We made it to May

April is finally over! I don't know if April has ever felt so long. This has been a weird year - time wise. Normally February feels long because it's cold and dark, but thanks to being in a play that opened the first weekend in March, February zipped by. And normally May feels super busy, but thanks to all my overcommitments in April, May actually feels very simple by comparison. 

So here is a post about finishing up April and heading into May. 

On Sunday after church we went out to Niagara Springs with Jori and her family. The original plan had been to hike to Tea Kettle Cave. But one of Jori's kids got diagnosed with strep on Saturday. She was feeling better after antiboitics, but not hike a mile and a half better. So we decided to pivot to just going to Niagara Springs and hanging out in the grassy picnic area. 

This turned out to be the way better plan anyway. The day was slightly rainy and there had been thunder and lightning while we were getting ready to leave. I would have been scared to try to hike in that weather. 

We got to Niagara Springs just as the weather cleared up and we never got rained on again. So we ended up having a really lovely time. 

Jori's family had never been there before so we went over to see the springs first. I'd left my phone in the car so I didn't even get a picture. 

We spent most of the time sitting at a picnic table and snacking. The kids played in the run off water and ran around in the grass. 

Charlotte and Lydia wanted to climb a tree, but they couldn't reach the lower branches. They enlisted Derrick and Veronica into helping them carry a picnic table to the base of the tree. 

Then they used that to reach the lower branches of the tree. 

I love this picture of all four kids up the tree - yes all four. Lydia is way up at the top. 

The afternoon was just perfect. It was overcast the whole time, but also warm. We had a really great time hanging out. 

When we got back home we watched a couple episodes of Sweet Tooth. We'd watched the first episode the night before and I'd dreamed about it all night. I was super curious what was going to happen. 

On Monday I was hoping to go to work for several hours. But Veronica threw a wrench in my plans. Or rather Veronica's eye threw a wrench. All week long she'd had a stye that was just getting bigger and bigger. 

We'd started putting warm compresses on it and trying to wash it really well, but it still wasn't decreasing in size. She was really embarrassed about it and didn't want to go to school. 

So I made a drs appointment for her and told her she could stay home the whole day. But the catch was that she had to go to school every day the rest of the week. 

The Drs appt wasn't until 11:30 so I went to work for a few hours. Then I came home and took Veronica to the doctor. It seems like we never see our primary care doctor for urgent medical stuff. We usually end up seeing another doctor. I never mind through because that other doctor has tons of experience. He's a good resource. 

He talked to us about the stye and gave some good tips for taking care of it. He also wrote a perscription for a gel we could put on her eye. 

Everything worked and on Tuesday it all finally started draining and started shrinking. 

That afternoon the other set of Twins came over after school. They hung around for several hours. We were all in the back yard for a while. I was going through all the plants that I got at the class that their step mom had taught at Moss Greenhouse on Monday. I had a lot of four packs and just didn't need that many plants. So I was cutting those in half. I'd keep two and put the other two into a bin for Jori. 

Macey showed up to pick up her girls. We were all standing around talking for a minute. I asked Gwen if she was excited for summer. She said, "yes, but I lose track of my friends during the summer." So then I said that I wanted to make sure we had some get togethers with all Charlotte and Lydia's friends this summer. 

Lydia was like, "Could we just do that this Friday?"  I thought about it for two seconds and said yes. So all four girls started planning who they could invite over. I was happy to let them all take the lead on this. 

After dinner I went on a hike to the Evil Knievel Jump Station. Charlotte and Lydia went with me. Charlotte was so excited to see all the cows in the field next to the trail. 

Here's the obligatory picture of Shoshone Falls. 

On the way back there were a whole bunch of baby cows by the fence. 

Charlotte was in heaven.

When we got home we watched one more episode of Sweet Tooth. I was really enjoying this show. It's been a VERY long time since I went into a TV show or movie without any idea what to expect. I'd never even heard of the show until Charlotte and Lydia talked about it. So it was really fun to watch it and have no idea of where the story was going. 

On Tuesday it was Derrick's turn to disrupt my work plans - but this one was more premeditated. Usually I can schedule his orthodontist appointments close to 9:00 so its really simple to drop in without disrupting my morning too much. This time the earliest we could get in was 10:00. 

So I had more than an hour to fill with Derrick. First we went to D&B and bought four bags of top soil and two bags of chicken manure. Derrick liked loading the bags onto my cart and then into the car. 

Then we went to Castle Therapy so I could do the billing there. Castle Therapy is just one office inside of a larger Physical Therapy office. The Physical therapy people let Derrick run on the treadmill for a few minutes. He liked that. I joked that he had quite the work out that morning. 

And then we finally went to the orthodontist so he could get his wire adjusted. 

And then I finally dropped him off at school and went to work. 

At work I had a huge project. A whole bunch of clients moved from Select Health to St Lukes Health Plan. I've been switched the clients here and there as they've brought in their new ID cards or as claims have come back denied from Select Health. 

On Tuesday 10-15 claims came back denied because the clients had switched to St Lukes. I had to look them up in the St Lukes system, find their ID numbers, get things updated in my system, create new claims, and then manually submit the claims to St lukes. (Normally I can automatically submit claims with my software, but this software doesn't cooperate with St Lukes Health Plan. So I have to submit the claims manually.)

Nothing about the process was hard, but doing it for 10 to 15 clients all in one day was A LOT. I basically melted my brain before it was all over. 

Our evening at home was kind of blah. Veronica doesn't have theatre on Tuesdays anymore and it was kind of nice to not take her anywhere, but it also made the afternoon feel long and directionless. 

Plus the weather got really cold and no one wanted to go outside. And Brandon wasn't feeling well. And uhh basically it was just not great. 

But we finished it off with an episode of Sweet Tooth and that was nice. 

Wednesday was a better day - even if I did have a to do list that felt like a mile long. 

There were so many little things to do. 

One of the things was Scripture Study. We were on the Truck chapter of The Mother Tree. I wasn't exactly sure what to focus on this time so I just left it as an open ended discussion. That was perfect. There were a lot of good things to say. 

Then I spent a lot of the day working through all the little things on my to do list. 

In my Facebook memories a picture of my tulips from 5 years ago came up.  I couldn't believe how much different things looked. 

Here's the picture from 2020.

I went outside and took a picture from the same location. What a difference!

Around the time that Veronica came home from school I'd finished all the boring indoor stuff on my list and could finally move onto the fun outdoor stuff. 

I went to the back of my vegetable garden and prepped two beds for planting. Last summer I moved the wood frames from the area that became the fire pit. Then I just filled them with bark chips when I was trying to figure out where to stick all the bark chips that came with that unexpected second drop. 

Now it was time to actually get the beds ready. I moved the wood chips over so I could dig up the soil under the wood chips. Then I mixed the wood chips in with the soil. I also put two bags of top soil and one bag of chicken manure in each bed. 

When all that was done I was able to plant ALL the plants. Even after giving away so many to Jori I still had so many to plant. I put 11 tomatoes into this bed. (Most of them are indeterminate so I can single stem them up firring stakes so hopefully things wont get too squishy in this bed.)

And then I planted so many peppers in this bed. It was a little early to plant tomatoes and peppers, but I was getting sick of moving them in and out of the garage. I didn't see any freezes on the horizon so I figured it was worth the risk. 

I had four tomatoes that I could not fit in. So I took a picture and put them in our ward's mom chat. My friend Hanah came and got them. (And bought me three small loaves of sour dough so that was an awesome trade.)

None of the kids were interested in the youth activity so they all stayed home. When I was done with the planting we watched another episode of Sweet Tooth. 

Thursday was the first day of May. I was so happy to have made it. It was another big day of work. I was at Castle, and then Gaining Perspective, and then Aspen Grove. I was at Aspen Grove for 4 hours. There were a lot of payments to process, and it was the first of the month so I had to print and mail statements for clients who were past due by over $100 or 60 days.  

That evening Charlotte and Lydia had their last orchestra concert of Middle School. 

I was hoping to get some good pictures to commemorate that. But the girls never really want to pose for these kinds of things. It's like they don't want any photographic proof that they are in orchestra. 

So I'm left with pictures that look like a private detective was trying to sneak and get pictures. 

See, here is Charlotte's back. 

I went up to the edge of the stage while they were warming up and this was still the best picture I could get of Charlotte. 

Lydia at least looked at me. 

The videos I took aren't much better. It's kind of hard to have girls that are sitting on complete opposite sides of a multi-middle school orchestra. 

For the actual performance Charlotte wasn't on the outer edge of the stage. She was the second one on the back row. Lydia was on the back row of cellos. 

But I tried. Here is their first song, Ships of Ireland. 

And their second song, Russian Sailor Dance

Here they are all standing for pictures at the end.

I tried to get a picture of Charlotte. 

Lydia's was harder because she was right beside her friend Hazel. But we finally got one. 

This was the big combined concert with the High School. So we stayed and listened to the Concert and Chamber Orchestra. The conductor teaches two classes at Charlotte and Lydia's middle school. Two classes at another middle school. And two at the High School. Charlotte and Lydia are happy that they already know one of their high school teachers. 

We came home and had ice cream. We were hoping to finish season one of Sweet Tooth, but we were out of time. 

On Friday I woke up feeling OVERWHELMED. I had so much to do at work and I didn't want to do any of it. But I knew it would just get worse if I took the day off. 

So I plugged along with my morning routine and got all the kids dropped off at school. Then I went to work and started getting things done. I wrapped myself up in my office blanket and that helped. 

I got through all four hours of work that I planned to do and got a lot of things crossed off my list. I felt caught up on some things for the first time all week. 

I was done at 1:00 and went to Derrick's school to pick him up. He'd had a rough afternoon on Thursday and had been freaking out on the bus. He hadn't wanted to go to school at all. That morning we made a deal that if he went to work I'd pick him up early. 

He was so happy when I came and got him. We stopped at the bank and then came home. 

When we were home Derrick wanted to watch a movie or something. I was like, "you do whatever you want."  I laid down on the padded bench on the patio and took a nap for 2 hours. It was WONDERFUL. There wasn't even a breeze blowing and everything was silent. 

It was just what I needed after a long week. 

I felt so much better when I woke up. The twins were home and we worked on the last few things to get things ready for their fire that night. Brandon took care of ordering and picking up pizza. 

Around 6:00 the girls started showing up. I think there were 6 other girls there. Aurora and Gwen of course, then a girl named Abby. A girl named Abby from our ward was there. Another girl named Claire and another named Lily. 

Charlotte and Lydia were really kind and let Veronica hang out with their friends all night. They didn't have to do that, but I was glad they did. Sometimes they act like Veronica is sooooooo much younger than them. I'm like, "you have no idea how lucky you are that your youngest sibling is only three years younger than you. When I was 14 Hillary was SIX!!!!!!!!"

Veronica fit right in all night and had a blast. 

The girls started out playing music and being really loud as they sang and danced around the yard. I was being very hands off with this whole thing so I just went into the front yard and worked on weeding for like an hour. 

Around 7:00 Lydia lit the fire and got out things for smores. I went out there and made a smore. I was like, "hey I paid for these. I can eat one."  

Gradually all the girls started gathering around the fire. 

They spent a lot of time talking around that fire. I think they were like this from about 8:00 until 10:00. This night was exactly what I hoped it would be. These girls knew eachother at school, but they weren't really on "hangout after school" status yet. But by the end of the night they'd created a group chat and were sharing pictures and vowing to hang out a lot over the summer. 

Brandon and I sat on the covered patio and talked. Around 9:45 Macey came over and we caught up on life. Neither of us can believe that we are going to have high schoolers next year. (Actually next year is not accurate. It's more like high schoolers in 3 and a half months. If you really want your mind blown, next year as in 2026 is when Derrick will be in high school!)

The other girls parents started arriving around 10:00. All the girls said they'd had a great time. Brandon and I told the girls and their parents that the girls were welcome here anytime. 

On Saturday we had lots of projects. First we started by helping a new family move into the ward. Brandon went to help load things from their storage unit into a moving van. And then I took the kids to the house to help take things from the moving van to the house. There were other people helping so it went really quick. 

Back at home I went through my clothes and switched out the winter clothes for summer clothes and also pulled out stuff to go to DI. I did the same thing with Veronica's clothes. 

Then Derrick and Veronica went with me to DI to drop off the clothes and then go inside to pick out shorts. 

After that Brandon and I spent a lot of time working on things outside. He worked on stairs down into the fire pit (we had been using the stairs used to get to Derrick's loft bed.) And I worked on prepping the soil around the fire pit and getting it ready for plants. 

Lydia spent the whole day down in the craft room. She designed and sewed a bag for her paints so that she could easily take them outside to paint. 

Brandon worked on the stairs all afternoon and was like completely unaffected by the 80+ degree weather. 

I was digging in the soil and taking a thousand little breaks to avoid heat stroke. But I got all the black berries finally moved away from the white fence and the soil turned over and ready for the different amendments I'll add next week. 

At 5:00 we met up with a bunch of friends at a nearby park for a bring your own picnic dinner. It was my friend Chandler's spur of the moment idea. That morning she'd just sent out a text saying that everyone should meet up at the park and bring their own dinner. It was such a good idea. 

Chandler was there with her four kids. Her husband had a drone and Derrick LOVED that. Jori was there with her four kids and so was Lindsay. (Their husbands were working.) It was so fun to see our 11-10 year old daughters walking around together. Beth was there with her kids too. 

Brandon was finally succumbing to the heat. I'd bought him two things of Gatorade and he'd drank those really fast. He laid on our picnic blanket for a long time and finally perked up after a while. 

We went home around 7:00. I told all the kids to take showers and Brandon and I ran over to D&B and bought a cattle panel. Then we came home and installed it as a entryway arch for the fire pit area. 

Here are the stairs that Brandon built and the arch that we put up together. 

And here's what the arch looks like from this side. I'm hoping to get something really cool to climb on this. 

All the kids had taken showers so when we were done we went inside and watched the Season finale for Sweet Tooth. It was really good. It ended on a cliff hanger through so all the kids were begging to watch another. I was like, "no, I need a shower."

So they all went to bed and I took a shower. 

This morning was a perfect Sunday morning. It was rainy and I was able to stay in bed until 10:30. That was really nice. 

The whole day was rainy so we didn't do anything after church. We stayed inside and watched two more episodes of Sweet Tooth. 

Then we took a break for making and eating dinner. And then we watched Star Wars A New Hope because it was Star Wars Day. 

And now we are looking down the barrel of another week. The big news in the coming week is that I'm taking Charlotte and Lydia to get their DRIVERS PERMITS on Monday. In Idaho you can get a drivers license when you are 15. And that means you can get your permit when you are 14 and a half. They turned 14.5 at the end of April. So here we are. 

Thanks for reading!