One week later

Monday of this week, I had activity days. I gotta say, I got moved to working with the 7-turning-8 year olds and I'm loving it. They're so much more excited about activities. They don't look at me like, "Are you serious with this?" or "Do I really have to talk?" Plus, I got a partner and that makes it so much easier!! She has great ideas and does half the prep work. We've only done two activities so far, but they've both been really fun. We made a resurrection eggs kit the Monday before Easter for the girls to share with their families, and last Monday, we did a get-to-know-you activity.

Tuesday, Emilia had her Tween Author Boot Camp. It was put on at the Provo Library, and it was basically a 4-hour conference for tweens who want to learn about writing. She says, "It was a whole lot of everything writer related." They learned about story structure, dialog, and writing appropriately descriptive prose. She also got dinner, a backpack, and listened to a keynote by J. Scott Savage.

That night the most beautiful double rainbow hung out over our house for a good twenty minutes.

The view was amazing, too.

Wednesday, all the fifth grades in the school district had a track meet and Emilia chose not to participate, so she cheered on her classmates for a couple hours and then I brought her and her friend Lizzy home. The other girls had gymnastics that evening.

Thursday and Friday had nothing special going on. I did some grocery shopping. I broke my phone. Like, did a really great job of destroying the screen. We had Lizzy over again and I helped them make Mt. St. Helens out of foam for their report/float on the state of Washington. We had our friend Cassie stay over night Friday night so she could hang out while her family moved on Saturday.

Saturday, I had a stake RS Activity and a baby shower to attend. Cecily had a birthday party to go to. Steve and my dad moved our treadmill out of the basement because we never use it anymore. Then Steve and I tried a new game called Photosynthesis after the kids were in bed. I got it the other day when Amazon had a board game sale. We enjoyed it. It's different enough from the other games we have that it's still interesting, but it's still got enough strategy that it shouldn't get boring anytime soon.

That pretty much covers our week. Oh! Except, I decided to try to start designing book covers to make some extra money. I've been working on some this week for friends as practice.

Here's my mockups for them:

Teacher Appreciation Week is next week and since I'm on the committee, I am helping out. Mostly, they just wanted me to design a print to give as a gift to the teachers. The theme for the week is "UP." Not the movie--like "giddy up," "batter up," "dress up," etc. I'm proud of how the finished print turned out, too, though I can't take credit for the layout. I copied it from here: https://www.raisinglemons.com/creator/holidays/teacher-appreciation-week-2/

And lastly, your weekly dose of Jules. She's started sleeping with her arms above her head and it's adorable. I love this stage.

Also, those eyes!

And that belly! Those toes! Every inch of her is the cutest, in my totally unbiased opinion. :)

Mira's birthday, spring break, a baptism, and Easter

Spring has definitely sprung around here. Flowers and budding fruit trees and rain. Lots of rain. ;)

The kids had spring break the first week of April. We didn't plan well, so we only went out of town Thursday afternoon through Sunday.

But we did enjoy our time at home. Playing with friends, watching TV, and visiting Nana.

Thursday afternoon, we took the girls to the Provo Rec Center. We decided to brave taking Jules and it went pretty well. We definitely ended up leaving earlier than we would have before she was born, but she was really good, considering.

Friday through Sunday we went to St. George. We hiked in the Red Cliffs recreation area first.

The water was mountain run off and freezing. But the kids all got in -- in their only clothes.

The weather was in the 70s and perfect the whole weekend.

It was General Conference weekend, so we watched that with family.

It was a good relaxing weekend.

Cecily drew these one day. I am so super impressed with her artistic skill lately.

I arranged these flowers for my friend who's going through a hard time lately and dropped them off one day.

I also made this bib before we went down to St. George. She's been so super drooly lately.

I didn't do a party on Mira's birthday. We were in the midst of Marie Kondoing and spring break and all sorts of goings on, so we finally had her birthday party on the 15th. It was a tea party and it was so much fun to put together.

Mira was baptized on the 14th. There were 4 other girls that all got baptized that day. AND Dylan was baptized that day.

After everyone left, I started going through my fabric and craft supplies. It took all afternoon just to go through the fabric. It's not that choosing what to keep or give away that was so hard. It was deciding how to organize it after.

I love the faces Jules makes. She cracks me up all the time.

I also designed Alison's wedding invitation this last week. Did I tell you I took her invitation photos, too. I think they turned out really good.

Friday, Cecily had a field trip to the zoo and Steve was able to go with her. He took a 1/2 day off at work and the two of them had a lot of fun. I was feeling bored and stuck in the house, though, so Friday night, we got takeout and took it to a park. Then we went to the used book store and let the kids pick out some books. Mira read a bunch of books to Cecily so she would know what she wanted to buy. It was so sweet.

I did Easter baskets on Saturday so I could keep the Easter Bunny separate from the celebration of Christ's resurrection.

Then Saturday night, I took Emilia out on a mother-daughter date to Fiiz drinks. We got "dirty" drinks, macarons, and a red velvet cookie. Emilia loved the massive amounts of sugar, obviously.

Such pretty girls on Easter morning.

And now we're at my parents house, eating ham, potatoes, jello, cheesecake, and Easter egg candy. It's been a good day. *sigh*