April

 I took Abbey's senior pictures!

Tanner LOVES to fish! When he's lucky, his fish loving older brother, Weston, takes him with him!

With spring break and Easter, Collin's birthday lunch had to be postponed. He chose Chuba Hut. I love this boy and any time I get to spend with him.

I think maybe this was from a dive clinic in Flagstaff. 

Last minute, I took a sub job at Mesa High for the dance class. It was a TRIP going back to that campus. It has changed so much. They've improved the campus a lot, but it still felt quite a bit like the hood. I gave up on pronouncing names for roll call. 

My mom used to hide ice cream from us in the freezer by putting it in a bag labeled oatmeal. I always noticed it and thought it was weird but never opened it or questioned the truthfulness of it. So I tried it with my kids. Nope. They all peeked and then gave me a hard time for trying to trick them! Why was I such a trusting, submissive child? 

Travis bought a badminton net and the kids had fun playing. We went through a badminton phase in Buffalo and loved it so much. Beautiful nights like this I want to tuck away in my memory forever. 

Science Camp!

I agreed to be a chaperone. We were in Israel for Weston's science camp and it was Covid for Collin's 6th grade year. We'll see what happens for Tanner! Luckily I didn't have to ride in the buses and could just drive up in my own car. The camp was in Prescott. I listened to my new favorite book, The Next Conversation, by Jefferson Fisher. 

Driving through Prescott I was surprised... it's a cute town! I don't know if I've ever been before. 

My favorite part of science camp was the salad bar. Legit ranch dressing.

SO grateful I was paired with a normal, fun mom! Danielle Shulman. Her daughter, Addy, was so cute and the girls in our cabin had so much fun together. Minus these twin girls who, I'm told, are in the classification of "pick me" girls. We hadn't been there 5 minutes when they took some streamers and fashioned male genitalia and put in on one of the other girls' bed in a different room. There was a lot of screaming and drama that ensued.  

I had brought decorations so the girls had fun making our cabin cute and all the other girls kept coming in and saying they wished their cabins looked like ours!

The cabins were put into larger groups and given a camp counselor. We had a schedule and spent the next two days in fun classes and activities. The boys in our group were fairly obnoxious, as 6th grade boys are wont to be. On the hike I finally stopped the group and used my teacher voice on them because they were being really disrespectful to the camp counselor and their chaperone wasn't doing anything. Ugh. I hate when I have to do that. The boy that likes Olive, Jace, was in our group and I don't think that helped matters as he seemed to be showing off for her but that equated to annoying behavior. Other than that, it went well. 

The butch girl with the Rizzler cat shirt on was our counselor. Fun, right? Can't remember her name but we'll call her Rocky. Olive remembered her cat's name was Mick Jagger. 

Quinn, Sloan, Addy, Emerson and Olive!

Kristen Arnett was there chaperoning too. I'm so sad I didn't think to take a picture with her or Danielle!

Travis and I tried a new restaurant called Sage and Barrel and ohhh myyy goshhh it was so yummy!! This was after I spent a full day up to my eyeballs in mouse droppings. Seriously worst day ever. They had gotten into both pantries and food storage and it was BAD. It had taken a while to kill them because why would they want cheese on a mouse trap when they're fat and happy on all my food storage?!! I had been delaying cleaning it all out because I knew what a disaster it would be and I wasn't wrong. I finally finished and showered and we got dinner at 9pm or something. Maybe that played into why dinner was so yummy. I was finally done with that horrible project. 

We missed Nora's birthday party so we went over to give her a gift. Olive is so cute with her. Cohen was showing Weston all his monies haha.

Celebrating Travis and Brandon's birthdays with a Sunday family dinner!

I had the most remarkable day serving in the temple. I wrote about it all in detail in my spiritual experiences journal but I'll include this text here. I was able to be in initiatory when Kenzi Fackerell came in. She was planning to do a session but felt impressed to do initiatories instead. It was a powerful experience for both of us. I don't know how I deserve to get a message like this from someone as pure and peaceful as Kenzi but it meant a lot. 

Camilla and I meet for acai bowls every few weeks and its my FAVORITE.

Liam opened his mission call! He's going to Hawaii!!!! End of October. So excited for him.

Hi, dad!

Tanner went on a field trip to the Butterfly Wonderland. I didn't get picked as a chaperone but his teacher sent this picture. 

For teacher appreciation week they asked for volunteers to decorate the teacher's doorways. Olive does not like Mrs. Jost at all but Mrs. Sandoval's door was already taken so I decided to help out. 

And then I helped with Mrs. Sandoval's art walk display since I've been doing art masterpiece for her class all year. 

I found out sad news about a high school friend so I got some flowers to go see her.