Spring Break and other things that sort of went as planned

Somewhere in the past few weeks we passed an important mile stone.  We've lived in Pocatello for over 18 months.  Why is that important?  Well we lived in Alabama for almost exactly 18 months.  So  it feels kind of special that we've passed the 18 month mark in Pocatello.  We are here for at least two more months.  I have no idea what life has in store for us after May 31st.  But just knowing that we are going to be here longer than we lived in Alabama is kind of comforting. Our time in Alabama was meaningful and our time in Pocatello is meaningful too.  

(By the way, in case you were wondering the longest we ever stayed somewhere was Logan, Utah.  We lived there 3 years after getting married, and Brandon had been there for something like 3 years when we got married.  Then we spent 2.5 years in Bountiful, Utah (though we did move from an upstairs apartment to a downstairs apartment during that time.)  Bountiful was followed by 2 years and 4 months in Fort Hood, Texas. Then 18 months in Fort Rucker, Alabama. Six months in Utah with Brandon's parents. Three months in Yellowstone.  And now 18 months and counting in Pocatello Idaho.  

In honor of our time here in Pocatello here's a picture I took while I was on a walk while Lydia was having a ukulele lesson.  It may not look like much, but the sun was shining and that was a BIG DEAL.  I am so over winter. 

Anyway, let's go back over the last two weeks of big and little things we've done here in Pocatello (and the surrounding communities).  These things include a Relief Society Birthday Dinner, important temple milestones, and a whole week of spring break where nothing went as planned, but everything turned out fine anyway. 

On Tuesday evening Charlotte and Lydia set up a whole zoo on the kitchen floor. 

They used some little animals from a board book that my Grandma Mary Ann gave us a few months ago.   This was the petting zoo area.

This was the duck and crane pond.  Lydia has learned how to fold paper crane and so we have something of an infestation.

This is the monkey house.

This is the aviary.  Charlotte originally made this as a cage for her toy bird name Wind.

The lion and tiger exhibit.  I love how the girls used cardboard things from boxes to make rocks.

The panda and collie exhibit.  (Not sure how those to go together, but okay.

Giraffs and I think Elephants are in the little gazebo.

Zebras. (under a stool)

And a boot that acted like the information booth.

Oh and that white paper has a map on it.

On Wednesday night we went to a Free STEM (Science Technology Engineering Math) night at  ISU's Hold Area.  We love STEM in our family so of course we went.  It helped that they also had free pizza.  We'd been to the Arena just a few days earlier for a basket ball game.  It was interesting to see how much the space had changed in just a few days.    

We liked this sign.  I think the Bengal is my favorite school mascot ever. 

After getting our pizza we walked around the floor and could see exhibits from different ISU departments showing how they used STEM. Brandon and I decided to split up.  He took the twins and I took the other *twins.*  Most of my time was spent making sure they didn't get lost so I didn't take many pictures.  Probably our favorite exhibit was this one with a computer racing game.

Our phones were over three years old so we decided to use some of our tax return money to buy new phones.  Brandon was in charge of picking out new ones. They arrived and he took care of getting mine all set up. He was so sweet and made sure to download all my apps and even set the alarms on my phone the exact same way.  I'm so happy to have a new phone.  This one has a better camera so my instagram account can actually look somewhat legit.  More importantly this new phone has a lot more storage space. I have some much more room for podcasts.  (Latest obsessions include LDS Perspectives as well as NPR's Throughline,  Planet Money, and How I Built This)  Anyway, here's the first selfie I took with my new camera on my new phone.

Thursday was a BIG night for me.  I am the Relief Society Meeting Coordinator and so I am in charge of the Relief Society Birthday Dinner which is a pretty big deal.  I've been thinking about this night for months. I'd met with the Relief Society Presidency and my committee to talk about what we wanted to do.  We decided on a theme of Soup Salad and Sisters.  (Later I changed it to Soup Salad and Sisterhood so it didn't sound like Sisters were on the menu too.)  We hoped that sisters would come and be able to get to know other women in the ward.  But none of us really knew how many people to expect.  I was hoping for about 40 people. Which would be more than double what our average attendance has been for the past several months.

Surprisingly I wasn't stressing or having any over the top anxiety about the dinner. Normally I would be stressing out about an activity of this size, but I tried something different this time.

Back in February I'd been listening to the Book of Mormon and thinking about the upcoming dinner.  I heard this scripture about the Sons of Mosiah and their mission to the Lamanities.

Alma 17: 9 And it came to pass that they journeyed many days in the wilderness, and they fasted much and prayed much that the Lord would grant unto them a portion of his Spirit to go with them, and abide with them, that they might be an instrument in the hands of God to bring, if it were possible, their brethren, the Lamanites, to the knowledge of the truth, to the knowledge of the baseness of the traditions of their fathers, which were not correct.

I'm pretty certain that a Relief Society Dinner is completely different than a religious mission to your enemies, but I really identified with the desire to be an instrument in the hands of God.  I wanted the sisters in my ward to come together and feel God's love for them and for each other. And I wanted them to have a nice night while they were doing that.  

I figured if the Sons of Mosiah fasted and prayed for help with their mission calling I could fast and pray for my little calling.  So on Fast Sunday in March I fasted for the Relief Society Dinner.  

I was surprised by results right away.  I'd sent around a sign up sheet the week before and it had been partially filled.  I was out of town on Fast Sunday, but the RS secretary took care of getting the sheet passed around again.  It came back to me completely filled. We had sisters bringing soup, sisters bringing fruit salad, and more sisters bringing dessert. One of the most important things on that sheet was a spot for someone to sign up if they had wedding decorations we could borrow.  I really didn't want to worry about decorations this year so I figured it would be easier to borrow some.  But no one signed up until after I fasted about it. 

Another thing that came together without much stress was getting a cake.  For some reason I really wanted us to have a Costco Birthday cake. I don't have a Costco card, but my mom does and she went with me to order the cake and then to pick it up the night of the party.  It was fun to have her help.

I got off at work early on Thursday so I would have time to pick up the cake and the rolls.  One of the sisters in the presidency took care of getting salad and ice.  I'd asked three sisters who are newer/less involved in the ward to come help my committee set up. I was also bringing a veggie tray so I got that ready before it was time for the helpers to come.

My helpers arrived and we got the room set up.  We had a little discussion about how many tables to set up.  We settled on 5 which meant 40 people.  We also set up three long tables for the food.  Before I knew anyone had signed up for decorations I'd borrowed some table decorations and fancy serving dishes from my mother in law.  I also found two people in the ward who were willing to let us borrow their fancy drink dispensers.  My committee member Khyliegh was especially helpful getting the food set up in an orderly fashion. She's so dedicated and dependable.  I'm glad I have her.

All this would have been for nothing if no one arrived, but thankfully people started pouring it.  By the time the Relief Society President welcomed everyone we had nearly every seat full.  After the prayer was said several more sisters arrived and so Khyleigh and I hurried and set up another table.  That brought our official chair count to 48, but I know some people were adding extra chairs to their table so we easily had over 50 people at the dinner.  It was AMAZING!  One thing that helped boost our numbers was that the Young Women all came.  But honestly we don't have that many young women so even without them we still had close to 40 adult women at the dinner.

We wanted to have lots of opportunities for sisters to talk with each other so we didn't have a key note speaker.  Instead we had three women share short testimonies of Relief Society.

Towards the end of the evening I borrowed a military tradition and had the oldest and youngest women cut the cake together.  I LOVE how this picture turned out.

My mom took this picture of me.  She says I barely sat down the entire night.  But I was so energized by how many people were there that I could have run around for another three hours.  As it was I woke up with so much energy the next morning.  Being around women always gives me energy.

So there you have it.  I put together a successful dinner WITHOUT major anxiety.  Fasting works!  (And so does having an supportive committee and a low key ward.)

How do you follow up a successful dinner?  You get a new fridge. At least that's what I did.  Our fridge had been officially declared dead on Monday evening by the maintenance guy that our property management company sent out.  He said the compressor was broken.  He said it was about $600 to replace and we had what looked like a $500 fridge so he was guessing the management company would just replace the fridge.  They got it ordered, but it wasn't able to be delivered until Friday.  Fortunately the freezer was still keeping things somewhat cold so we moved our freezer stuff into our chest freezer and moved the fridge stuff up into the not working freezer.

The maintenance guy suggested filing a claim with our renters insurance for the cost of lost food.  I did that and they paid us some money for that.  So all in all things worked out really well.

By the end of the week though we were really happy to have a new fridge. Brandon even went grocery shopping after the kids went to bed on Friday night because he was so excited to fill up the new fridge.  (And we'd run out of milk that morning and the kids were freaking out over the prospect of not having cereal.)

On Saturday we were all in good moods because this was the start of Spring Break.  Brandon had to go to Chrome in the Dome (a fancy car show) to man the booth for the SKILLS club.  He did that in the morning.  I asked the kids if they wanted to go and no one seemed interested.  So we stayed home and rearranged the bed rooms a little bit.

We moved Veronica into Derrick's room.  They used to share a room up until we moved to Pocatello. When we moved in here I felt that they were old enough that maybe they shouldn't share any more.  But lately Derrick has wanted Veronica to sleep in his room. I'd put them to bed in their separate rooms and then find them asleep in Derrick's bed when I went to check on them.  After a couple weeks of this I decided to move Veronica's bed into Derrick's room.  I figure its more appropriate for a brother and sister to share a room than to share a bed.

After the furniture was moved around Derrick started asking for his "Baby Vance."  He found Vance and started playing babies with Lydia's baby Rose.  It was so cute to see them playing together.

We still had a couple hours before Brandon would be back from Chrome in the Dome so the kids and I decided it was time to make rainbow cupcakes.  I'd watched a tutorial on how to do this and wanted to make them for Charlotte and Lydia's baptism, but they were too complicated for that.  Instead I saved the idea for St Patrick's day.

We mixed up two while cake mixes and then divided it into six bowls.  Then we used gel food coloring to color the batter.  This was the first time I'd ever used gel food coloring and I loved how dark

We spooned the batter on color at a time into a muffin tin to make rainbow layers.  Then we cooked the cupcakes. We put them away until the next day when we'd frost them.

While the cupcakes were baking we watched the Pocatello Temple ground breaking ceremony on my phone. Attendance at the temple site was strictly invitation only, but the ceremony was being broadcast to local stake centers. I didn't plan on going to that because I knew my kids wouldn't sit still. Then our bishop sent out a link to watch the ground breaking from home.  I figured the kids would do much better with that. They sort of paid attention.

Later in the day we stopped by the temple site on the way to my parents apartment. We are all excited to watch the temple be built here.  Construction will take between 2 to 3 years which means all the kids will probably be old enough (8 years old or older) to go to the dedication.  And Charlotte and Lydia will be old enough to do Baptisms for the Dead in the temple soon after it's complete.

We dropped the kids off at my parents and then Brandon and I went up to Idaho Falls to attend the temple there. It was our ward temple night (afternoon) and so we'd made plans to go.  Plus I'd been hearing about some changes to the endowment session and I was excited to see what I thought about the changes.

It was the BEST temple experience I've EVER had. My little feminist heart was so happy by the changes to make things more equitable.  And I hadn't realized the session was now shorter.  Usually I just have a headache by the end.  This time I was so full of energy. Normally I just want to leave when I'm done, but this time I stayed in the celestial room and whispered excitedly with Brandon until one of my ministering sisters told me to be more quiet.  Sorry honey that wasn't happening. After 12 years of going to the temple with varying amounts of dread and anxiety I was going to share these new feelings of acceptance and happiness.

After we left the temple we went to Wendy's and I had a burger with mushrooms on it. I used to hate mushrooms but I started liking them after I turned 34.  I guess I'm an adult now.  Then we drove back to Pocatello and picked up the kids.  Before we went home I had Brandon stop at the gas station to fill up the Honda with gas.  A few years ago I heard someone say they like to make sure they have a full tank of gas on Saturday night so if a emergency happened on Sunday they would have enough gas to leave town.  I figure that's a good rule of thumb so if we are out running errands and it's convenient to get gas I always like to do that.

The kids had fun setting up Leprechaun Traps before they went to bed.  I didn't help and I didn't take any pictures because I was tired and because I regret ever introducing our family to the idea of Leprechaun traps. But Brandon had fun setting them up with the kids.

In the morning the kids were sad to see that the Leprechaun had sprung all the traps. It looked like the leprechaun had fallen into one of our living room floor heater vents.  The kids were surprised to find that the leprechaun escaped out of one of the basement ceiling vents. 

He left and insane amount of gold so I guess we caught what the kids were after any way. I told Charlotte and next year she should just set up her Tooth Fairy Hotel and charge the leprechaun to stay there for the night.

The kids basically ate the chocolate coins for breakfast.  They then went to church where they got more coins in Primary.

After church my parents came over and we had a dinner with lots of green things.  Green jello, green apples, green grapes, kiwis, pickles, and a salad.

Then I got out the rainbow cupcakes.  I tried a trick to get rainbow frosting.  It worked, but my frosting piping skills need some refining.

These cupcakes were a lot of work, but I think they were worth it.

During dinner we got a text from my brother Billy saying he'd missed his flight out of Calgary Canada.  He was there for an audition with a symphony.  He was supposed to take the flight to LAX and then to Salt Lake City.  He was going to stay Sunday night with my sister Hillary and then Billy, Hillary, her husband Joe, and their baby Walter were going to drive up to Pocatello on Monday night and spend the night and Tuesday with us.  Then they'd all go back to Utah, and Billy would audition for the Utah Symphony.

Missing the flight put a wrench into those plans, but I figured Billy could figure out another flight.  He tried, but soon began to realize that unless he wanted to pay a small fortune there wasn't another flight.

That's when he sent me a text saying, "Brandon wouldn't want to drive to Canada would he?"

And I replied with, "Ha ha, I'm not sure he has a current passport."

But after a little while I realized Billy wasn't joking and that Brandon was probably Billy's best bet at getting back to America.  Brandon realized it too.  He and Billy talked and quickly came up with a plan.  Brandon would drive up 1-15 to the Canadian Border.  Billy would take a bus and then an Uber to the boarder.  Then he would walk across the border at the check point and meet Brandon on the other side.

The good news was that Calgary was pretty much a straight shot north of us.  The bad news was that it was going to be a 8 hour drive - one way.

But once the plan was set Brandon didn't hesitate.  My sister Lindsey had once driven 10 hours on 10 minutes notice to come rescue our family when we got stranded on the Texas/New Mexico Border.  Brandon wasn't going to hesitate to rescue my brother.

He packed up some things for the drive and was in the car by 6:00.  I teased him that this was his chance to go on a fun Spring Break trip like all his friends at school.  I was also glad that we'd filled up the gas tank the night before.  I knew he'd have to fill it up several more times that night, but I was glad he didn't have to waste time doing that before he got on the interstate.

Brandon drove basically all night. The moon was almost full so he could see a lot of the scenery while he drove.  He said it was really pretty.  He made it to the border at 2:00 am and found Billy waiting at a rest stop.  They turned around and started driving home.  They pulled over and took about an hour nap, and then kept driving.  They made it back to Pocatello around 10:00 am.

Meanwhile, back on the ranch we'd made some last minute adjustments to the Spring Break Plans. Not that we really had that many plans - I had to work every day except Wednesday so we didn't have plans to go anywhere far away.  We'd thought about planning a camping trip for Tuesday night, but  I'd ended up getting summoned for Jury Duty for the same week as Spring Break and so I didn't want to plan an overnight camping trip.  Then Hillary and Billy had started talking about visiting for part of the week, but hadn't really known which part at first. We basically had a vague outline for the week. But even that vague outline needed to be redrawn thanks to "Operation Rescue Billy."

My parents had planned to have one grand child over at their apartment every morning.  We'd decided they'd start with Veronica on Monday, Derrick on Tuesday, Lydia on Thursday, and finish with Charlotte and Friday.  The plan was they would spend time with the grand child and then drop them off at daycare. The daycare had something fun planned for every day of the week and the kids didn't want to miss those things.

I'd also signed Charlotte and Lydia up for a Robotics class through Bannock County 4H on Monday afternoon. I'd planned on Brandon picking them up from Daycare and taking them to the class at the fairgrounds, but now that Brandon was on a long haul road trip I wasn't sure if he'd be back in time to take them.  And if he was back he'd probably be sleeping.

After talking for a minute my parents and I decided that Charlotte and Lydia should have a sleep over at my parents house that night.  Then they could spend the morning with my parents, followed by my parents taking them to their robotics class in the afternoon. Honestly, once we came up with the idea I realized it was so perfect we should have done it all along.  My parents live near the fair grounds and it eliminated a lot of extra driving.

Somewhere in here I remembered I needed to check in with the Jury Duty office to see if I had to report the next day.  I called the pre-recorded line and got a message that there were no trials set that week and to call back the next week. Whew at least I didn't have that to worry about.

The girls hurried and packed their bags and left with my parents around the same time Brandon left.  I went back into the house and found it strangely quiet after all the activity of getting everyone out the door.  Derrick and Veronica looked at me like, "Are we going to do anything fun?" And so I quickly decided that we would unfold the couch bed and have a little sleepover party.  They thought that was a great idea.

So we all got into our pajamas and watched the Lion King together.  (It had been our movie night movie on Friday night and the kids ended up watching it something like 10 times during the 2 weeks we had it checked out from the library.)

In the morning Derrick and Veronica let me sleep in a little bit (that's my favorite part about Spring Break).  I got ready for work and helped them get ready for Day Care. I didn't feel like packing a lunch so I asked the kids if they wanted me to pick them up and take them to McDonalds for lunch.  Of course they said yes.

So on my lunch break I picked them up and we went to the McDonalds across the street from the ISU campus.  They each got burgers and fries and some chicken nuggets to share.  I saw another mushroom melt burger on the menu and had to try it.  (Wendy's was better.)

For dessert we had brown toppers.

It was a fun way to spend lunch.

Like I said, Brandon and Billy got back to Pocatello around 10:00 they stopped by my work to say hi.  I wondered why they didn't just go home and try to get some sleep, but they were trying to avoid screwing up their sleep patterns.  They did end up napping for an hour or two in the afternoon.

Brandon had grand plans for making dinner, but I could tell those weren't going to pan out so I ordered Little Caesars Pizza online and picked them up on my way home.  We had pizza and salad for dinner.  My parents came and brought Lydia and Charlotte home.

Lydia and Charlotte told me all about their robotic class.  Out of a class of 20 there were only about 3 girls.  They used special legos to make robots.

After dinner we waited for Hillary, Joe, and Walter to arrive.  When they did all the kids crowded around Walter. He loved the attention.

Here they are showing him the animals from the board book.

We eventually put the kids to bed and set up a pack in play in the dinning room for Walter.  My parents went home to go to bed too.  Billy, Hillary, and I pulled out the Green Thumb cards and taught the game to Joe who ended up beating us all.  Hillary says he's just naturally good at every game he ever plays.

Then we stayed up talking to Midnight which was probably super mean to Billy and Brandon, but they didn't complain.

In the morning my parents brought over 2 dozen Ridley's doughnuts for breakfast.  Those were a hit.

Sadly, I had to go to work, but everyone else was able to enjoy time together.  When I came home on my lunch break Billy was giving a private concert to the family and Walter was showing off some new walking skills.

I'd put together a Bloomin Quesodilla on Monday night after dinner and Brandon had put it in the oven before I got home.  So all we had to do was eat it when we got home. It was a super easy way to feed a crowd. I'd even made different quadrents for different people's tastes.  There was a meatless area for the vegan eater, a just bean and cheese quadrant for the picky eaters, and the rest was the yummy area.

Then we got the cupcakes out again.  Walter went gaga for the cupcakes and was chasing Lydia down for hers.

I had to go back to work, but I ended up getting all my stuff done early and my supervisor let me go home at 3:30.  That was nice.  Hillary had brought a pork loin and put that together with a mushroom sauce. It was yummy.

After dinner the Salt Lakers headed home and took Billy with them.  The visit had been short, but it was very fun.  I'm glad they took the time to visit us.  And I'm glad we'd figured out a way to get Billy to Pocatello.

My Mom and Dad left around the same time.  I realized that we still had a ton of evening left and so I took Charlotte and Veronica to DI to buy some things we needed.  We ended up getting the girls about 10 pairs of pants, shoes for four of us, an Easter Dress for Charlotte, and a jacket for Derrick. It was a good shopping trip.

The next day we put a lot of those things to work on our latest adventure. We'd decided even though we weren't going camping we still wanted to go somewhere on my day off.  I've wanted to visit Craters of the Moon since we've moved here, but just haven't done it yet.  So we decided that would be a good place to go.

Well, all I can say is that it's a good idea we didn't plan on camping there because the ground was covered in over 4 feet of snow!

We went for a little walk on the hard packed snow that was above the road.  We couldn't really see anything of note, but it felt good to get outside.

I can't believe how high the snow was.

This is the pay station at the entrance to the campground.  We all want to come back here and camp when the snow is gone. 

We spent some time in the visitors center, and had fun learning about the things we couldn't currently see.

And we got a pressed penny - of course.

This is one of my favorite pictures of the day.  The kids climbed to the top of a huge snow pile.

We got back into the car and started driving.  

Even though we hadn't been able to do much at Craters of the Moon we were all in great moods.  We were happy to be on an adventure.

Here's all the kids chilling out.

And me, I have a new hat and was trying to get a good picture of it.

Somehow we didn't have a map of Idaho in the car, but that wasn't a problem because I'm felt pretty confident that I knew our route.  To get to Craters of the Moon we went north to Blackfoot and then travelled north west to Arco and then west to Crater of the Moon.  I was pretty certain we could circle around the West side of Craters of the moon and travel south to Aberdeen and then south to Amercian Falls and then go east back to Pocatello.  It would be one large circle.  It was a perfect plan.  Except for one tiny detail.  There is no road from Craters of the Moon to Aberdeen.  In fact Craters of the Moon is located to the west of Aberdeen. Clearly I'm still figuring out Idaho Geography.


So that's how we ended up in Twin Falls.  The funny thing is that Twin Falls had kept coming to mind as a place we should go for Spring Break, but I'd kept dismissing it as "too far."  Well we ended up taking the long way there anyway.

We visited Twin Falls last May, but we barely saw half of the things there are to see there.  So I was happy to get a change to get more things off my list.  First we stopped at the South Side of the Perrine Memorial Bridge.  We stopped at the North Side last year, but later I learned the South Side is where the visitor center is.

Then we went down the Grade (Grade = road down into a canyon) to Centennial Water Front Park.  This is the flat area behind me in the picture.  We saw a waterfall.

Derrick was so excited to get to throw rocks into the water.

He happily went to work throwing rocks and playing with drift wood. 

He and I pulled a big log out of the water and then Brandon thrilled us all by throwing it in the water.

I love this picture of Charlotte on a dock.  She kept saying she wanted to live by this river. 

We went down a little trail and found this cool area.

Brandon tried to push the rock into the water (much to the delight of the kids, they think he's so funny.)

This picture is titled, "why I dress my kids in second hand clothes and shoes."

We all had a great time and we were a little sad to leave and head back home. We are visiting Boise in two weeks and I decided to modify our plans so that we can spend a night in Twin Falls when we are done in Boise. We really like this area and we realized that we over looked the Twin Falls airport as a place for Brandon to apply. We quickly put it on the list.

On Thursday it was Derrick's morning to spend at my parents.  He spent the morning with them and then his therapist picked him up in the afternoon.  I wanted to take Charlotte and Lydia out for lunch at McDonalds.  I thought I could be sneaky and pick them up without Veronica noticing, but they were all playing together on the playground when I arrived.  So Veronica was able to come along too.  We ordered the same things as on Monday, but this time I ordered a Salad for myself. We had a good time.  I took them back to Daycare and later they all watched the Lego Movie at the ISU theater.

Brandon went to Driggs on Thursday for an official tour of the maintenance company there.  Driggs has been at the top of our list, but after the tour he left feeling less than impressed.  So Driggs isn't at the top any more.

Friday was a rainy day and the daycare had planned a hike as their special activity.  But the weather probably cancelled that. The kids wanted Brandon to let them stay home from Daycare, and since he didn't have any plans that couldn't be done with them around he was able to keep them home.

Saturday was a busy day.  We played a quick round of the cleaning game and then I took Lydia with me to run some errands.  We went to Hobby Lobby to find a patch for Derrick's jacket.  Then we went and looked at chicks at Cal Ranch.

We also went to DI so she could find an Easter Dress.  Then we went to Fred Meyer to buys seeds for our garden. 

Back at home I put the patch on Derrick's jacket.  I'm hoping having a fun picture of a rocket helps him remember to grab his jacket even on warm days.

We had a quick lunch and then we took the kids to the arcade at Outer Limits.  The kids went here with Adventure Camp and have wanted to go back for a long time. They picked this as their reward for reading scriptures for the past month.  We gave them each $3 in tokens and they had fun on the games.

Veronica really liked this racing game.

Outerlimits could also be called, "How to blow $12 in less than 20 minutes," but overall the kids had fun. 

Then we came home and I started working in the garden.  My goal was just to get this area turned over and planted.  We planted peas, onions, radishes, and lettuce.  I'm hoping all these things will mature before we move. 

Getting that little part of the garden ready had been easier than I thought so I moved onto other areas and ended up getting it all turned over.  Now it's ready when I am ready to plant other things. 

Inside I also planted some mint, cilantro, and basil in some re-purposed pots.

We have a lot of firewood from dead branches we cut down last fall.  I want to get rid of the unsightly branches so I want to do a lot of fires this year.  We had our first one.  I made tin foil dinners and they were so good.

My parents came over and helped us eat the tin foil dinners in the dining room.  Then we all went outside and roasted marshmallows.

Lydia made this cute little garden.

Here are all our sticks.  Charlotte was the roasting queen and made perfect marshmallows every time. She does not get that from me.

Then we went inside and gave all the kids baths to get them ready for Sunday.  Some how we forgot to brush out their hair after the bath so Charlotte, who had some pretty bad tangles all week, woke up with an epic Spring Break rats nest on Sunday.

Thanks to our wet brush, our detaingling spray, and some distracting youtube vidoes I was able to vanquish the rats nest without too many tears. 

And that was our Spring Break and other things. 

And that gets us caught up.  Or at least it would have if I'd been able to finish this post on Sunday like I planned.  But what ever.  This post is long enough and so we are done. 



Thanks for reading.