Recovery week 1

This week has been a pretty good recovery week. I am satisfied with what I accomplished. Especially since the flu seems to be going the rounds in our house.

Cecily started throwing up Tuesday, I felt ill on Thursday and Friday, and Steve has a fever today. It always seems like when we make plans and he has a day off, something like this happens. I'm grateful it's not too terrible of a bug, though. Mostly just made me feel run down for a couple days.

Things we did this week:

Planted our garden. And some annuals to make the yard look pretty.

Get our car fixed, again (and we'll have to do it a third time this week, since the dealer is apparently incapable of doing it right the first or second time).

Sprayed all the weeds in our rather large front flower beds.

Built two dressers (from IKEA) and put them in as our nightstands.

Went to our neighborhood "block party." Which basically means our neighbor who owns a portable brick oven makes pizza for everybody while we stand around eating it and chatting. Nice for us. And I think he likes doing it, so I guess it works out. And the kids get to run around with their neighborhood friends until bedtime, so they love it.

On the way to the block party.

Finished processing senior pictures for the daughter of our good friends, the Sliks. I don't do a lot of photography lately, but I feel like I've still got a good eye for it. I just don't enjoy doing it for total strangers. I'm too much of an introvert. So good friends and family are fun to shoot.

Babysat Ben's kids on Saturday. I took them all to the park for a while and this was the view on the walk home. I live in a beautiful place.

Went on a date with Steve on Friday. He helped me plot my next WIP (which is writer-speak for work-in-progress, or the book I want to write next) and we went to the Cocoa Bean for cupcakes/cookies/frappes/hot chocolate. Mmmm. This book is going to being a lot more complicated than my first book, so I'm a little scared I won't be able to pull it off. But I love the story idea so much, I'm just going to look at it as one scene at a time and see where it takes me.

Yesterday was also Cecily's birthday. I had these grand ideas of making her feel special and loved. That's pretty much all they ended up being were ideas. Steve ended up taking her shopping at Toys R Us, but didn't buy anything until later that night after she was in bed.

We were going to take her to the Bean Museum, but we didn't have time before her nap. I stayed home with her while Steve took the other two. The Bean Museum is a bunch of taxidermied animals from all over the world. I guess Emilia and Mira got to touch a snake, too.

Today we had cake and ice cream at Grandma and Grandpa Watts' house and she opened presents. It was more birthday-like. She probably would have enjoyed it more if her poor tummy was behaving, but she has had nasty blow-out diapers all day (sorry if that's TMI), so she just kept telling us that something hurt. She was excited about the ice cream and the presents, so I was glad for that.

Playing "I went to the barbershop."

She opened presents topless because she spilled water all over her shirt after cake and ice cream.

Other random pictures:

From my yard. I love fresh flowers in the house.

Mira talking to her husband Steve-alatcho.

From the beginning of April when it was warmer than it is now. The girls and their neighborhood friends sunning themselves after playing in the sprinklers.

Cecily is a Momma's girl. Wants to be just like me.

Another picture from Mother's Day from Steve's phone.

I'm back!

It's been a while. I didn't even remember until this week that I've missed posting. I have been working my little tushy off trying to get my book polished for the writing conference that happened the last three days. EVERY spare moment I had went toward editing the manuscript. I pushed off so many things, it might take me at least of month of no writing to catch up again. We'll see.

The conference was so much fun. My whole writing group went (except the member who lives in England), and since it was nearby, three of them stayed at my house. And I learned a lot from the classes and met a bunch of new people that I hope I can stay in touch with.

Last Sunday was Mother's Day. I tried to get a great picture of me with my girls, but that meant relying on Steve's photography skills, so I got a somewhat great picture of me with my girls. ;) They are so beautiful, inside and out. I love them and I love that I'm enjoying them more and more each year.

While we were there, Grandpa (or P-Paw, as Cecily calls them) was doing his exercises for the slipped disc in his back. The girls decided they needed to join him. Emilia was doing them, too, but she got up right as I was getting out my camera.

I decided for dessert, I wanted something that defied deliciousness, so I ended up making a cheesecake which we topped with fresh raspberries, strawberries, and blackberries, then drizzled (a lot of) white chocolate over the top. I succeeded. It was AMAZING. (The picture was not so amazing, sorry.)

Some other things that happened in the last month:
I made an Easter wreath,

Emilia draw a picture that I thought was impressive,

Do you see the monkey, the snake, iguana on a branch, and blue bird?

Mira made a computer for herself out of duplo legos,

Cousins came to visit, during which time Grandpa pushed them on a rolling turtle over and over again,

I did a tiny bit of gardening,

Steve took Mira and I took Emilia out on dates,

Emilia chose to get hot chocolate and a cupcake. I got a sugar cookie, which surprisingly, exceeded my expectations. I also ended up drinking the specialty hot chocolate that I had bought for Emilia because it "tasted too nutty."

and went shopping with Cecily while Mira was at a friend's house and Emilia was at school.

snow and sunburns

This week was a good week for me. We got our carpets and livingroom furniture cleaned on Monday. This meant that I had to move all my furniture out of my living room and family room. And that inspired me to rearrange things a little bit when I put stuff back in. I liked how it felt open and uncluttered when the furniture wasn't there, so I tried to make it feel that way when I put everything back in. I like the new arrangement a lot.

Also, it took me three days, but I was able to go through all the toys in the girls' room and rearrange and declutter so it all fit better. And I spraypainted a sunburst mirror that I inherited from my mom. And I covered the boxes for the shelves I got from Ikea that you can see in the background of the photos below. The shelves are cheap (only $35 a piece), but then they wanted $15 a piece for baskets to hold stuff. If I had filled the shelves with those baskets, it would have cost $60 for the baskets! That's almost double what I paid for the shelf! So, being me, I decided to find a DIY solution. What I found? 12x12x12 moving boxes from Staples for $1 a piece, which I covered in burlap which was $3 a yard. So for less than $4 a piece, I have nice-looking "baskets" for my Ikea shelves.

Emilia and Mira got chocolate all over themselves and thought it was really funny.

I tried to capture a picture of Cecily in her adorable outfit, but she would not stand still!

So sweet when she's asleep, though.

The weather in Utah may be less predictable than the weather in North Dakota was. This week Wednesday, it snowed. Mira was SO excited. She got into her snow clothes and hurried outside. When I looked out, I saw her sitting on the hill, eating handfuls of it. Then she started crawling, caterpillar-style, through the snow so she could eat it without having to use her hands. Silly kid.

Then yesterday, I picked lilacs for my table and Mira and Emilia got swimsuits on so they could run through the sprinklers with their friends. Earlier in the day, we took the girls for a picnic and to feed the ducks. There was a momma at the canal who had 11 babies. Three were a couple months older and eight were little little. They were all adorable, but I was surprised to see that many with one mom. The beauty of the day made us feel thankful for God's great creations. And Steve got sunburnt. :)

Spring Break, Easter, Silly kids

Two weeks worth today because I totally forgot last Sunday. We were at Megan's house for Easter Sunday and to watch the last session of General Conference. Looking through the pictures I have for you, I can only come to one conclusion: my kids are crazy sillyheads. And they are so fun.

Cecily has been going through a phase where she doesn't like to wear her diaper. Or perhaps it's just that she doesn't like to sit still long enough to have it put on.

The full moon was so huge the other night driving home from my mom's house.

Here are the girls playing outside at Megan's house. We do Easter baskets on Saturday morning so that we can focus on Christ on Sunday. But besides Easter and General Conference, we were also celebrating my mom's, Mira's, and Dylan's birthday. So they got a few new things to play with that day anyway.

 

Grandpa an Lincoln.

Dylan and Mira playing on Nana's tablet.

Here are some more of my kids being silly. I wear my hair up in an old t-shirt for a little while after I shower and when Cecily got out of the tub the other day, she wanted to wear something on her head. She was so cute, I had to take a picture and then then others needed pictures taken, too. Of course.

This last week was spring break for Emilia. A couple of the days, she and Mira and the other girls in the neighborhood played outside for 5+ hours. It was glorious. There may have been angels singing.

On Wednesday, Steve took a 1/2 day off of work and we had some fun. First we went bowling (I did the best with a 154). Then we put Cecily down for a nap at his parents' house. We were lucky that Wilda was off work with a headache so we could leave her there. We took the older two to Nickel City. (A little arcade where you pay to get in and then all the games are a nickel.) Then we got Cecily and we all went out to dinner at a pizza place called Malawi's. It was a fun day.

Mira did a victory dance every time she rolled the ball. It made me giggle. 

Cecily thought the ball ramp was an excellent slide.

 

I also had writing group this last week and they were troopers and read over half of my book this time around. I'm excited to have it close to polished. The writing conference is next month. Happy Day! :)