Catching Up

Summer break is here! Here's a recap of all the photos and videos that I've been meaning to share....

Flashing way, way back to winter. I finally caved and let the heat be turned on  when we began waking up to temperatures in the 50's in our house.

We had a lot of luck with tomatillos in our winter garden, even had enough to make salsa verde

making ginger bread houses

Christmas day

Waiting in line to buy tickets at.... the happiest place on earth!

About to ride The Happiest Cruise that Ever Sailed!

Finally, those bottom two teeth came out, many weeks after the permanent teeth had already appeared behind them

Getting our groove on at the Epcot Festival of the Arts

 

Decorating for Daddy's birthday

Natalie learned what a 'prank' is and filled her shoes with sand from the sandbox, walked around with shoes half full of sand for half the school day just so that she could dump them in the car. Then, the next day, she tried to pull the same move again!

Playing video games

Natalie is on the right in the white shirt and khaki shorts. She and Angela took a few months of warrior ninja training classes. It was very fun.

Our Easter chicks

Decorating for Angela's birthday party

15 minutes before kids are going to be arriving for Angela's birthday party

15 minutes after kids have left from Angela's birthday party.

I don't know why he's so tired...

Pete the Cat at the library

We have had lots of fun at weekly story time this year

Last day of school was a non-uniform day

Natalie chose slushies for our celebratory after-school treat. Woohoo!

We cancelled plans to camp because of predicted thunderstorms, but then the forecast changed and we had already cancelled our reservation. Bleh. We still let the kids play with fire and 'camp' in our backyard.

Angela has made a lot of progress in this session of swim lessons. She regressed quite a bit over the winter and cried and refused to put her head under the water for the first few lessons, but now she's swimming under water and floating on her back. She still can't quite keep her head above water when she treads, but she's close. Here she is backing down off the diving platform. She chickened out every single time...

....until the very last class!

She still wouldn't do the real diving board, maybe next session! Both girls are doing a condensed, daily swimming session the week after Memorial Day to hone their skills to start out the summer.

Lately

Much excitement and much routine lately. Natalie loves school and is doing well. Angela loves whining and is doing lots of that. Micah got started doing crossfit and his quads are getting so buff that he keeps ripping his pants. We've had 2 varieties of infectious disease hit our household in the past month and my work has been so busy that I haven't had a weekend off since Christmas.

President's Day we went to Disneyworld. We have just one more trip before we're going to let our passes expire. It's been fun and the girls have loved it but are looking forward to spending time checking out other fun places in the area.

And you can see Angela's beautiful hair is gone. I'm still trying to figure out what to do with it- when I stick it in a little ponytail, it highlights all of the little 1" nubs of hair that are spread across her scalp from Natalie's thorough styling job.

For my birthday, I got 2 new chickens- a sex-link (common brown production oriented bird) and a black copper marans. The marans has just started laying it's first eggs- those beautiful dark brown ones.

Old Pictures From Micah

Holidays have come and gone and I have not yet figured out how to upload pictures from my phone. So, here's some older pictures from Micah's phone. They show Micah's work's Zoo Day in December, putting up lights, me taking a dainty nap at Sam's Club. the cardboard train Micah made for the ward Christmas party and playing blocks at Bass Pro Shop.