July- Part Two

Utah was a lot of fun. We were able to help out my sister-in-law with her new baby, play with Oatmeal (Reid's obnoxious little dog), visit my parents' new pad in Fountain Green, visit an ancestor's grave, Lamb Days, and do a lot of fun things like laser tag, sleepovers at Aunt Rosi's, visit with a few friends, lunches with Pee-pa, Pioneer Day parade, family BBQ, Temple Square, BYU, splash pads with cousins, the mall, etc., etc., and so forth.

Amelia LOVED baby Kane. She would wake up and ask Luiza what she could do for her. Such a good helper.

Amelia and cousin Mason got to play a lot while we were there. Such cute kids!

Lamb days was extremely hot. Poor Amelia was overheated. We put a wet washcloth on her head to try and cool her down.

We had dinner at Roy's Pizza in Ephraim. Good pizza. Cool family.

We visited the pioneer cemetery and left flowers for the kids' 4th Great Grandfather Christian Willardsen.

The fountain part of Fountain Green

Amelia was missing her Daddy and this Beast reminded her of him. So we bought it.

We went to a splash pad and found that it was closed. The kids were devastated by this, so I drove all the way across town to another splash pad, a whole 5 minutes before a thunderstorm hit! Good thing I could take them to Blickentstaff's for a treat after that!

We finally got to visit the Spriggs! We are sad Paul wasn't there, but we sure do love these people! 

Stay at Uncle Reid's comes at cost! Pulling weeds!

We went to the Church History Museum in Salt Lake. 

We had a girl's night at Rosi's and sent this cute boy off to stay with Grandma and Grandpa for a night. He had fun eating at McDonald's for every meal, hiking in flip flops, and visiting the Manti temple.

And then, after seeing like 3 movies in the theater, we ran out of things to do so we went to Costco where the kids ate samples and enjoyed piggy back rides from Aunt Rosi and Uncle Roy.

We had fun at the Spanish Fork Pioneer Day Parade.

After the parade we all went to Uncle Ryan's house for lunch. The cousins played really well. Fighting was minimal.

Sometimes it's hard to say goodbye.

One of Uncle Reid's future neighbor's was getting a basement poured. Amelia brought a snack to watch the show.

REID

We visited BYU twice. The kids loved all the Cosmo photo ops and creamery ice cream.

play date with Mason

We had a goodbye dinner at Texas Roadhouse. Roy was Amelia's jungle gym.

It was a crazy 2 and half weeks in Utah and then we headed back to San Jose to get situated in the house before school started.

I took the kids to IKEA so we could actually finish organizing the house. Since we were already in Palo Alto, I decided to take the kids the to a splash pad, followed by the Magical Bridge playground. They had a blast. Best park ever.

And that was our July! 

July- Part One

If I had to choose just one word to describe the entire month of July, it would be: CHAOS.

The month started with James' baptism on the 1st. 

Aunt Rosi and Grandma & Grandpa flew in the days before. We ate a horrible meal at Applebee's (HOW are they even in business?), showed everyone new the house, and had the missionaries over for dinner. We visited Monterey and took everyone on the very scenic 17 Mile Drive. The MEN put all the windows down and we were freezing and angry for half the ride. Punks.

Grandma chatting up strangers

Amelia was terrified of the "creatures" in the tide pools. "I don't want to touch the creatures!"

And we started packing/moving into our new house. Poor Aunt Rosi has a terrible time babysitting while we took a few loads over. Amelia was very unhappy when we dropped everyone off at the airport.

 The entire process took about 10 days with us moving on our own for 3 days, movers bringing the furniture on the 6th, and then unpacking the new house and cleaning the old apartment. We tried to reward the kids for being such troopers with swimming and slurpies lots of playing in the sprinklers. It was a LOT of work, and they were really very well behaved.

we do miss the hot tub! 

free slurpie day at 7/11

 We handed in our keys on the 12th. The kids were pretty sad to leave the apartment. I think that's normal. It's the only home Amelia really remembered. And of course, the pool. We all miss the pool.

And then I flew out to Utah with the kids on the 13th for a trip that we had planned far before we knew that we were moving.

Amelia was VERY excited about flying.

Stay tuned...

4•23•2017

Easter Sunday was beautiful. The kids got a lot from church (I'm sure our week of lessons helped). All our after-church meetings were cancelled, which was nice. We had a dinner of ham, au graten potatoes, asparagus, rolls, easter fruit fluff, and lemon meringue pie.

 It was Spring Break this week, so we stayed up late and slept in all week. Monday and Tuesday were rainy, so we had lazy tv days. It was nice to just be lazy for once. Dark, rainy weather never inspires me to be productive.

By Wednesday I was ready to not be lazy anymore though. The sun came out and we walked to lunch at Five Guys, picked up some things at Target and Marshall's, then went home and cleaned up the house as fast as we could so that we could spend the afternoon watching movies and eating popcorn. Paul had his weekly EQ meeting and didn't get home until well after 10. Re-assigning home teaching assignments always takes forever.

The walk home brought us by all these weeds. No wonder my allergies are going crazy right now!

On Thursday we went to Starbucks for breakfast. They have the best breakfast sandwiches. After breakfast we went to Orchard Supply and the kids picked out some plants. We cleaned the balcony and planted tomatoes, forget-me-nots, basil, mint, and strawberries. We will see if we can keep any of them alive. But the kids did have a great time planting. James lost his 6th tooth when he bit into a stale piece of pizza. The tooth fairy only had a $5 bill, so James scored big. We told him that next time the tooth fairy is bringing some pennies. James' team beat the Giants by 1 point (their 3rd win of the season).

James picked out this tomato plant and carried it home.

Friday was our last day of Spring Break. It went by so fast. I am really looking forward to summer break now! The weather was wonderful so we walked to lunch and then went to the library and got some new books. In the evening we went to the church building to do a service project for CDA Cares. We helped make 1,400 peanut butter sandwiches. The kids did great and it was a lot of fun. We watched SING for movie night. I can't say that I liked it. At all.

Reading books on the patio.

 

James was nervous about making sandwiches because he didn't think he was very good at it. But he did great.

Paul had to umpire early Saturday morning before heading to coach James' game against the Red Sox. James took a ball to the head and got to walk and was happy that his team won. Amelia amused herself with flash cards for the first half of the game, and then with dirt for the second half. After the game we headed to the BSA store where we got expensively outfitted. Then I got to spend three hours trying to figure out how to sew patches on evenly. Many seams were ripped. Much frustration ensued. Not my favorite Saturday night ever. I broke out in hives, which led to waking up with sealed eyelids, but that's a story for next week.

This Week's Conversation Highlights:

Easter according to Amelia: Jesus got himself dead and then he went to a spooky cave and the soldiers rolled the stone to lock him. And then he was alive again! And he saw Mary and those soldiers went back and rolled the stone back and they were mad

Amelia holds up a strip of paper that has her name on it and says "it says, 'dear Mia, make James disappear'"

Amelia is currently obsessed with Moana. In the movie a character tries to fatten up a chicken so that he can eat it. I was sitting on the sofa and Amelia brought her bowl of popcorn over to me and started sprinkling it all over me and said "I'm going to fatten you up, drumstick!"

Amelia was running around with a bottle cleaner and I told her "Amelia, go put that in the sink. It's for cleaning water bottle straws, it's not a toy" and she said "wow, that interesting. Tell me more" in the most sarcastic tone I've ever heard come from a three year old.

Paul made a ton of chicken for dinners this week and Amelia asked "is that for you? and he would say yes. Then she pointed to the next one, "is that for you?" and after he said yes to each piece of chicken she decided to change it up with, "is that for me?" and "is that for James?" and finally, "is that for mom?" Finally Paul gets fed up with the 5,000 and questions and says, "it's for all of us!" to which she replies, "oh, that's interesting. Tell me more..."