Catching up some more

My April of overcommitment continued last week.  I was able to get mostly caught up the week of April 13-19. But it was the next week April 20-27 that I felt really on top of things - or as on top of things as I can get. 

Sunday April 20th was Easter. I was not feeling it for Easter this year. I'd put Brandon in charge and he was great at getting candy for the kids, filling eggs, filling baskets, and basically everything. I didn't have to do anything and he is in charge of Easter FOREVER after this. 

I woke up around 5:00 on Easter morning and had a hard time falling back asleep so I got up and worked on scheduling more guest posts for the Exponent. I went back to bed around 7:00 and slept until like 9:00. 

We had a really chill morning. The kids found their baskets and ate a lot of candy. Here's Veronica with her basket and the sun glasses that Brandon picked out for her. The kids each got a new pair of sun glasses in their Easter baskets. 

We all laughed really hard at this "Peanut Butt" candy. 

Charlotte and Lydia had hidden all the eggs on Saturday afternoon. All the kids went outside to look for eggs around 10:00. 

I took two whole pictures of the hunt. 

I was just not into it this year. 

Here are the kids with their haul. 

We also had the cookies they'd decorated on Saturday. 

Church was only an hour long. One of the bishopbric counselors spoke. He gave a really good talk. 

Then we went home and I took a really long nap on the patio. I loved that. 

Then I helped Brandon cut up things for kabobs and I helped put everything on the skewers. Brandon cooked them on the grill. We ate on the patio. They were really yummy. 

And that's it. I'm sure we watched a movie in the evening, but I can't remember what it would have been. A few weeks ago we watched Seven Brides for Seven Brothers because Derrick had watched part of it in his choir class. (Yes, I'm as surprised as you are that he's still going to choir.)  He LOVED that movie which seems strange until you remember there's a lot of slap stick, a big fight, and it's set in the old west. So yes, he loved it!

On Monday I only went to work for about two hours because I had a board meeting for Idaho Parents Unlimited over zoom at 11:00. 

I was back home for the meeting. I couldn't find my webcam so I was just on audio the whole time. But I probably would have muted my screen because I spent most of the meeting prepping the book cases for stain. I taped off all the walls. 

I listened to the meeting the whole time and jumped in with comments, questions, and votes as needed, but I spent most of the meeting climbing up and down the ladder with a role of tape in my hands. 

As soon as the meeting was over at 1:00 I jumped into staining the wood. I worked on it until Veronica came home from school around 2:00. And then kept going a little longer. But after about 3:00 I was at a stopping place. 

And I HATED how the stain was turning out. All that work and it was streaky and somehow both too dark and too light. I took this picture to text Brandon to tell him about my discouragement. Then I went and took a nap.

I was hoping that I'd feel better about it after I woke up and saw it with fresh eyes. But when I woke up I STILL hated it. 

But I was also hopeful that maybe the problem was just that it wasn't finished yet. So I finished off the sides and did the detail work around the bricks. That made me like it better, but I still felt like I was ruining everything. 

Brandon took care of making dinner while I was working on the shelves. Around 6:30 I had to go into work for a team meeting. It was a really good team meeting and only a few people mentioned the stain streaks I had on my arm. 

My friend Amy was encouraging and told me to "Trust the Process."  But I was like, "I made up the process. How can I trust the process when I'm the one that came up with the idea? What if I'm completely wrong about the dark stain?"

On the drive home I was seriously considering giving up on the stain and maybe doing a colorful chalk paint or something. 

But when I walked inside and looked at the book case again I realized it wasn't that bad looking. The thing I hated the most were the light streaks. I was encouraged by that. If I hated the light parts then maybe I was going in the right direction with the dark stain. 

So I decided to push through and stain the other bookcase. I worked on it from like 8:00 to 10:00.

And when I was done I felt okay about what was happening. I didn't love it much, but I didn't hate it as much either. 

On Tuesday I had to work all day. But as soon as I could I was back to staining that evening. That second coat went really well. The shelves were beautifully dark. I was like, "OOOOHHHH I didn't ruin my living room.

Here's one. 

And the other. I noticed that I didn't like the while ceiling inside the tops of each book case. So I decided to paint that part blue on Wednesday. 

On Wednesday I had my day off and I didn't have to worry about scripture study. So I could get the shelves finished. I started the day by taping things off one last time. 

Then I took all the middle schoolers to school and got them dropped off. 

Veronica was staying home from school because her class was going on a field trip to see Jive. Veronica likes Jive, but the field trip can be a really loud and chaotic time. She had a panic attack on that field trip a few years ago. So she was really nervous about it. And since she's barely hanging on by a thread to 5th grade I let her stay home. 

It actually worked out really well. A new lady in my ward needed someone to watch her 4 year old son. I was like, "Hey, he can come hang out with Veronica. She's AMAZING with little kids."  (I'm not exaggerating. When we were at McDonalds for Derrick's birthday she played on the play place and immediately started some sort of hide and seek game with a random kid.)

So Shaylee brought her son over and Veronica played with him for close to 2 hours. I took care of painting during that time. 

I was really really really worried that I'd spill paint all over the newly stained wood, but nothing like that happened. 

And soon I was pulling the last of the tape off and then it was time to decorate it!

We'd put all the stuff that had been on the shelves on a card table that had been sitting in the middle of the living room since Monday morning. I took everything off of that and put it back on the shelves. Then I went downstairs and found the books that used to be in the living room on a janky book shelf. Those books looked so good on the shelves. 

Later as the kids came home from school I had them each pick out a shelf to put things on. The final result was incredible. Not only did the shelves look so good - they looked like they had always been in our living room. 

I went through some papers that were on the microwave and found the sketch of the drawing I'd made to give Brandon and idea for what I wanted. 

I also found the drawing he'd made with all the measurements.  

That afternoon Veronica and I went grocery shopping. Then I came home and took a long nap. 

That evening none of the girls had young womens. (There had been a temple trip on Saturday and that counted as the activity for the week.) Derrick had Young Mens. They were playing frisbee golf at the course at the college. I took Derrick and then just walked the nearby walking trail for an hour until he was done. I did the trail twice and passed the boys two times. It was fun to see Derrick having a good time with the group. 

On Thursday I woke up really early in the morning and felt strangely dizzy - while laying in bed. Later I got up and was even more dizzy. 

It didn't go away when it was time for me to get the kids up and ready for school. I was really worried about whether or not I should drive. But I also didn't want the kids staying home from school - especially Derrick. 

I walked Veronica to school and felt okayish. A long time ago I'd had really similar vertigo and the way I'd helped it was to suck on mint candy. I didn't have mint candy, but I did have peppermint tea. So I made that and started drinking it before I had to drive the middle school kids.

I was also feeling nauseous and so drinking anything made me feel like I had to throw up. Things were really touch and go there for a few minutes as I tried to drink the tea and then tried to not throw up.

I told the kids that I was really glad I was done with the shelves because there was no way I could climb the ladder if I was feeling this woozy.  

The drink must have helped a little bit and after a few minutes I felt okay with driving. So I dropped Charlotte and Lydia off at their school and then drove across town to drop Derrick off at his school. 

Then I came home and ate something and then laid down in my bed and slept for about an hour. I took it easy the rest of the morning. I worked from home for Castle Therapy and thankfully didn't have much to do for my new client. And by noon I felt well enough to drive into work at Aspen Grove. 

I'm glad I went into the office in person because we had a few big checks show up in the mail. I also had a lot of electronic payments to process. It was the end of the pay period so it was really important to get all that put in. 

By the time I made it home from work the whole vertigo thing felt like a distant memory. And that was good because I was hosting bunco that night. 

This was one reason I was so motivated to get the living room shelves finished. I wanted the living room to be put together for Bunco. 

Bunco had taken a lot of prep besides the shelves. I also had a buy 5 prizes. This was hard for me because I don't buy cutsy things a lot. But I finally figured out five things. I had a wind chime, a white board/scheduler, a lavender plant that came with a fake lavender plant in case things didn't work out with the live one, a rosemary plant that came with clippers in case things did work out with the rosemary, and the book, "One Beautiful Dream" by Jennifer Fulwiller. 

I also had to make sure we had 12 players. We have a group chat with about 16 members in it. The first 12 to respond get to be in the bunco group for the month. I had 10 respond - other people were busy that night. So I had to find one more person. I asked my friend Carol to come. She'd come another month and had really liked it. 

Everything was set with the people until Natalie texted me one Tuesday and said she had a last minute change of plans. So then I asked Shaylee if she wanted to play. I figured since she was new it would be a fun way to meet some ladies from the ward. (This bunco group isn't exclusively for my ward, but its like 80% composed of ladies from my ward.)

Then on Thursday morning TWO people told me they couldn't come. So then I was really scrambling to find people. I probably texted 6 people to find someone. People were sick, or had other plans, or didn't have childcare. 

But I finally found two people. One was my friend Marianne from Cinderella. The other was my friend Justine who has been in my ward forever. Charlotte and Lydia describe her as "that lady who is really invested in our lives." 

After that my plan was to just teach the twins to play bunco if anyone else dropped out. But thankfully no one else did.  

Brandon helped make a charcuterie board. When I asked him if he wanted to make one his answer had been, "Heck Yes!"

I actually had to reign him in A LOT. He wanted to do drinks and dessert and the board. I had to explain that "it's just bunco."  We keep it simple so that we are willing to do it once a month. If it gets to elaborate it will be to stressful for people to host. 

So here's the "simple" charcuterie board. (Please note the water bottles on the side that were used instead of our fancy drink dispensers that usually get used at our parties.) 

Here's how the living room was set up. We pushed the love seat up against the backpack wall. That was where one table was. The other table was in front of the other couch. The food was on the side bar table where we usually keep the piano keyboard. (We'd moved the keyboard to my bed for the evening.) Bunco take three tables so the third table was in the kitchen. 

At 7:30 Brandon took the kids to Centennial Park and my friends started arriving. In addition to Carol, Shaylee, Marianne, and Justine we had Jori, Beth, Lindsey, Chandler, Cori, Sami, and Nicole. 

Bunco is a dice game, but its really an excuse to talk to friends. As you win or lose you move around to different tables. So you are sitting with different people all the time. It's kind of complicated to talk, roll dice, count points, and eat all at the same time, but it works out well. 

We had a good time playing. I was on a roll again and had 17 wins. That would have earned me a prize but I didn't want one. So Marianne got the prize with 15 wins. And she'd never played before. 

We were done by 9:30 and some people left. Brandon and the kids came home. They'd had a lot of fun at the park and then the bridge and then getting a pizza from Little Caesar's and eating it in the car. 

A few people hung around and talked for a while. Jori later told me that my house is a place where people relax and feel comfortable sharing things. I liked hearing that. 

Around 10:30 Lydia came out of her room because she wasn't feeling well. I gave her some nyquil. She really wanted vick vapor rub. But we couldn't find it. So Brandon went to get some. The last of the guests had arrived when I'd started tracking down medicine for Lydia. But some of them had just moved their conversations to the driveway. When Brandon came back from the store he joked, "You guys are welcome to talk on the patio. I can turn the lights on for you."  But the ladies were almost done and soon went home. 

The night had been great and I'd had so much fun hosting. But I'm also glad it won't be my turn again for a while. 

On Friday I spent close to 4 hours at work. It was another day of listening to musicals. I'd been working through Sweeny Todd and I finished it. The Orpheum is doing this play in the fall. Brandon really wants to be in it. He's actually hoping to play the super evil judge. This character is so evil that last time Jared directed the play he didn't want anyone else to have to play the part so he cast himself in the role. 

But Brandon's really feeling like he wants to play a villain so he's interested in the role. He's even bought the script book to prepare. The judge gets his throat slit at the end. That's how Brandon's character in Treasure Island died so he's like, "Hey, I already have experience with getting my throat slit. 

So anyway, I listened to the musical and I liked the music a lot. (Even if the subject manner is kind of off putting.)

At 1:00 I went over to Jori's to help with her raspberry patch. We pulled out all her raspberries and all the other random things growing in with the raspberries. There were bulb flowers. There were goji berry plants, and there was a ton of grass. 

We got it all out and then I turned over a whole row of dirt and got it ready for berries again. I put about 8 plants with good roots back in. 

It was a lot of work and I was very tired by the end. But it was good work. Jori wasn't sure where she wanted to replant the Goji berries and I wasn't sure if they even would replant because their roots were so weird. So she just gave them all to me. I took them home and planted them. I'm hoping two of them will do well in a place where I want an arch. The rest I put in a row that I'm calling "death row" because I'm pretty much expecting them all to die. But who knows their weird roots might be okay with transplanting after all. So we'll see what happens. 

Brandon came home and I had him help me load the tiller into the van. (Yes, we have a tiller. Brandon's friend went through a nasty divorce and after all was said and done the wife didn't take her tiller and the husband didn't want it and gave it to us.) We took the tiller over to Jori's. 

And then we came home and I took a shower. We'd been half planning to go to the Symphony concert that night, but I was pooped. So we stayed home and watched Down Periscope with the kids. Derrick loved it so much. I fell asleep about halfway through. 

When that was over Charlotte and Lydia wanted us to watch a new show they like called Sweet Tooth. We watched one episode and I was hooked. I dreamed about it all night. 

Saturday was a really busy day, but in a good way. It started out with taking Charlotte to Tubbs Berry Farm. It was their annual Bee Days. But we weren't there for the bees. We were there to see the goats. Charlotte loves goats so much. 

On our way out our our neighborhood we'd passed what used to be a trailer park. They've been cleaning it out for several months and all the trailers are gone. Now who ever owns it has moved onto chopping down the big trees. It's so sad to loose the trees. But as we drove by I was eyeing the piles of logs that have been left behind. 

So on our way home we stopped and parked by one of the piles of logs and found one that we could get into the car. Then we drove over to another pile because it had a really pretty stump right by it. 

While we were eyeing the stump we found another branch that we could lift. This one was bigger so it was tricker to get it into the car, but we muscled it in. 

The stump was harder. There was no way we could lift it in. I told Charlotte, "if only we had some 2 by 4s we could roll it in. Charlotte was like, "There's some in a pile over there."

So we grabbed those and put them against the car. Then we just rolled the stump up the board and into the trunk. 

When we got home I was like, "Brandon, guess what I have in the car!"  When he saw the logs he was like, "This is like what my mom would do, only she always wanted big rocks."

He was able to get the big log out of the car a lot easier than it went in. Then he picked it up by himself like a caber. He said, "I always wanted to see if I could do this."

He carried it to the front yard and I showed him where I wanted it in my flower bed. Once it was laid down it looked like it had always belonged there. 

We put the smaller one in another bed. 

And I realized I needed some more pictures of the yard so here's one of the path. 

And the side yard (with one of my existing logs.)

Isn't that pretty! And look at that lilac. It's almost ready to bloom. 

Here are more of the pretty tulips. I love this time of year. 

Here's another bed. 

Veronica was looking all cool in the car so I took her picture. 

Brandon had been working on how to get the stump out. He tied rope around it and had all the kids pull. That worked, but the stump was so deep in the trunk that it needed an extra push. So Brandon sat in the car and pushed it up while the kids pulled it out. 

That worked and we were able to roll it to it's spot. Here's Charlotte posing with it. (Though I think I have a better spot in mind after the tulips are done. 

After the logs were out of the van I had all the kids help clean it out. Charlotte vacuumed everything. Lydia helped with the vacuuming and taking things in the house. And Derrick and Veronica picked up all the trash - there was a lot of trash. 

Then at 11:30 I left and drove over to Moss Greenhouse in Jerome. Moss Greenhouse is owned by the step mom to the other set of twins. She was teaching a class in conjunction with CSI's continuing education department. It was called "How to Win at Vegetable Gardening." She posted about it on Facebook and said that it would have lots of info specific to growing in Southern Idaho. She also said that we'd leave with like $150 worth of products. I liked the sound of that. So I paid the $80 and signed up for the class. 

I'd never been to Moss Greenhouse, but I'd heard a ton about it. As soon as I walked in I realized what all the hype was about. There were so many plants. The ceiling was full of hanging baskets. I was like, "This is what heaven looks like."

The class was really good. Jennifer Moss was super good at teaching in an engaging way. She had good handouts too. 

And the plants at the end did not disappoint. There were like 8 racks full of plants. We could take as many as we wanted. I loaded of both levels of my cart. And Jennifer still said that I didn't look like I had enough. I was thinking, "I don't know where I'm putting all of these as it is."

I filled the whole trunk of my van with plants. 

Then I came home and realized my flowers were lovely so I had to take more pictures of those. 

Aren't they just beautiful!

And then I had the kids help me bring all the plants to the patio table. 

They all said it looked like a mini jungle. 

The kids had been playing with the chickens in the back yard. They brought the big chickens out and the little ones too. They had them in separate cages, but they could see each other. This is the first time they met. 

I spent the rest of the afternoon figuring out the plants. The first thing I did was group them and count them. I had so many tomatoes and peppers. A lot of herbs and a few cucumbers. 

The herbs could be planted right away so I planted them in a bed that was ready. 

Then I got another bed ready and planted the onion sets. I've never done onion sets and only watched one youtube video on how to do that so I'm not sure if I did it right at all, but at least they were in the ground. 

I had duplicates of nearly every herbs so I planted the second ones in the bed along the back fence. 

I also spent some time weeding out my strawberry bed. Here's a whole view of the garden.

And the pretty cherry tree blossoms. 

I moved the rest of the plants into the garage since it's still a little too cold for them at night. I realized I had way too many. I had like 23 tomato plants, but only room for 16 of them at best. So I texted Jori and asked if she wanted some. Of course she did. 

And that gets us mostly caught up. 

So this is a good stopping place for now. 

Thanks for reading. 

Catching up from overcommitting

Welcome to a very long blog post about two weeks worth of happenings. There's been so much going on that I haven't had time to update this blog. 

I REALLY overcommitted myself for April. I thought that I'd have so much time after Cinderella that I kept saying yes to things. And in theory I had time for all the things, but some of them were new things and I had to learn how to do first and that took more time than I expected. 

I've made it through the worst of the overcommitment backlog and now I'm feeling a little more on top of my life again. So let's do this recap thing. 

First we will recap Sunday April 13-Saturday April 19th. 

In the morning I woke up and worked on helping get Guest Posts scheduled on the Exponent blog. Caroline, the lady in charge of guest posts, had asked for someone to help back at the beginning on the year. I'd told her I could help after I was done with the play, but this was the first time I really was able to do that. 

She already had the posts loaded into word press. I went through and got them all pretty and uploaded pictures to go with them. I also emailed the authors and let them know when their posts would be published. It was such a good way to spend a couple hours on a Sunday morning. That's become my go to time for working on those guest posts.

We went to church at 12:00. In Relief Society I always sit with my friend Charla. Charla is about my age, she is disabled and has always lived with her parents Mary and Carl. Mary and Charla's sister Amanda were called into the library about a year ago. So they are always a little late to Relief Society. I told Carl that I will always sit with Charla during the first part of Relief Society and save seats for Mary and Amanda. So that's what I've done. Carl thinks the world of me because of that. He was really worried about having Charla sit by herself for a little while, but he's never had to worry about it because I'm there. 

I think it's just a small thing, but I also think that Charla is the most important person in our Relief Society. She can't hear very well, she grinds her teeth, and the only words she says are kind of slurred and she randomly says them. Some people might think that she doesn't belong in Relief Society or that she isn't getting anything out of it. But I say that her presence in Relief Society signals that EVERYONE belongs there. If there is room for Charla then there is room for all of us. So she is the most important person in the room because she makes room for all of us to belong.

After church we went on a hike on the Morgenson trail in the canyon. This is the trail that goes under the bridge. Derrick has been begging to hike on this trail for a long time.   

There are a few waterfalls on the trail. This is one of them. 

 

All the kids posed by it. 

We went under the bridge and made it to what Derrick calls, "the secret dock." But he always seems to add an L sound to words that end in K so he says it kind of like "dolk." (He does the same thing with the word stock. He says it stolk."

Derrick brought our big magnet on a rope with him so he could go "magnet fishing."  He spent a lot of time throwing it off the dock and pulling it back in. But he didn't find anything. 

Here's a pretty little pond area that we saw on the way back up the trail. 

When we got home Brandon cooked BBQ chicken on the BBQ grill. He'd recently fixed the regulator or something. It's nice to have the grill working again. We ate on the patio. 

I'd spent a lot of time cleaning it off the day before so it was nice to be out there again. I liked how the fake palm tree looked behind me.

Anything specific about work or anything else on Monday has left my mind. But in the evening Lydia, Derrick, and I went on a walk to the Evil Knievel Jump Site. Derrick ran up it and then slid down. 

Lydia wanted me to take a picture of these cows. 

Here is the view of Shoshone Falls. 

Tuesday was the first day of Veronica's tech rehearsals. I put make up on her and also did her hair. I basically did the same hairstyle I'd done for the twins during Cinderella. Apparently I only know one hairstyle.  I dropped her off at the Orpheum at 5:30 and she was there until 8:30. During that time they got her wired for her microphone, did the mic checks, had her try on her costumes, and ran through the whole show, and then did notes at the end. It was really long. 

She really liked the whole thing, but she was TIRED when it was over. 

As soon as I dropped her off I took Charlotte and Lydia to Twin Falls Highschool for something that had been advertised as an "Open House."  We imagined walking through the school and talking to representatives of different clubs and organizations. 

Instead everyone sat down at tables in the cafeteria and listened to a presentation by the guidance counselors about a TON of information. It was like 4 years of highschool info condensed into one hour. A lot of it was good stuff - they talked about how there is about $4000 available for each student for online courses or college courses they can take during high school, and they talked about things like concurrent enrollment. But it was A LOT to throw at us all at the end of 8th grade. 

The adults in the room are not used to sitting and listening to that much info for that long. Every one of my friends that was there talked about how much they STRUGGLED to keep listening. The kids were better. I think a lot of them just zoned out. 

Overall it was good, but they really need to work on their marketing and not call it an open house. 

On Wednesday I hosted my scripture study group. It was really good. Then I buckled down and worked on auditing things for the Exponent. I was able to get February and March all done. It felt so good to have those off my mental to do list. 

For the first time in a while I actually felt caught up on things. 

Veronica had tech rehearsal again that evening. She had to miss Young Women's but all they were doing was a General Conference Recap and none of the other kids were interested in that so they didn't go either. 

I spent the evening writing in the garage. I worked on that long post about the Curtain Call Awards. I was so happy to get all my memories about that night written down. 

Brandon picked up Veronica so I didn't need to stop writing. He went in to get her and was able to talk to our friend Sara for a minute. Sara is one of Veronica's teachers. She said that Veronica was doing so well and had really come a long way during the class. 

On Thursday Veronica really didn't want to go to school. She was so tired from the long rehearsals. But she had to go because they were doing an ISAT test. She's already had one on Tuesday and so I thought it was crazy they were doing a second one that week. I'd known tech week would be hard on Veronica, but I hadn't factored in TWO ISATS. 

So I told her that she should go to school for the test and I'd pick her up after it was over. That shortened my work day quite a bit so I picked up the mail at Castle while I was on my way to drop Derrick off at school. Then I went straight to Aspen Grove and hurried to get 4 hours of work done in 2.5. 

I picked Veronica up at 11:40. We had something to eat and then I suggested we talk while laying down in my bed. I was trying to get Veronica to take a nap, but we both ended up falling asleep. We slept for 2 hours! It was amazing! 

After we woke up I got on my computer and took care of the Castle Therapy stuff. 

Brandon was at CSI that evening. So I was on my own all afternoon. My phone calendar had what I called, "A Nesting Doll of Committment"

Brandon was at CSI from 4:00 to 9:00. 

Veronica was at Tech Rehearsal from 5:30 to 8:30. 

And I had a Relief Society Activity from 7:00 to 8:00.

We had a quick dinner and then I got Veronica ready for her rehearsal. This was the dress rehearsal. The other cast of Willy Wonka came to watch the show and then gave positive feedback at the end. Veronica loved every minute of it. 

The Relief Society activity was a speed friendship thing. We rotated around and talked to different people. It was really fun. Brandon actually got home from CSI really early so he was able to pick Veronica up from rehearsal and I was able to stay and talk with everyone until the activity was over at 8:30 and then stay and talk to Jori until like 9:00.

On Friday I was at work for a long time. I didn't really want to be there, but I needed to be there. In order to keep me motivated I've started listening to musicals on Spotify. This is something I used to do years ago when I worked for Conservice. My co-worker Elise was a huge musical fan and let me download a bunch of her CDs. It's been fun to revisit the musicals that I used to listen to 15 years ago like Aita and Wicked. And I've listened to ones that I discovered after that time like Hamilton and Six. So that kept me motivated to keep working on boring paperwork.   

My friend Hanah has a sour dough business. She makes like 80 loaves of sour dough at a time and sells them at Farmer's Markets. She'd made too many for a market that week and had lots of extras. She wanted to take them to a little food pantry locker thing down town, but she didn't have time because she was making another huge batch for a Farmers Market on Saturday. So she asked if anyone could do it for her. 

It was no problem for me to do it after work. Her house is actually less than a mile from my work. So I picked up the bread and dropped it off for her. And I took a delivery fee of like 6 loaves. Here's everything I dropped off at the food pantry. 

Then at 2:00 I went to Jori's and helped her figure out what was going on with her raspberry patch. At first I figured it just needed a good pruning. But it was so over grown we decided to rip it all out and replant some of the plants in a more orderly pattern. 

So we pruned for like an hour and then made plans to keep working on it the next week. We both walked over to the school to get the kids at 3:00. Veronica and I went home and I started getting the kitchen cleaned up so I could make pizza. A little before I started the pizza Steve and Jacque arrived. They were there to see Veronica's play. Steve said that he'd just buy pizza. That was really nice because I was running out of energy. I ended up falling asleep on the couch for a little bit while he picked up the pizza. 

Veronica would do 3 performances that weekend.  She told me that since Steve and Jacque were coming on Friday we should come on Saturday. So none of us were going that night. Instead I decided to take Charlotte and Lydia out to the Burley Straw Maze for their animal days. 

I've thought about taking the kids to this for several years, but we've never gone. And I was kind of thinking that maybe we'd outgrown something like this. But when I casually asked Charlotte if she would be interested she said, "YES!"  

And actually it was kind of awesome to go to something like this with totally chill teenagers instead of rambunctious  little kids. We just wandered around and looked at animals. I didn't have to chase anyone down or deal with melt downs. It was great. 

Here are the girls with some horses. 

And cows. 

Charlotte wants a cow one day.

More cow pics.

There were puppies that were a big hit. 

The girls wanted one so bad, but we are NOT getting a second dog. A few months ago I actually told Charlotte I'd buy her a dog when she moves out, but not while she lives here. 

Here they are with the puppies. 

Hereare some bunnies. The one Charlotte is holding look like a sentient mop. 

There were also kittens and I held one. It's black so you can barely see it against my coat. 

I was super tired. I'd had a hard time not falling asleep on the 40 minute drive out there. So I sat down at a picnic table while the girls played on the big slide. 

They wanted to go on the swings so I bought tickets for that. 

We also bought some feed so we went around and fed some of the animals. 

Here's a baby horse. 

At the very end the girls wanted to get in the big tractors that were on display. 

They had fun in these. 

We live in such an agrarian community. 

The girls thought this was so fun.

Here they are on the slide one last time. 

We drove back home and got there a little after Veronica had come home from the play. Steve and Jacque had given her a ride home. Jacque said something like, "She was so enthusiastic in the car." I thought about all the times that Veronica came out of rehearsal and spent like 10 minutes shouting about how fun the rehearsal was. I could only imagine how loud she was after a live performance. I was like, "Oh yeah, I should have given you a heads up about that."

Here's a picture that was posted online of the kids after the show. That's Veronica's oompa loompa costume, but she wore her Mr Bucket hat so people would know that she'd also been that character. 

We had icecream and talked about the show a bit. Steve and Jacque said it was really cute and well done. One of Jacque's friends had asked her if she was going to see her grand daughter in a school play. Jacque was very proud to tell her, "No, it's at the Orpheum in Twin Falls. We even had to buy the tickets."

I was so tired so after a little bit I disappeared and went to bed. 

On Saturday Brandon had a craft for the kids to do. They made Easter baskets. A few weeks ago when I was feeling super overwhelmed with everything I told Brandon that I didn't want to worry about anything for Easter. I told him he was 100% in charge of it. And he did GREAT!

Since Eggs were expensive he decided to have the kids decorate sugar cookies. So he had everything ready for that. 

Most of my day was spent on the book cases. I taped off the wooden parts of the book cases and then painted the backs blue. It took three coats. So I'd do a coat and then wait 2 hours and then do another coat and wait and then do another coat. 

It was a good project for the day because a lot of the day was spent going back and forth to the Orpheum. Veronica had to be there at 12:30 for the 2:00 Matinee. 

And we had to pick her up at 3:00 when that show was over. 

Then she had to be back there at 5:30 for the 7:00 show. 

So it was kind of like, "Paint, drop Veronica off, pick Veronica up, Paint, drop Veronica off, etc."

Brandon and I also ran to Lowes and picked out stain for the wood. I was fairly confident I wanted a dark stain because I love dark stain. But I worried it would make the area too dark. Jori assured me it wouldn't. 

In other Saturday things, here's a picture of my flowers. 

 

They were doing so well.

While I worked on the shelves I was listening to the anniversary episode of Baconsale. I was so glad I wasn't on the show because I wouldn't have done well. When they did the Baconsale I paused it and Brandon and I spent quite a bit of time figuring out how to connect Morgan Freeman to Val Kilmer. It was hard! And we totally forgot that Morgan Freeman and Gary Oldman were in Batman Begins together. 

Here's my cherry tree. 

And more tulips. 

I love this little side yard area. 

More flowers. 

At 6:30 we went to the Orpheum to watch Veronica's show. 

She did so well as Mr Bucket. It was great to hear her give her lines. She also did well as an oompa loompa. She did all the cute little dances so well. At one point she was also a squirrel that was fun to see too. 

All the kid actors did so well too. All their hard work definitely paid off. 

Here's Veronica in the lobby after the show. She was so excited.

Five of the cast members were from my ward. (I might have been the one to share the class with all the other moms.) One of the other moms took this picture. 

Veronica was Mr Bucket. Hadley was the Candy Man. Frasier was Mr Salt. Amelia was Mrs. Beauregarde. and Ollie was an Oompa Loompa. The two other girls in the front of the picture weren't from our ward. But we did have two girls in the other cast. Navee was an Oompa Loomp. Nora was supposed to be Mrs Bucket in this cast, but she had to switch to the other cast because her family was going to Hawaii during this performance. 

Veronica loved EVERY single person in the cast. She said they were all her best friends. I love this group hug photo that was on Facebook. 

And here's the cast photo. They each got a copy of this and Veronica asked for a frame. It's in her room. I heard her talking to it and saying, "You were the best friends."

She had a cast party right after that 7:00 show. It got over at 9:30. When it was all over she told me, "Well now there's no point to life right now."

Thank goodness I have her signed up for Matilda this summer. She's already looking forward to that play and seeing a lot of her friends again. 

Here are some more pictures of the book cases. 

I was really happy with how the teal color was looking. It's the same color as the coat hook area on the other side of the room. 

And here's the award Veronica got at her cast party. She was awarded most improved - which really was the best award for her. She was so shy and so nervious at the beginning of the year. But she really came out of her shell. I can't say enough about how good this class was for her. 

And you know, I think this isn't going to be a two week recap. Let's stop there and I'll post the next week soon. 

Thanks for reading.