April 2014

April has been a busy month for us! And guess what?? I am nearly caught up to REAL TIME on my blog!! That's amazing! I have been catching up on nearly a year of stuff, and it feels really good to be almost done! At first, I thought "Why haven't I been keeping up on this as it happens?" But then I look back through at all the things our family has done, and realize--Oh. It's because we've been REALLY busy!  But ideally, I would still like to remain caught up and not have to do the whole marathon blogging business.

So, back to things that happened in April:
-Hallie and Claire get to do swimming for their PE in school all month long.  This is so great because it helps give them a base of knowledge of water safety and swimming skills.  I know it will help them a ton when they get to summer swim lessons too!

-Random cuteness:

If you look just to the left of Shaelyn's head, you can see one of my tulips starting to grow!

One of our first warm days.  It is so nice to be able to go outside again!

We made a few rounds around our circle driveway in the wagon. 

Little peanut

-Claire went on a field trip with the first grade to the Treehouse Museum in Ogden.   Hallie went last year and told us it was great.  When Hallie went they did a little play with the kids and it was the story of The Princess Who Never Laughed.  Hallie was the princess. This year Claire got to go and loved it just as much! They did the play Snow White and Claire got to be one of the seven dwarfs.  She had a great time and made a wand which she was very excited to show us!

-Rob and Hallie went to Donuts with Dad night at the school.  It is for all the second graders and their dads to come for an hour and just read books together and take AR quizzes at school.  I love the focus on reading at this school! Urie Elementary does a great job.

-Random Cuteness:

I just walked in and she was doing this.  No reason.

Recently Shaelyn has really started to love books and reading.  She asks me to read her books many times a day.  It is so cute. 

Hangin out in Shaelyn's room reading books!

I love her dimple!

Selfie of me and Evie.  I am NOT a big selfie person, especially with our rinky dinky digital camera that I can't see where I'm pointing...but Evie wanted one of the two of us.

Taken by Evie.

-Hallie had her second piano recital.  She has been a little less dedicated to piano now that the novelty has worn off, but she still loves it.  She didn't do her best at the recital, but she is a pretty good little piano player! Her recital was scheduled for 7:00 on a Thursday night, which is right when I teach Zumba, so I had to reschedule Zumba for 5:45-6:45 so that I could run over and see her recital.  Ah, the juggling of motherhood!

-My tulips started growing! This is my first time ever planting tulips and they are doing fabulous! It's so exciting! I got my first bloom on Easter Sunday and they've just been getting better and better.  The deer ate three of my blossoms--grrrrr.  But someone told me that if you put human hair in your garden bed, the deer will stay away from it.  We have tons of extra long blonde hairs around here, so I emptied out the hairbrush and tried it and it's worked so far! No more destructive visits from the deer. 

First flower!

The others are still buds.  I planted white and purple tulips, and for whatever reason, the white ones have grown much taller and bloomed before the purples.

First purple bud

About a week later, we have lots of blossoming flowers! Still no purples, though...

I took these today, April 30th.  The purples are catching up! It's looking so beautiful!

This picture makes me so happy!

I grew that!

-I started doing natural allergy elimination treatments with our local chiropractor, Dr. Haycock.  Hopefully they work, because I cannot endure another summer of constant hayfever like last summer.  That was miserable.  He uses an acupressure technique, and my mom swears by it.  I've heard lots of other people claim some pretty miraculous things too using this method, and after you hear so many success stories, I thought it was worth a try--especially since there are no shots or anything.  It takes a series of treatments to ensure that it will work properly, so I'm on this regimen, and hopefully it works well!

-Hallie wanted her hair like Anna's from Frozen when she is at the ball.  So we tried a modified version--it turned out pretty well, I think!

Big girls!

-Shae, Evie and I went to school to help with Claire's class Easter party.  I was in charge of the craft.  I didn't take any pictures there because I was just a wee bit busy helping all the kids do their craft--which involved making paint handprints.  The girls had a half day of school on that day, so after Claire's party was over, school was dismissed for Spring Break.  We stayed and played at the playground for awhile and visited with Frank Smith, Claire's schoolteacher.  He is a very nice LDS man and he had brought his family to school for the party too.  Here's a cute picture of Shaelyn after the party. 

Shaelyn ate a lot of marshmallows (which she LOVES and calls "lo-los") at the Easter party

We had lots of fun in Claire's class today!

-And on the last day of Spring Break we had a fun park day with the Halls. It was a BEAUTIFUL day!

-I went to Muffins with Mom with Hallie at the school.  It's the counterpart to Donuts with Dad. This also happened to fall on a Zumba night, but luckily it started at 6:30 so I was able to go read with Hallie for the first half and then run over to the gym for Zumba at 7.  Grandma Kelly stayed and read with her for the last half hour of Muffins with Mom.  She is getting so good and fast at reading!

-We got goats! Yes, we are THAT family.  I was very hesitant at first, but I think it's going to work out.  So far, they have been great.  They bleated a lot the first couple of days they got here, but now they've settled down quite a bit.  I was worried our neighbors would complain about the noise, but no one has said anything.  And the Lemons are really excited that we have goats because they like goats' milk and goat cheese. 

Rob milks the goats twice a day, 7 AM and 7 PM and we get between 1 and 1 1/2 gallons of milk a day.  The milk is SO good! It is creamy and delicious.  We have even made goat cheese once, and it was super easy and tasty. 

This is Big Momma.  She is the big milker, giving us the majority of our milk. She's also a go-getter personality-wise.

Another one of Big Mama.  She didn't want me to take her picture

Rob's parents' old chicken coop that they let us take.  We use it as a milking barn.  Rob built a goat milking stand and everything.  We painted it with all the kids last Saturday!

Our smaller goat, Buttercup.  She's got a very sweet temperament and super creamy milk!

Products of our goats! This is approximately the amount of milk we get out of one milking, although it varies from day to day.  And the cheese is soft and yummy!

-We had lots of other events too, such as Easter, Taylor's baptism, Shaelyn's birthday, and the Garden.  They will all get their own posts :)


And all this is on top of our usual busy-ness: Zumba at 7 pm every Tuesday and Thursday, preschool from 9-11 am every Monday and Tuesday, storytime at 10:30 am every Thursday, Hallie's piano lessons every Wednesday afternoon and Activity Days every other Wednesday at 5:30.  It's a busy, full life we have!

And one more cute one in farewell to April:

Melts my heart!