun waterfall hike and then over to this cool walk through where part of Jurassic Park 2 was filmed.  You walk through this river and the walls surround you are all covered in moss.  It was super cool.  We also stopped at Trees of Mystery where you can walk across swing bridges and ride a gondola to the top of this mountain overlooking everything.  The kids loved this and ran around for a while.  We took the gondola up a few times just because it was so fun and went pretty fast.

We ended up in Crescent City that has a fog horn that blows every 30 seconds 24 hours a day every single day no matter the weather.  Interesting, and I'm sure if you live there you don't think twice about it but we could hear it inside our hotel room.  They had some tide pools that were great and the kids had a blast looking all around there.  And it's always good for my soul to have some sunshine and a beach, even if it was pretty chilly.

We drove back to Grandma's via Oregon so we could check Oregon off the kids states list.  We saw these cool falls called Burney Falls.  They were super impressive actually and we hike to them and then up and around the back side across a bridge.  Fun little stop on a long car driving day.  We spent one last night with Grandma and then headed home the next day.  We had such a fun trip, got to see lots of new things and loved that we got to see Grandma again, it had been way too long.