insta-april

insta-april


{4.1.19}

Nothing can top swinging on the tire swing with Grandpa-Great on a beautiful, if chilly, Wyoming day. #alsobabycows

{4.1.19}

Sweetest Caleb wouldn't go to sleep tonight. He wanted to sit in the chair and so I let him, half expecting him to come out in two minutes. When I came back to check on him, he had fallen asleep. I ♥️ him.



{4.4.19}
We spent the last week with these crazy kids and we were SO sad to say goodbye so they could leave to move to their new home in Iowa. But we've had a great time tracking their progress across the country today and are getting excited for our own trip to visit them soon. Anyone who has talked to me recently has heard all about how sad I am for my sister to move. 😭 But I'm excited for them and we are going to make the very best of it that we can! ♥️

{4.10.19}

I love Spring. I love the sunshine and the clouds, the rainy days and the mornings we wake up to a spring snowstorm outside. Every sunny day reminds me that warmer days are coming and every rainy/snowy day promises one less smokey/fire day this Summer. ☀️🌦️❄️

{4.27.19}
Yard work Saturday! First (real) one of the season. 🎉🌳🔨 I'm usually not so excited about yard work but it's also one of the first Saturdays that David has been home all year and it basically feels like a vacation. Also, I realized today that we are having a baby in 7 weeks 🤯 so I guess it's good that my other baby is getting so big!

Busy Season Dates

Busy season is always crazy and so I am grateful when Shantel and I get some good dates and time to be together. 

There was a tiny art show at a store down in provo on center street and we went down and checked it out. It was really interesting. It was also funny because the show was at a really hipster type clothes store and totally did not fit us, but the art show was cool. 

We exchanged dates for Valentines day and one of the dates Shantel got me was Jazz tickets! I really loved going to the game with Shantel. Funny story- before the game I was going through the Jazz players with Shantel and telling her who everyone was. I mentioned Grayson Allen and just said that he would not play unless it was a really big blow out. Well- the Jazz had a few guys not play, so Allen ended up playing. So Shantel was all in cheering for him. Then he went off and had a career high 23 points. It was so funny. I spent a lot of time with her at USU basketball games when we were dating and it was so much fun to go to a Jazz game with her.

The next day we actually had tickets to Newsies at HCT Orem. It was a great production and we really enjoyed it.

The next weekend was the "after busy season party" at a Real Salt Lake game. We had a really enjoyable time and mostly just liked being together.

It was so nice to have so many good dates during busy season to stay connected even when I am working more. 

Homeschool Adventures

Some more adventures we've been on as we've been up to this homeschooling thing: 

(This is the best life I can possibly imagine.) 

Alice in Wonderland at Kingsbury Hall (University of Utah). 

This is our fourth theater adventure this year. (1-Annie Get Your Gun, 2-Frozen, 3-Velveteen Rabbit, 4-Alice) We went with our little neighbor Lilly who lives next door to us and is also homeschooled. I'm so glad that Lydia has friends who have chosen the same educational path and that there are so many resources and opportunities available - like this production specifically targeted to school-aged kids! So many neat things we can be involved in. 

Spring Break Day! 

So, we didn't take a very legit Spring Break this year. Technically Spring Break was the week that the Haderlies were in Morgan when we went to stay and spend time with them - but I still had Lydia do a good portion of her school work, only taking a day or so off. I kind of felt like we didn't need a Spring Break and I was happy to keep working through our stuff. But towards the end of the month, I decided that we DID need a break so when the kids woke up I surprised them with a Spring Break Day! We headed to the mountains to go on a hike. We didn't make it all the way to the top because ... I realized about halfway that I'm 31 weeks pregnant and carrying a two year old up a shouldn't-have-been-classified-as-an-easy-spring-hike-becauseitwasactually-really-steep wasn't really on my game-plan for the day. Even though we didn't make it to the top, we made it to this beautiful river with a fun bridge. We ate a little picnic lunch right by the river and then headed back down. It was beautiful!

Spring Break Day Part 2

After our hike through the mountains we stopped at the store and picked a box of fun popcicles and took them to a fun park in Sandy that we'd never been to before. There were 12 popcicles in the box and I let them eat them until they were all gone. We played at this park for 3-4 hours. I just sat and watched while they climbed and played and laughed. We played hide and seek together and I pushed them on the swings. I wasn't expecting to stay so long, but I wasn't in a rush. It was exactly the spring break day that we needed. As the grand finale, we picked up a Little Caesars pizza on the way home and their lives were made. So glad my kids are easy to impress!

Onion Research Project

This may be one of my favorite projects that we've done all year. Lydia found an onion that had sprouted in our basement, left over from last September when we picked onions at the USU extension in Kaysville. (When I say sprouted, I mean, it had 18 inches worth of growth.) Lydia thought it was so cool and asked to learn about onions. I found a couple of YouTube videos and a website about onions (plus a couple of fun songs about onions) and we learned all about onions together. Then we spent about an hour cutting up the onion. We counted the layers and just explored the vegetable with no particular end goal in mind. At the end I had Lydia write a page about what she had learned. It was a huge homeschool success. Totally unprompted but ended up being engaging and interesting!

Reading

That's all this girl does these days. 

Planting Seeds

We did a unit on seeds and prepared to plant a garden. We planted peas, carrots, watermelon, zucchini, and corn. Lydia bought a strawberry plant with her family economy money (and I bought a tomato that I'm hoping survives until I can plant it outside). We learned about lots of different kinds of seeds and what things seeds need to grow. We will watch them grow inside until it's warm enough to transplant them outside. I have grand plans for a garden this summer with pictures of me happily weeding while the kids play outside and my baby sleeps in her bouncer next to me. I know it probably won't be so dreamy and already I'm thinking my garden eyes were bigger than my garden stomach (meaning I bought all the things but maybe should have just focused on a few things). But it's been so fun to watch our peas sprout and know that the rest of the seeds aren't far behind. 

Easter Celebration

Happy Easter! The kids were so excited for Easter this year, so Easter Sunday was really an Easter week. We don't have photos for everything, but the kids loved Easter egg hunts and insisted on doing an Easter egg hunt almost every day. Here are a few pictures. 

Lydia surprised us and updated our letter board for Easter. 

The kids pulling candy/cereal/popcorn out of eggs after one of the many easter egg hunts.

We did the "big" easter egg hunt on Saturday morning. Amy helped us hide the eggs on Friday night and the kids had so much fun. 

Sunday morning we did Easter baskets, with a few eggs with some candy, some slippers and a church book for each of them. Also we gave them a "garden kit" that should be really fun.

Before church, we got a few cute Easter outfit pictures.

Happy Easter!