March 2017

Busy is my by-word.

In March Grapes and I traveled to Flagstaff for her Odyssey of the Mind regional competitions.

 They got 1st place!

Socks earned a reward ski trip at school. He had a good time, but also got very sunburned.

Good job, Mom, forgetting the sunscreen.

We attended Grapes' school concert
(cello and choir!)

Our princess found different ways to express her royalty. 

With help from the siblings...

Grapes got contacts!

 Spring break came, and we enjoyed the warmer weather.

One of my favorite things was dinner out at the fire pit.

Aunt Kelsey Came and spent some time with us too!

Kelsey watched the kids so the Doctor and I could take a trip to Flagstaff to celebrate our anniversary.

We went to Flagstaff Extreme (Obstacle course and ziplines) and didn't take a single picture!

Kelsey also came with us to Grace's state honor's choir performance.

Unfortunately, we had a sick kid with us at that concert.

Miss Feta did a taco bell puke in the car on the way home from the concert.

It was traumatic, and may have cured me from ever wanting to eat Taco Bell ever again.

(It also didn't help that in the confusion of getting puke cleaned up and kids into bed after a long night, a single taco got left in the car... not to be found for another 3 weeks.)

Autumnal Recollections... of our own insanity

The Doctor is remarkable. (And so I remark...)

He decided to run another marathon this year. This time in St. George, Utah.

The timing was tricky, though, because it happened to be the weekend BEFORE our kids had a "Fall Break" from school. It also happened to be at the same time as the LDS temple open-house in Star Valley, Wyoming. 

SO- I hatched a daring plan (facilitated by $35 one-way flights from Southwest Airlines.)

It looked like this:

Green represents Me

Red represents my kids

Blue represents my husby

And somehow (with tons of help from BOTH sides of the family) we pulled it off!

MISSING in action

We've been missing on this blog-- We've been busy.
Doing things-- I'm sure there were things....
Lets check the photo evidence:


We visited Utah- Our Aunt Kelsey went to the temple to receive her endowment- It was so great to see so many extended family members and be there with Kels for such a special day.
AND we ate at a Brazillian Grill/Buffet in honor of our dad (he served his mission in Brazil, so it made us feel like he was there with us) Plus it was a DELIGHT to get some more family time together! (New Aunties, anyone?!?!)

Christmas trip

We had the privilege to travel to Utah and visit lots of family over the Christmas break.
In all honesty- the more times we do this, the more I struggle with the visiting. We only get to see these awesome people a few times each year, so when we get together we try to cram as much as possible in, logically. I love seeing them and spending time together.
Sadly, with children, trying to spend long hours in cars for days on end, and spending time with people doing lots of crazy fun things quickly turns into a nightmare of grumpy kids, little to no sleep (thus resulting in a grumpy mom) horrible eating habits (that mom gets to take care of/clean up after) and ridiculous expectations for when we get home again.  (ie: "Why can't I eat more chocolate orange for breakfast? I don't want to to CHORES! I'm not getting up for school." to name a few direct quotes from the last few days)

I'm very glad we went. Don't get me wrong. We made some brilliant memories and loved on some dear, dear people. I just need a vacation to recover from my vacation.
(My work trip, lets be real. I was working on this trip)


Things we want to remember:

Before this trip our darling aunt Amanda came to AZ to visit us. We loved every minute of it- we just didn't take any photos. Boo. It was a delight to have her here, and we'll hopefully take better pictures next time! While she was here there was some crazy weather and my kids ended up having some school cancelled for snow days. We also had church cancelled- so there was lots of hanging out in Jams and being together.

Amanda flew from Phoenix to Utah with us- and our adventure began!

We got together with the Doctor's father's extended family for a Christmas dinner- I didn't take great photos there either. BUT-- I caught Feta hamming it up with our sweet Cousie E and Aunt Amanda and Grandma Jen.

We're still here!

Life may or may not be trying to do me in this time.
Just as post baby sanity begins returning, and I'm swamped with all the everything else!

I've been thinking about blogging. After months of such thinking, here we are.  A post of pictures.
Because I don't want to forget the little stuff. These little stuffs. (not that they'd let me forget them even if I tried....)

So- Photographic evidence that we do, in fact, exist. At least, we did last September.

In no particular order:

A rain-gutter regatta. Our cub scout's boat didn't fit in the rain gutter due to his (and his father's) over-active imagination. SO he used a borrowed boat for the races.

After all, there's only one more sleep 'till....

Christmas!

Better late than never...

I know today is New Years Eve...

but I thought I would share a little of the last holiday before things got too far out of hand.

We decorated!

Guest Momming

Our Seattle trip, through the eyes of my big little sister. (She's like 5 inches taller than I am)
She is a delight to be with and a wonderful friend in addition to being a relation.

Playing "Mom"

• Oh hey! Sister, Auntie, and pseudo "mom" here!
  Whit asked me to write as a guest blogger to describe my adventures with her monkeys while she and the doctor were away.
   I just want to start by saying I am one proud aunt and sister! Aren't I lucky to call the Whitings my family?!? I just love them! Any time I visit and spend time with them I feel pretty good about life. My problems seem so small and my blessing seem so big when I'm there. They have that effect on you, let me tell you.
  Any who, Grapes, Socks, and Pencil are the best kiddos. If you ask me, we had a blast!
  I'll be honest, I had my doubts about my ability to be "mom" but they made the job easy!
  Here are some of the highlights: Each night they took turns opening an envelope that explained an Auntie Activity(for bribery purposes, of course). Unfortunately I forgot to take pictures of our final results of any of the activities... Shoot! In fact, it seems as though Grapes and Sock didn't make it in any of the few pictures I took. I'm not so good at the picture thing.
  

In the throws of July or How I spent my Summer Vacation, Part 1

When last we met, our fantastic heroine was entrenched in the most solemn preparations for mighty battle, er, a road trip with her sister and three sweet and hairy monkeys.
It has been three and a half weeks, and by gracious, I am simply exhausted still from the events that filled this madhouse road trip/ family vacation.

Event #1: We were driving.(and driving well, I might add.) We had stopped and hotel-ed in style in the darling town of Kanab, Utah. We had breakfasted and filled the mighty Fred's tanks to brimming with gasoline that cost far more than I wanted it to. And then...