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.

March 2021

Our next door neighbor, Maddi is pregnant with triplets right now.  She is on bedrest for going into pre-labor.  She's not due until July so it's going to be a long few months.  (She had the babies in May and they are doing great!)  We had a day off of school so took her 2 kids with my kids and we headed up to the zoo.  It was such a fun day, not crowded and I think the kids were happy to get out of the house.

We had an unusually warm Saturday in March and because we didn't have much going on, we took the kids and went to Antelope Island.  None of us had been there before.  We had such a fun day.  We saw the old farm out there, saw a bunch of bison, took a short hike to an overlook and then spent time at the beach at the Salt Lake.  We spent over 4 hours there and easily could've spent a few more.  Such a fun day to get out and enjoy warm sunny weather.

The chalk comes out every spring.  This yeah though instead of just drawing random lines and stuff, they drew pictures of their squishmallows.  I was actually impressed how they turned out.

Siena and Aria participated in Battle of Books this year at school.  They get a list of 20 books to read and then have a contest answering questions against other teams.  They did pretty good but had to face some hard 4th grade teams.  I was impressed that both girls read all 20 books.  Because they read all the books they got to be on the all star team for 3rd grade.  Out of all the 3rd grade classes, only 10 read all the books.  They battled against the teachers and won!

The secret leprechaun made another visit of course for St Patrick's day.  The kids love this tradition.  They also made their annual leprechaun traps and got some rainbow treats after school.

It was finally my turn for the Covid vaccine.  Actually I got it a couple weeks ahead of schedule because my niece Ashlee works at the Walgreens pharmacy and had some extra doses one night.  Since they had thawed them they had to use them so she called us up.  I felt so happy after a long year of non-stop covid closures, news, consuming our life.  I was feeling so hopeful this was the beginning of the end.  My arm was super sore the next day but other than that I felt fine.  My 2nd dose 3 weeks later made me super light headed where I almost passed out the morning after and just felt off all day but it really wasn't too bad.

The girls threw Chip and Ozzie a birthday party.  They planned the whole thing, made invitations for a few neighbors.  The made Chip and Ozzie a veggie 'cake' and brownies for the humans.  They played a few games and it was actually just kind of cute of them.  They still love these guinea pigs so much.  They do a pretty good job taking care of them, cleaning their cage and making sure they have enough attention.

February 2021

We always have a lot of deer that come through our yard, mostly in the winter.  Last winter we had one take a nap in our yard a couple days in a row.  This year we had 3 hanging out right next to our house.  As much as we hate all the poop in our yard, it's still fun to see them.

Once again we couldn't have our family get together for the super bowl so we had our own with just our family.  We had different snacks and dinner just like we were at grandma and grandpa's and we even made our own scoring game so we could win candy bars at the end of each quarter.  It ended up being a fun evening but we still miss out get togethers.

The girls played another season of basketball.  It was fun for them because they are finally to the age where it isn't co-ed anymore and I think they had a lot more fun that way playing with all their friends.  Shane and I helped coach along with their friend Vanessa's dad.

All 3 kids got to make their own valentine boxes and bring them to school.  It's kind of a pain if I'm being honest but they have fun making them so I guess it's worth it! 

The girls had another friend party hosted by her friend Ella.  Her mom always plans such fun little parties and events.

We had a fancy Valentine's dinner together as a family.  The kids had fun decorating the table and always like when we do things just a bit different for special occasions.

Aria cracks me up a lot of times.  She decided she wanted to sleep on the floor one night and even though her bed was right there she slept on the floor for about 2 weeks.  I always knew she had a lot of stuffed animals but we had never counted them.  She asked me to help her count and organize all her stuffed animals.  I was dying when I counted 121 stuffed animals!  Anytime she goes to the store with money, she always, without fail, buys a stuffed animals.  She can't resist those cute animals.  She is truly an animal lover and nothing can deter her.  She still checks out horse non-fiction books at the library, the same ones over and over again.

All 3 kids have been listening to the Harry Potter audio books.  They are obsessed with them and listen to them every night before bed and any other chance they get.  Siena decided to throw the family a little Harry Potter party one day.  These were her little creations she made that we got for going to the party.  It was so fun and cute and creative of her.