April 2023

We stayed home this year for Spring Break but had a fun time doing lots of different things.

Monday was puzzle day. Siena and Aria created an escape room for us to figure out. It was fun and creative of them. We went to Labrynth that has lots of mini escape rooms/puzzle obstacle courses to solve.

Tuesday we got the biggest snow storm maybe of the season. So. much. snow!!! We were watching a friends dog and by accident left their garage door open the night before and all the snow blew into their garage and I spent a while shoveling it all out so we could even close their garage door. So the theme was snow day. Aria and Jaron played in the snow, Siena played inside and ran to the neighbors in shorts and a t-shirt to feed their dog, Aria played Christmas music on her violin. That night we watched Sound of Music which the kids had never seen and they liked it more than they thought they would.

Wednesday was Ninja day. We went to the Ninja gym which they love and always come home with blisters. We also saw the elk that live in the hills by us. They had some down trying to find grass that wasn't all covered in snow. It was the first time seeing them up close.

Thursday was Mario day. Siena made up a cute Mario craft for us each to make and then we went and saw the new Mario Movie followed by dinner at Shake Shack and a ferris wheel ride at Cabela's.

Friday was ski day. Shane, Siena and Aria went skiing and Jaron stayed home with me since he was sick. This was their last time skiing for the season. We also dyed Easter eggs for Easter on Sunday.

Saturday we had a busy day. We were asked to come help clean the chapel then we ran over to the Highland Easter egg hunt missing the starting time for literally 30 seconds and missed out getting any eggs. We are never late and I felt bad we missed it this year. Then we used our Lagoon passes for the first time. It was super fun and it had warmed up a bit so it felt good to be outside and feel the sun. It was super crowded but the kids were excited just to be there.

Sunday was Easter and we had our egg hunt followed by Church and dinner at my parents.  I only got one picture on Easter and it was not of us dressed up all cute for Church like I would've liked.

Lisbon our next door neighbor got a bunny and so the girls have all been having bunny/guinea pig play dates. And it's been nicer weather so they've enjoyed playing outside a bit more.

Jaron won the Goold Family March Madness trophy this year. He was so excited because he's come close but never won it.

Outdoor soccer games started up again. Always fun to get back into soccer and always fun when Grandma and Grandpa show up.

The kids discovered geocaching and have been having fun begging me to take them to find different geocaches. It's fun to see them get excited about new things they've never heard of before.

Jaron had his 4th grade country project. He did San Juan County and wrote to them and got a lot of cool brochures and information about his county. He even made some famous landmarks out of clay.

Aria had her end of year Orchestra concert and did a great job as always. I'm always amazed how well the music sounds with so many different students.

The kids had their end of school year knowledge bowl party and had a fun time going to escape room, which they always love!

March 2023

This is going to be a long post with everything we had going on in March.

Battle of the Books - Ridgeline.  The girls started first with Battle of the Books, always their favorite event of the year.  They have read all 20 books and most they have read twice or 3 times even.  This year instead of elimination rounds they just added up the points and the top 2 teams went to the finals.  Siena and Aria's team (with Annie, Athena and another Aria) went to the school final and won.  This is their 2nd year winning and they were excited because this year they got to go to the district wide competition.

The district competition was at American Fork Jr High and it was so fun.  We made matching t-shirts for the team.  They did about 6 rounds I think and out of the 40 teams that were there, they ended up placing 5th!  It was fun because they also got to meet and were given a copy of 'The False Prince' signed by Jennifer Nielsen.  She also spoke to the whole group for a while which was so fun.

Battle of the Books - Westfield.  Jaron had his competition after the girls school competition.  They still do elimination rounds at his school (wish they didn't, always causes crying) and Jaron's team made it through the first day.  The 2nd day he made it to the top 4 teams.   Jaron so bad wanted to go to the finals.  The top 2 teams get trophies and I think that is what he wanted, he has also seen his sisters win twice now.  Well the team he went up against (also from his same class) came down to a tie.  They did 4 tie breaker questions and it was still a tie.  So I guess the rules are you go to a buzzer round (I do NOT like this rule)  Jaron was the team captain and when they asked the question he was literally one step behind and they lost.  I was so sad for their team, who all started crying.  It was a very rough day.  I so wish they had changed the way they did this because I think Jaron's team would've gone to the finals but those were the rules and that day it wasn't in our favor.  I tried to make sure Jaron learned something from this, that sometimes we lose even when we do our best.  We learned to be good sports even when we don't like the outcome.  The captain of the other team was so nice and came over to Jaron afterwards and was so nice and gracious about it, I was thankful for that.

All 3 of the kids did Knowledge Bowl this year.  The subject was history which was not their favorite and Siena and Aria especially had a hard time because the 5/6th graders had to learn all of the world history.  When it came to their competition the questions were so hard.  Who was the father of Alexander the Great (stuff like that) which a lot was nothing they had studied.  So it was a bit of a let down for them but they still had fun.

Jaron's team who didn't have to learn world history just Utah and US history had a much better experience.  The questions were more relevant to stuff they had studied and they did a great job and ended up getting in the top10 of all the teams.  One of the questions made me laugh.  What event brought the world to Utah in 2002?  These young kids weren't alive when the olympics were here and no one of the 10 kids on the teams answered it.  Seemed so obvious to all the adults but things like that are hard when you weren't born.

Aria joined a writing club at the library.  It was kind of fun for her to have something of her own that she likes to do.  They learned all the basics of how to write a fictional book, building characters, setting the scene, etc.  She has lots of ideas of stories she wants to write so we'll see how that goes in the next while.

Our Secret Leprechaun remembered us again this year.  Always a fun tradition to see what green things he can find.

Siena talked us into getting her a Betta fish.  She bought a large tank for it.  So introducing Archie, the red Betta fish.  She keeps it in her room and does a good job of feeding and keeping the tank clean.

The kids had free passes to the Butterfly museum that were expiring so we randomly went one night.  The girls love being able to find and hold the butterflies, even though they were a little harder to hold this night for some reason.  A fun night.