April 2022

We did a stay-cation for Spring Break this year.  It ended up being such a fun week.  In fact at the end of the week one of the kids told me this was one of best spring breaks we've had.  I usually worked each morning and then we did one activity each afternoon.

The first night Shane took the kids night skiing.  They had so much fun and shut the mountain down at 9pm.  They all improved so much and of course now want to go all the time.

We went to the Provo Rec Center to swim with The Pace's.

We went to the Ninja Gym.  The kids are obsessed with American Ninja Warrior and wanted to try out some obstacles.  They had fun and all had blisters by the time we were done.

We went to Airborne and then stopped by this little Petting Zoo.  You can see how excited Jaron was about the petting zoo part. But then he held his favorite animal, a turtle, and cheered up. 

We went to a Park and then Pizza Pie Cafe for dinner that night.  

The BYU women's soccer team played UVU for a spring game which was fun to go watch.  And then we went to the BYU Creamery afterwards.

In between all those activities we bought the game Clue and the kids were obsessed with it all week playing constantly.

I had a doctor appointment one day and as I got on the express lane I got a flat tire.  I couldn't drive on it at all and had to pull over.  I called Shane but because we only have 1 car right now he was going to have to ride his bike down to me.  I called my dad who was on Jennifer's helping fix something at her house and he said he would go pick Shane up and come over.  While I was waiting this nice man pulled over on the highway and climbed up this hill to help me.  Shane and Dad pulled up, we had a hard time finding our spare tire but we finally got it changed and off we went to buy a new tire.  I was grateful for this stranger that stopped and helped and grateful for my Dad and Shane coming to help out.  My Dad even parked his Tesla so that if someone were to hit us it would hit his Tesla first.

Easter is always fun.  The kids wanted to do the Easter egg hunt for Highland city even though it was freezing and windy that morning.  Our neighbors also invited the kids to a glow in the dark egg hunt and it was so fun and they had soo so many eggs.  We also dyed eggs as is the tradition.

Easter morning we had a quick egg hunt before going to church where the kids sang in Sacrament meeting.  That afternoon we went to Grandma and Grandpa's for dinner.  We played a couple rounds of Deal or No Deal that Siena got in her Easter Basket.  It was so fun.

Siena and Jaron went to an escape room with their Knowledge Bowl team and had such a fun evening.  They have loved Knowledge Bowl this year.

We got free tickets from our friend Dana Leavitt to the Tulip Festival. I had heard how pretty it was but had never been.  We had such a fun afternoon seeing the flowers and walking around. Jaron was skiing and didn't come.

Jaron got to go skiing with his friend Graham on one of the days we had off from school.  He has been asking to go with Graham and Graham, who is on a ski team, was so patient to help Jaron improve and get better.

March 2022

Jaron finished up his 2nd indoor soccer season.  And although the first season didn't have any wins, this season was much better.  We recruited a few boys to play with us and we ended up tying 2 games and winning all the others.  Jaron played goalie for 1/2 of most of the games and although he would rather be in the game, he was such a good goalie.  It made me so nervous though watching him.  Such a fun season and their coach got them all a trophy which the boys loved.  Jaron has loved indoor soccer so much and it really improved his speed and footwork I felt like.

Jennifer gets lots of free tickets to Jazz games and I was so excited when she invited me to go with her one night to a game.  It was so fun to see the Jazz in person and have some sister time.  The kids, as always, were so mad that I left them home.

We got free passes to a Grizzlies hockey game with our Get Out Pass and The Pace's came with us.  It was a fun night watching hockey and hanging out with friends.

Chip and Ozzie had their 2nd birthday.  The girls celebrated by giving them a vegetable 'cake' and lots of hay treats.

Since we are studying the Old Testament this year, this month we got to the story of Joseph and the colored coat.  We decided to do a family pyramid to represent Joseph being sold into Egypt and then leading the people to prepare for 7 years of famine.

We had a fun night with ice cream celebrating all the wins and competitions our kids have been in lately.

The kids love having sleepovers in each others rooms.  This night was cute because Jaron didn't even sleep in his own bed and I found him asleep right next to Siena on the floor.

We celebrated Pie Day 3/14 with some razzleberry pie, whip cream and ice cream.  My kids have discovered a love of berry pie and that makes me so happy.

St Patrick's Day is still a very fun holiday around here.  The secret leprechaun left dollar bills taped to our door this year and there were a lot of traps made but they still didn't catch the leprechaun.  Our green dinner tradition never disappoints either.

My parents bought new couches for their house and offered us their old couches for our basement.  It was kind of a pain because we had to take them completely apart to get them through doors but we are so happy to have couches and Shane and I watch TV down there almost every night.  We can turn it up loud and not have to worry about waking the kids up.

The girls participated in some craft classes at the library this month and one of them was learning how to make balloon art.  They made balloon dogs and then the guy who did the class made them each their own different balloon figure.  An elephant for Siena and a wheelchair for Aria's dog.

Battle of the Books and Knowledge Bowl

We've had all 3 kids in a few school competitions these last couple weeks that deserve their own posts about.

Battle of the Books

All 3 kids participated in Battle of the Books.  This is where they get a list of 20 books that they can read through out the year.  Then they form groups and in March have a competition of trivia questions about the books.  They need to correctly give the book name and the author's last name.  All 3 kids read all 20 books which makes me so happy.  You only have to read 3 of them to participate but if you read all 20 you get to be an all-star.

Jaron was in a group with 3 other boys including his good friends Aiden and Royce.  Jaron got to be the team captain which means he had to be the one to answer the question after he conferred with his group.  They did a great job and I got to sit in on a couple rounds and help out with the questions.  During one round of the non elimination rounds their group was up against a really good 4th grade team (Ryder Daniels team in our ward) and they lost.  Jaron had a rough time because one question he had to guess on and when he guessed his friends didn't like his guess and weren't super nice about it.  He felt so bad and started crying at the end.  It broke my heart but luckily his friends apologized and knew they hadn't been very nice about it.  Good but hard life lesson.  They won their other 3 rounds.  Unfortunately they lost in the first elimination round.

Siena and Aria were on the same team together with 3 other kids in their class.  Siena was the team captain.  They had a great time and won all 4 of their rounds.  During elimination rounds they kept going and going.  In the semi-finals they went up against Ryder's team (that beat Jaron's team) and they beat them.  I felt bad because Ryder was crushed and so sad about.  So that meant they were in the finals.  The final round is held in front of the entire 2nd, 3rd and 4th grades.  Shane and I got to go and watch.  I was so nervous for them.  But they won!  I was so impressed with how well they did and it was so fun to watch them win.  They were excited and got trophies and a $30 gift card to a book store for it.

After the final battle all the all-stars got to battle the 3rd and 4th grade teachers in a round.  Ryder was the team captain for the 4th grade and Jaron was the team captain for 3rd grade (they were the ones in each grade that finished all 20 books first.)  They ended up tying the teachers and it was such a fun time.

Knowledge Bowl

Siena and Jaron have been participating in Knowledge Bowl this year.  Aria does orchestra so she didn't do Knowledge Bowl this year but wants to next year.  Once a week they've been going to school an hour early and learning about Geography.  I've been so impressed with everything they have learned.  Utah geography, US geography and even some world geography.  They know states/capitols, counties, national monuments, forests, parks, rivers, oceans, etc.  

They had 3 fun competition events where they got to show off their knowledge with buzzer rounds.  The first was an assembly where they got to battle against the 3/4th grade teachers.  They beat the teachers by a lot.

They had a practice competition with 2 other schools.  They had 3 rounds against 3 different teams and they won each of their rounds.  There is a trophy that gets passed around for the winning school and Ridgeline got the trophy.

Then the final competition was the district wide competition.  There were approximately 28 schools that participated.  We had a fun study session the night before with Ryder who was on their team.  The actual competition was a little bit rough and hard.  The other schools were so fast at those buzzers and so we lost 3 of our 4 rounds.  The kids were so disappointed and it was a rough day after studying so hard all year to come out like that.  But we focused on what we've learned and after all the other successes I think they learned some good life lessons.  We can't always win everything but we can have fun and be grateful for the experience.

The whole team celebrated by going to an escape room one night.  Siena and Jaron might think that was the best part of the whole experience, they had so much fun.

They have already said they want to do it again next year.  The topic I think is history next year.

Over all these competitions I am so proud of my kids for participating learning and growing so much.  Also thankful our school has such good support and great programs like these to help kids to keep learning and pushing themselves.