Ava helped me with this blog post. She chose the title for the month!
The kids remembered the Easter egg activity I did last year for conference and requested it again this year. I put either an activity to do or a treat inside of the Easter eggs, and they could open them one at a time as the corresponding speaker spoke.
I hosted a girls night for the women's session. It was really nice to be together! Brent took the kids out to dinner while we partied. After the session, everyone left except Karen, and she and Brent and I stayed up talking and laughing about funny social situations.
One of the Easter eggs said to play with Legos. This lasted an entire session! Ava made a Harry Potter Gryffindor room, and she helped Coen with his pool party Lego idea.
A partner at my firm told everyone to go out to dinner and charge it to the Company since we had worked so hard all busy season. In a normal year it would have slowed down on April 15 for me, but this was no normal busy season. I don't expect it to slow down until September. Ugh! Anyway, we were so busy on the weekend that we went out on Monday. We went to a favorite, BJs, and the kids were so excited.
Coen singing "I'm trying to be like Jesus."
Audrey kept asking me to go swimming. I let her get in her swimming suit and get in my big tub.
The next day, it was so hot outside! It was a dream come true for Audrey as she got to get in her swimming suit and help wash our car.
Coen doesn't like to get his face wet so he put on his goggles.
After washing our car, we went to Karen's house for dinner. No pictures!
I was doing the laundry and Audrey ran out of Ava's room like this. Haha!
A week before, Ava's teacher told her class that she was leaving for the rest of the school year. The class was very sad, and Ava was especially sad. This is her last day with her teacher. Ava's class had a lot of children with behavior problems and they constantly had to "clear the room." This is where the class leaves the room, since the teacher is not allowed to touch the problem child, who might be throwing desks, throwing school supplies, etc. Her poor teacher got to the point where she was so stressed that she wasn't sleeping, so she needed to take a leave.
I took Ava shopping to Kohls to get some clothes for Girls on the Run, which is an after school running activity.
We went to dinner at the Janes' house and played a Disney game. We are going to miss them when they move in a couple months!!
Instead of reading, we had craft day with Sister Peaslee. We made bottle cap magnets for a family home evening board.
One of Ava's favorite TV shows currently is "Full House." She looks forward to watching it in the evenings, if her homework and piano is done. She says it's very lucky if she gets to watch two. Even Audrey likes the show!
After our optometrist appointment, we went to TJ Maxx to look for curtains for our living room. Audrey went crazy and pushed this lawn mower all over the store.
Our optometrist is next door to Crumbl so I've been waiting all year for an excuse to buy cookies for us!
A video of a hail storm we got:
While Coen was in taekwondo I let Audrey play at the park outside. This is the same place where I would let little 3 year old Coen play while Ava was in ballet class. Coen never dared to go down the slide and Audrey went down the slide without a second thought. It's interesting how different kids are! When Audrey was walking down this ramp to the right of the slide (you can hardly see a slight incline on the ramp in the picture) she was taking the tiniest steps and holding on to the bars so carefully. It looked so funny to me and I kind of giggled. She looked up at me and said "it's big for me."
Audrey was determined to put every single puppet in a check-out bag and line them up on the ground. She said they're going night night. Once she was done, we had to unzip every bag and put them all back but she was quite happy with herself.
Audrey chose the Frozen CD at the library and I kept it in my car and played it on repeat for a couple weeks. The only problem is that Audrey only wanted "Let it Go." She would belt it out and make me and Ava laugh! Here are a couple videos:
Around midnight on Thursday night, Audrey started throwing up. Brent was up working on his conference that he would be presenting early the next morning. He had to present at 6:30am, so leave our house at about 5:30am. I just closed the door to Audrey's room and told him to pretend he didn't see that. Poor Audrey, it's miserable when a toddler has the bug, but she was a good girl. Brent did a great job on his presentation and said it went well!
We had planned an Easter egg hunt with friends since the kids had no school, and my friends were nice to let Ava and Coen still come while I stayed home with Audrey.
Brent tried out our backpack carrier that he was going to lend to friends. He walked it over to their house with Audrey in it!
On Saturday Audrey seemed to be feeling much better. After dinner I painted her nails and she was so happy to have pink! Then she asked for a tums and while she ate it, she acted like it was a gross flavor, and then all of a sudden threw up across the bathroom! It was the strangest thing, she had been better for a day!
Sunday was Easter and the kids were super excited about what they got- pop tarts, pez, and cheese puffs.
I had to speak in church and all weekend I wasn't sure if I was going to be coming down with Audrey's bug or not.... I didn't get sick, so I went while Brent stayed home with Audrey. I was so nervous to speak though and just frazzled from the weekend of cleaning up after Audrey. I got through it.
After church we went on a walk, and Brent put Audrey in the backpack carrier again.
I made a turkey for Easter dinner and it turned out yummy.
Audrey went back to school on Tuesday and her teachers sent me a picture of their activity- washing their toy dishes. They think of such fun things for the kids to do!
On Tuesday while I was working I got a call from school that Coen had thrown up. Poor buddy! He didn't seem to embarrassed about throwing up right in his classroom, and was happy to sit on the couch and watch TV while I kept working.
As the day went on though, he felt sicker.
He couldn't go back to school until Friday, so he just watched a ton of Lord of the Rings and Hobbit! I had so much work that needed to be done, and he was happy to watch TV.
Audrey gluing shapes on to her paper.
While the kids were sick and I was stressed with work, I kept looking out our backyard at our beautiful pink blossoms to cheer me up.
Brent took the kids to see Carousel, and support a boy in our ward who was in it.
My friend, Matilda's mom, and I went to see the play a few days later. It was fun!
On Friday Audrey went to Matilda's house since she wasn't able to go on Monday that week when she was still recovering from her tummy bug. Instead of just trying to work more though, I took a day for myself! I cleaned, did yoga, painted my nails, and just relaxed. It was so good for me! That afternoon we met Brent at school and went to the museum of Natural History. They had a display of beautiful photography of animals.
On Saturday we went to my favorite place, Hendricks Park! Being outside in the beautiful nature cheered me up after a hard week!
We had the place almost to ourselves which was weird since it was a Saturday and good weather. As I looked at my kids playing in this beautiful field, I thought, this is what heaven must look like!
Since Ava finished Harry Potter 5, and I'm only on #4 with her still, she got to go to Karen's by herself to watch the movie. They had a lot of treats and fun while they watched the movie.
On Sunday we hosted a breakfast for the YM and a friend from Norway helped make Norwegian pancakes. Brent gets different speakers to come give a little devotional about the temple or missions.
We got this smaller 2 wheel bike from the Janes that I thought would be perfect for Coen to learn how to ride on. On Sunday afternoon I took him out and showed him what to do and he immediately took off riding! He was a little wobbly but he could do it! It was tricky for him to get the pedals in the right place to start off riding. As we were practicing on the sidewalk strangers that would past us would cheer him on.
Here's a video of Coen learning:
Audrey saw sheep out the window and asked me "I touch sheep?" She saw cows and said "I touch cow's head? I touch cow's shoulder?" I told Brent, we have to take her to see animals! We have some alpacas, horses and sheep by our house so went on a walk around to see them. But sadly, she couldn't touch them.
We had our new friends the Scotts over to dinner. She brought an egg spinner to decorate eggs. They turned out so pretty!
Another picture from school- they got to use spray bottles at outside time!
We matched in orange! My baby is getting to be so big!
Doing homework by me in my office, while warming up in her PJs!
Coen wrote about his sick days: "When i was sick I got to wach all of the exsended cut Lord of the Rings. It was fun."
I needed to go to the bank and Audrey kept asking to go with me. We finally made it out there one day and I think I discovered why she was so anxious to go to the bank with me...lolipop!
Coen was the VIP kid of the week in his class which meant he got to bring a show and tell item on Friday. I didn't write it down in my planner which means I forgot, but luckily he's a responsible kid and reminded me on Friday morning! He wanted to bring his baby Yoda and he just so happened to be wearing his new shirt I had bought for him.
Before Ava went to school she set Audrey up with a little "work station" in my office. At first I was annoyed because Ava is always getting out things and not cleaning up, but Audrey was very happy with her set up.
I was preparing to go to Utah for work and had to do our laundry before. Having 5 people is getting to be a lot of laundry!
Coen was so happy with his new bike riding skills! I took him on one last ride before I went to the airport.
I text Brent when my airplane was about to take off and he went outside with the kids to see my airplane take off - we live super close to the airport. The kids wanted to know if I could see them waving to me from the airplane.
