No writing but lots of other fun stuff

My biggest goal this week was to get a bunch of writing done. I got none. Bah.

I did wash and fold all the laundry, helped my friend Julia, had a presidency meeting (my last one! we'll be released this week), took Cecily to the Bean Museum, Steve took the kids to the school carnival (which he said was super lame this year), started redoing my folding chairs, took kids to dentist appointments and gymnastics, Steve took Emilia to a district-wide keyboarding competition where she took 11th out of 140 4th graders and won $10, had girls nights 2 different nights with 2 different friends and went on a hike to the hot springs with 2 other friends (isn't Steve a good husband for being perfectly happy to let me do all that in one week?), and did A LOT of shopping (mostly grocery, but some toy shopping for the girls).

Cecily has been excited for her birthday since January, so every time we go somewhere she asks if she can get this or that for her birthday. At the Bean Museum, it was books.

Cecily painted her own nails one day when I fell asleep on the couch and got nail polish all over my white bathroom rugs. She sure was proud of how they turned out though.

I also took Cecily to McDonald's one day just to play at the Play Place and she wanted me to take this picture. She wouldn't look at me, because she said it wouldn't look like she was really climbing the tree if she looked.

I put some enamel on a bunch of the shrink dinks I made recently.  I like how a lot of them turned out.

Cecily made this creation out of her magnets one day, but she kept not liking the pictures I took. I was too far away every time. Emilia eventually stood right over the top of her and took the picture and that was satisfactory.

Cecily found the fly swatter one day and as she waved it around, she exclaimed, "I'm going to use my spy squatter on you!"

On the way to take the girls to school one day, we could see the sun shining like a blurry lightbulb through the rain clouds. From the back seat, Emilia yelled, "There's a rainbow!" so enthusiastically, I thought she saw a rainbow. But then she finished, "At least there should be!" I told her that just because there is sun and rainclouds, didn't mean there would be a rainbow. She was super disappointed. And then, as soon as I turned around to drive home, there was a rainbow stretching across the entire sky. By the time I got home and got my phone, you could only see a small part of it. But I thought that was funny.

My plants are getting big. The bean plants that I started way too early are growing beans already.

Here is the before picture of the chairs. They were so old and gross. You'll get the after pictures next week.

These are pictures from my hike. It was a beautiful day, but the trees weren't green because its too early for them to get leaves up in the mountains, so the pictures didn't turn out too picturesque.

Not busy, busy week

I had almost nothing on my calendar this week and I was so excited to have a relaxing week. And then the one thing that I *did* have on the calendar blew up.

This past Thursday I was supposed to submit 10 pages of my work-in-progress to the three members of my writing conference group. But then last Sunday night, I decided to change which story I was going to send and had to not only write 10 entirely new pages, but plot the entire book they were coming from--before Thursday at midnight. My goodness it was a stressful week with NO extra time to do fun things. But with a lot of help from both heavenly and earthly parents, I was able to do it. Phew! What a relief.  Now I just have a new book to write. And a short story for a contest I want to enter. And two books to revise. Probably not all this week though.

Friday I took the girls to DI to shop for some Spring clothes for Emilia. It was a bit ironic that it snowed so much that day that it felt like winter.

Saturday, I had breakfast with some friends. I multitasked and got the car's oil changed and safety and emissions done while I chatted and ate. :) Steve mowed the lawn and fixed a broken sprinkler head and adjusted the rest of the sprinklers, plus finished the lesson he was giving in Elder's Quorum. It was a beautiful day, so the girls played outside a lot and Cecily even went to an outdoor birthday party that evening. We had to shop for the gift in the afternoon, too. Then after dinner, Steve and I went on a date. We had a bunch of ideas but actually ended up playing frisbee golf and then (after driving to three different dessert stores that were all either closed or blocked off) went home and made our own. Steve had a strawberry chocolate milkshake and I made gluten-free brownies.

When I looked at my calendar for this coming week earlier today, I thought I might have a slow week this week, but it's getting filled up fast. Hopefully I'll have some relax and writing time, too.

Mira's hair last Sunday. She wanted me to take a picture so she could take it out. *eye roll*

They had this at the library. The library was putting on a "Greatest Showman" family night that night. We didn't go, but the girls still needed a picture.

I needed a picture of my new hairdo and color.

Some of my seeds that I planted on Thursday last week were already up by Tuesday.  Yay!

Fun sandals I found thrifting. Real leather for $8.

Everything was blooming outside. Wednesday it was over 70 degrees!

This was how it looked when I woke up on Friday. *more eye rolling* ;)

Silly girls trying on clothes on Friday.

I added some more eggs to my wreath yesterday. I think I like it better.

This was the frisbee golf course we did yesterday. Don't let the picture fool you. It was the hardest course I've ever done!

Us before we started.

 We saw a rabbit on our way back to the car. Can you see it hiding in there?

The sunset was pretty, even though it was cold and windy.

Birthday, Conference, and Spring Break

I've been a slacker the last little while. I keep posting every other week instead of every week. But that's still pretty good, I suppose. I hope you all aren't too upset with me. ;)

So the last week of March, Mira turned 7. Everybody says, "I can't believe my baby is ____!" For whatever age is weird for them. But I think I will feel that way every year for Mira from now on. Really it started last year. Mira was such an adorable toddler that it will be weird every year that she's not one. I mean, it's good that she's getting older and growing up like a little girl is supposed to do. But I mourn the loss of my Bubby Monster every birthday. It's probably me that's being weird about this. But I'm okay with that. :)

Mira made an octopus out of dominoes and then gave it a school of fish to hang out with. She's so stinkin' creative.

On her actual birthday, I went to the school to have lunch with her. Then went to the store to buy treats to bring to her class at the end of the school day. And then I went home and made the dinner she wanted. Thankfully, she just wanted buttered spaghetti noodles. Though I did make spaghetti sauce for me and Steve.

We had her birthday party on the Friday after her birthday. Haylee and I decided to have a joint birthday party for Mira and Dylan this year since they essentially wanted the same party (unikitty vs. unicorn). We met in the middle at a park in Spanish Fork. There were 14 girls there and it was chaos, but you come to expect that when you get a bunch of little ones together.

Last weekend we had General Conference and that's why I forgot to do the blog post. Change up my routine and I'm done for.

While watching the Sunday afternoon session, I painted eggs to make a new Easter wreath. The last one I made was really similar, but I used fake dyable eggs for it and the sun bleached them out that they all just looked white (which, if you can't guess, looked really dumb). We watched that session at my parents house and had Easter dinner with them, which was nice. We also hid Easter eggs in the yard for the girls to find. Wilda usually does that for us, but she was out of town this year, so we did it ourselves. It was fun to hide them and to watch them search. I also hid Easter baskets for the girls and Steve. Mira found hers in less than a minute. The other three took more than 20 minutes, so I did my job there. :) After we got home that night, I put the wreath together. I think I need to add a few more eggs, but otherwise I like how it turned out.

This week was spring break for the girls. I was looking forward to them not having to get up in the morning and catching up on some sleep. Ha! They went to bed late every night but one.

I caught Mira playing school with Cecily and having reading time one morning. I love see my girls learn to enjoy reading and each other.

It was a very rainy week. But it made for a pretty sky one afternoon.

The rest of the pictures I'm just going to explain here because I already wrote it once for an instagram post and I'm too lazy to write it again.

Other things we did over spring break (in backwards order): We went to The Leonardo yesterday in Salt Lake and I would recommend it to anyone. It was amazing for the kids, and even us parents and grandparents enjoyed exploring and discovering with them. It was fun enough that I would go back on a date night with Steve. Emilia called it a STEAM museum and I'm inclined to agree with her: science, technology, engineering, art, and math--all in a super engaging, hand in environment. Can't say enough good things.

Stayed one night at a hotel where we swam twice and had too much free breakfast food, went to the Gateway Discovery Museum (not anywhere near as fun as the Leonardo and WAY more crowded), painted nails, decorated crowns, (not pictured) had a sleepover at Nana's, got my new haircut lightened, (not pictured) repotted most of my garden plants that I started, played with a new box of magnetic tiles and built lots of fun stuff, went on a photo hunt hike in the hills above our house, and dodged rainstorms as much as possible.