North Dakota and another crazy week

I went to North Dakota last weekend for my grandmother's memorial service. I loved being home and spending the whole weekend with my mom's side of the family. We haven't all gotten together like that in a long time. I felt surrounded with people I love, people who know me and accept me, people who make me laugh with their antics, jokes, stories, and bad puns. And (except for the being funny part, maybe), the feeling was mutual. :) I also enjoyed staying with my Grandma and Grandpa Frohlich. I hadn't seen them in 5 years, so it was good to catch up and be a part of their lives again for a very short moment.

We didn't want to pay for plane tickets for everybody, so Steve stayed home with all three girls while I got to go play. I felt like a kid again, playing games, eating great food, going to garage sales, and staying up late. So much fun.

The kids missed me. So that was nice. :) This whole last week seems like a blur. We packed in doctor appointments, car repairs, a family photo shoot (that I took the pictures), a drive to Layton (about an hour from here), a splash pad, a play date, a ward barbecue, a library trip, a Costco trip, a family picnic, a Twitter pitch contest (for my writing), some gardening, a lawn mowing, a trip to a friend's house, a pretend race, Emilia's first lost tooth, and a whole lot of goofiness.

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.