april in review

so april went by way too fast-the start of the month my big sister christy and i went to see my littlest sister cyndi in arizona for a week...we decided to make a road trip of it and drive the 15 hours. well i got my kids on the bus tuesday morning and headed to blackfoot to pick up my sister. i got to about ucon in idaho falls and i hear sirens behind me so i pull over-

the state trooper asked do you know why i pulled you over-and i actually didn't so i said no. he said he had been following me from rigby and i had crossed the shoulder line at least 7 times and my speed varied from 5-10 over the speed limit. i told him that i guess i wasn't paying attention very good-well wrong answer. he next told me there was "safe drivers" and "unsafe drivers" and which one was i? i gave the right answer this time-unsafe driver. then he asked why i was going so fast if i was late for work or something. and i told him i was just picking my sister up in blackfoot to drive to arizona. and then he asked "well, is blackfoot going to move? is your sister going to be there in another 10 minutes?" and i said "i understand i will slow down"...i thought for sure i was getting a ticket after these comments but he did just let me off with a warning. my road trip was not off to a good start but we actually didn't have any more problems getting there-it was a beautiful drive and me a christy talked (laughed or cried) the whole 15 hours-nonstop...seriously. and when we got to las vegas-we really couldn't believe that we had traveled 9 hours-it went by so fast: we also enjoyed watching the temperature keep going up an up it was 80 degrees in vegas at 7:00, we were so tempted to get out and lay out for a bit:) but we made it to cyndi's at about 1 in the morning.

we had thought that it would take paisley a little while to get used to us but my sister kara had visited a couple weeks before us and she just thought we were her and loved to play with us! i was the one who would go on the walks (christy had a very sore foot). i loved being able to go on walks at any time early in the morning, in the middle of the day, at night-the weather was perfect at about 80-85 degrees the whole time we were there. oh, i've said it before my life would be complete if we had sidewalks in salem:) paisley was so much fun to walk with: i love the simple excitement of toddlers-we never tired of seeing newspapers, gross garbage cans, owwwy cactus, more balls (bb pellets), doggie poop (her favorite), the bees (bugs), and all the cats and dogs...we even had a cat follow us home for the last couple days.

i did learn an important lesson-DON'T TOUCH THE CACTUS!

they are pokey everywhere even if they look all squishey and rubbery in the middle-they have millions of little invisible pokeys-ouch.

it was so much fun to have nothing to do but play-we drove cyndi crazy and blew up tons of balloons, blew lots of bubbles, built lego creations (i wish i had a picture of all those legos dumped out, there was thousands), went on walks, pushed paisley in her swing-i remember it was like 10:30 at night and paisley wanted to swing and cyndi is like "you can tell her no" and i said "why-i don't have anything else to do"

and getting to know cosette was wonderful, she is such a sweet baby...she loved to be held and would totally mold herself around you-i always wanted a snuggly baby. she did make it a little hard to keep my eyes open through conference, there is nothing quite as peaceful as a baby sleeping on you! i miss cuddly cosette...

we visited the mesa temple grounds, we kind of had alternative motives for this...we were trying to find koy a lizard-the cactus grow so huge, they look fake to me.

we were able to go to the easter pageant while we were there, too. they do it right on the temple grounds and it was so neat to feel the spirit there and watch the last week of Christ life-it was a huge cast and everything was live including the donkey and sheep.

well i guess we had a harder time leaving because the ride home took alot longer than the ride there. we were still trying to be hopeful about finding a lizard for koy. we saw a little road side shop that sells all sorts of things and christy said "i said a prayer this morning to find a lizard and i have a good feeling about that place" so she flipped a u-turn right on the highway! we asked the shop lady if they sold lizards and she looked at us very strangely and said "no, but you could try a pet store at the next big town." well i happened to look out the window and saw a peacock and the lady said we could go back there in her backyard...she had some other birds and a fish pond, and while we were looking at the fish i saw a lizard crawl into her garden: so we started looking around her deck and we saw-a lizard! but it was huge, it looked like a small dragon. i told christy i couldn't catch it, it was too scary. so we were getting ready to leave and i told christy we had to get our picture taken in the photo thing...

no joke-as i was running to get in the picture a lizard ran over my foot-so we were totally laughing in this picture, waiting for it to hurry and take. then we tried to corner the lizard but it was super fast and we only had our hands, i went to christys car to try to find a cup and it ran under a rock. we were quite disappointed but then i decided to look down the deck one more time and

another lizard! so we were really sneaky this time and we emptied christy's first aid kit and cornered it behind this sign...i went to find a stick to wrangle it into the box and i noticed we were so caught up in catching this lizard that we failed to see this guy had stopped to watch our big commotion. i told him we were catching a lizard and he just went into the store shaking his head. but we did catch it...

we had to bandaid up all the holes in christys bucket so it wouldn't escape in the car:) we were so happy-i'm so glad christy remembers everything in her prayers! (it's been a month and we still have the lizard)
i also realized on the ride home that if i ever lived in a big city i would never have to workout-i was totally sweating in the las vegas traffic...they had closed our exit and we were briefly lost. we pulled off an exit ramp and the first place we saw was a Del Taco fast food restaurant, and christy said "i am not asking some guy who works at Del Taco which way to go" i don't know why but i thought this was hillarious-the whole ride home!
it was good to get home, there really is NO PLACE LIKE HOME-i'm so happy that my family let me go and everyone who helped so i could.

conference was of course wonderful-i can't wait to reread all the talks again...i loved the very optamistic quote by President Monson-

"the future is as bright as your faith!"

and one of my favorite talks was by Elder Gary E. Stevenson on temples. i am daily thankful that i am blessed to live so close to a temple and can even see it out my backwindow-and i too...

"never feel lost when i can see the temple!"

and it finally warmed up enough to enjoy some days outside and there is nothing better than being outside after a long winter!

i love this picture of koy and connor-it reminds me of that story when the farmer is pulling the big stuck turnip.

we also had our salem community easter egg hunt which is so much fun:

this is koy's friend justin-i just have to write how much i enjoy watching their cute friendship, justin is 4 years older than koy but is so patient and kind with him: he lets koy wrestle him and always forgives him when koy gets carried away, justin always lets him sit on his lap at scouts or elsewhere (eventhough koy is about his same size), and he really looks out for koy and calls him his buddy and i just think that is so sweet.
here is brooke and sirri getting ready to fill their baskets up.
and kaden doing his best impersonation of the easter bunny. we had beautiful easter weekend weather, kaden woke up on Sunday and said, "what a glorious day! i don't know if i could survive without holidays!"

usually we color eggs for the family home evening before easter but since i was gone, we did it on easter. we had so many eggs from our chickens i let each of them dye a dozen each.
i just love koys stained fingers-he's slowly turning into the hulk!
kelsi is always good for a beautiful egg and a dramatic pose:)
kaden has been mastering his yo-yo that he got for christmas...this is called the eiffel tower. he's pretty good and will put on a show for whoever will watch but it's actually quite hard to get a good yo-yo picture.

we have been very thankful this month that kent is pretty much a jack of all trades and has been working doing a little of anything he can...he is farming at the moment and will probably do this until the end of may, so he invited the kids and i to come ride around with him for a few hours, they were so excited!
i had to take this picture because i just love the totally straight lines that tractors make-the patterns in the fields look so cool to me! but i could never be in a tractor to long-it made me so tired. if i was alone, i would be asleep in no time-then my lines would be all over the place:{
koy was so happy to be working with his dad and tried to push every button and asked a million questions.
this is my favorite picture, he was just whistling away and it reminded me of just a true little farmer, happy to be out in the field!
we ended the month with brookes "america" kindergarten program. i love school programs but especially the kindergarten one...the energy that a group of kindergarteners radiates is so tangible: i just love being in the midst of it-you can't help grinning and giggling the whole time.
brooke would not look at me though-little stinker!
afterwards brooke and i went to get a treat with sirri and lisa marie at dairy queen-they still had a little to much energy to dine in but it was super fun to see them be so silly...sirri decided to suck her sundae up with a straw and she actually did it-holy super sucker sirri!

brooke tried and finally was able to suck hers after a few minutes of waiting for her sundae to melt.

too cute! well this was a little long but it was so fun for me to remember all this! i am the luckiest person ever!!!!! and for the grand finale here is a cute little paisley that i'm sure will get you smiling:)