After a particularly crappy day--right around the anniversary of Dad passing away, Ashlyn had a special surprise for me when I got done teaching. All dressed up and singing the Doc McStuffins song for me. Lucky me to have this little sunshine!
AHH!
Ashlyn and Elan got spoiled by Rae this year for birthdays too!
Oh this boy. He is one big heart breaker!
Ashlyn had her 5-year old checkup! We went to a new doctor--Dr. Reynolds-- who was about 1000% better than the dime-a-dozen healthcare at the St. Luke's pediatrics. (I could go on about that place!!) Anyway, I had thought it would be helpful to let her know almost a week in advance that she'd have to get a shot at her checkup. Yeah, wrong choice. I should have told her like, morning of. Maybe the day before! She was fretting about it for a week! Oops! We watched shows about it, talked about it about a thousand times... that didn't help! Lesson learned! BUT her checkup went great, and she loved the doctor. At the very end it was shot time, and she was saying she'd be brave, until... they told her she'd be getting FOUR SHOTS. Then she lost it! I had to help hold her down. Luckily they were quick. She cried just for a minute and then was fine. But she was NOT happy that they had surprised her with that whole 4 shots thing--she kept saying afterwards, "I was ok with getting ONE shot, not FOUR shots." Ha ha ha. She got ice cream afterwards and she was very proud of herself for being brave. And she probably reminded me of the unfairness of that four shots thing for the next week or two!
My friend who was watching Elan while I took Ashlyn to the doctor sent me this--I think he likes it just a little?! This boy. So adorable.
Playing with Elan's birthday gift from Rae.
Date night for February/March--Banbury Hotsprings (near Hagerman) and dinner at The Farmhouse (Wendell). I wasn't excited at first but it turned out to be a super fun night. :)
Weather was pretty nice for a lot of March! I got out with Elan for a run. He is a quiet little observer in the stroller.
The anniversary of Dad's death ended up with me having to style Ashlyn's hair due to different circumstances. I was not in any mood to spend a great deal of time but came up with the Star Wars look--she rocked it well! Such a cutie.
I started a meal plan! Something had to change. Not to be all self-pitying, but I am not happy with the shape I've gotten into. Relocating.... (to a place not with not super accessible gyms), adding a kid to the family, and death in the family caused me a lot of not taking care of myself over the past year and a half! Anyway, a friend and I started up the Clean Simple Eats 40 day challenge at the beginning of March. Pre-planned meals and snacks with grocery lists made up for you and everything. I am loving it! Have lost about 6 pounds so far and feeling so much better. I took this picture because I went to Chick Fil A one day and actually packed my own salad! Ha ha. I haven't done that since... but well I was proud of myself!
/
Tara came to visit! Tara and Lauren actually, although I couldn't find any pictures of Lauren here for some reason? Anyway, we had a lot of fun girl chatting and hanging out, and we had a girls night out for froyo and went to Eddie the Eagle (I'd recommend!). Love you sis!
I judged for festival a couple of weekends in March too. One weekend I did both Friday and Saturday for Nampa's festival--that was busy but fun. I spent the night at a piano teacher friend's house in Nampa, and got to catch up with several of my old piano buddies from the Boise area. Miss those people SO, so much! This was my view of the office I was in for festival Friday night at College of Idaho. I had nice digs for both days of festival judging this year! Must be making my way up the ladder, ha ha. I also judged for festival in Twin Falls the following weekend all day Saturday. I was the judge for the highest levels! That was intimidating. Hopefully I did ok. It was definitely fun to get to hear upper levels of playing, and motivated me to get more back into playing myself. Collin was a rock star home with the kids all the times I did that.
These are a few park pictures he sent me while I was judging one of those days. I was sad I missed it! Elan's first trip to the park.
Another pic Collin sent me while I was gone. Who knows what kind of racing competitions he came up with for them?!
So I guess it's a "thing" now to celebrate Dr. Seuss's birthday? Collin did some dramatic readings of Dr. Seuss in some classes at the middle school that day.
After getting their pictures taken I attempted to get one of them.... Elan was not interested. Ashlyn was since she had just gotten her reward slushy! ;)
Elan has gotten very good at throwing little fits on the floor. Any time he is denied something he wants--especially things like getting into the pantry, the bathroom, the dog's water bowl, etc.... he dramatically flings himself onto the ground with a cry and throws a little fit for a minute. I started taking pictures whenever he did it one day because I wanted to make a little collage. But he gets up like 1 minute later so I wasn't ever quick enough to get very many. Silly boy.
SO upset he can't go into the bathroom with Ashlyn.
SO upset I shut the cupboard before he could empty it
Oh and also the dishwasher is another thing I have to keep him away from when it's open.
Sweet girl always likes to color a picture for her teacher on the back of her homework.
All day, every day. I put up with this for about 6 weeks and finally had Collin put locks on most of the cupboards.
Ashlyn did GREAT at her dentist checkup! No cavities, and she loved all the attention and the movie she got to watch while they did it all. Of course they heard all about her lost tooth.
Elan often goes into his room and just sits in the corner looking at books! Pretty much completely melts my heart!
The middle school put on "The Lion King" for their musical, and Collin took Ashlyn on a little date to it. He said she was absolutely enthralled. After that her favorite thing was to pretend she was in a play! So cute.
We took some trips in March! Two to Utah in two weeks! What were we thinking? Just kidding, it was actually fun. Both of them.
The first trip was to Logan for one night and then Provo one night. That was definitely the more crazy trip. Collin had free hotel rooms to go work on recruiting employees for the Jerome school district at college job fairs, and they got him big enough rooms that we could come along. It was definitely a little challenging for me, being the one to have to pack up and check out of the hotel on my own with the 2 kids both mornings, and all of us sharing a hotel room wasn't the most fun either at bed time trying to get them each to go to sleep, but overall I was really glad we went, mostly because we got to visit all my siblings that live in Utah!
This was the weather on our drive to Logan! Yikes!
We got to have lunch at Chick Fil A with Auntie during her one hour break between classes! :) We stopped by later to see her apartment too. Ah the college life!
Our hotel in Orem had a little coffee table that the kids considered a tunnel! They probably played in this for a solid half hour when we first got there.
We met up with Jodee, Brian, and Alex for dinner that night! It was nice that Collin finally got to meet Brian. Jodee and Brian had just gotten unofficially engaged the week before! So exciting!
One stellar picture of our family!
The biggest news in March was.... Elan started walking!! He took his first few actual steps in Sunday School class, actually!! (If you recall, Ashlyn started walking during Sunday School class too! What the heck.) When he did it, Collin shouted out (interrupting the lesson), "OH MY...!! That was amazing!" So funny. After that Elan just got better and better. So so cute.
Collin had the kids with him for a small part of an assembly while I had a hair appointment one day. Ashlyn was being such an obedient girl posing for pictures, ha ha
Ashlyn with the girls basketball team! :D
Our other trip to Utah was for spring break! We came home in between the trips for 4 days, just enough time to unpack and then basically pack again! Collin's mom was so nice and let us use a condo rental from WorldMark in Midway, UT. It was perfect! We did SO much stuff while we were there, but also hung out at the condo a lot. The kids loved it. Ashlyn thought it was so exciting to stay there, and Elan was perfectly happy exploring and playing. He had his own room to sleep in and we were all able to sleep in separate rooms, so everyone was happy!
Some pics of our nice condo!
We met up with Nana for Hogle Zoo while we were there.
We did a lot of swimming at the resort pool! Ashlyn even got brave by the last day and started putting her WHOLE HEAD in the water! That is a big deal!
The weather was pretty terrible (snowy) all but the first day we were there. We were glad we did the zoo that day! After that we found stuff to do inside! We went to the Museum of Natural Curiosity at Thanksgiving Point. It was so fabulous. I wished we had more time there, but we needed to get back for a few reasons. Both kids LOVED it! We will go back sometime.
Ashlyn's favorite part was a little stage where you could dress up in different costumes and put on a little show to music. She dressed up a bunch of times and did some cute little shows for us. It was so cute! She is never usually into that stuff and I was wondering why she was all of a sudden! Then I remembered that she had just seen the Lion King like a week before and so I figured that was why she thought it was cool all of a sudden!
The classic floating head pictures everyone posts from this museum! :)
Elan wanted to crawl all the way out of the table!
Washing "laundry"
Playing vet
Building with crazy legos
Oops.. out of order. More from the zoo!
We were back at the merry go round Ashlyn rode for her very first time back about 3 years ago! Aw! She got to ride it again.
OK, now back to museum pictures. :)
This is out of order but an example of what Collin really enjoyed on our trip! ha ha!
And one more museum pic. Boy this little guy melts my heart.
On the same day as our fun museum trip, I drove back into SLC to meet up with Tara and Jodee for a girls night. We ended up just having dinner at our favorite bakery and it was wonderful of course! I stopped at Park City and shopped for about an hour on my way, and then stopped at Trader Joe's and Whole Foods on my way home... it was so awesome to get to shop a little! I miss the city.
Our beautiful view from our condo patio! My only regret about the trip is that the weather really wasn't nice enough to do much outside. I would have loved to explore Midway more! What we saw of it, we really liked!
Shenanigans before we headed out swimming.
Hubba hubba!
We did a teeny bit of exploring in Midway on our last day there. Collin found a crater and so we went and checked it out. It was actually super cool. Google The Homestead Crater! You can go and swim or scuba dive inside it in this clear blue water. Cool and a little creepy. Not for kids! I was clinging to my kids super tight to not let them near that water! ha ha. We hiked to the top and that was our "hike" for the trip. Ashlyn was being a real peach about getting her picture taken!
She gave us a nice smile back down at the bottom of our hike! Sheesh.
On our last day, we headed out pretty early and got to temple square in the morning and met up with Tara, Lauren, Paul, and Tyler. Even though we go to Utah pretty often, we hardly ever make the stop at Temple Square. It was really nice to have some time to go check things out! Ashlyn really was interested in everything. The only thing we were bummed about was that the church office building was undergoing some remodeling so we couldn't go to the top to look out. Next time!
Grr, how did these get so out of order? More swimming. :)
Did I post already about Ashlyn losing her first tooth? Well, she lost it just a couple of days after her 5th birthday. It was SO wiggly and ended up coming out while she was eating some fruit loops for breakfast. It was an exciting time! The tooth fairy left her a dollar! She was thrilled. She came into our room at like 4 am to tell us. I thought it was so soon for her to be losing a tooth, but apparently it's not that uncommon. Her big tooth was already growing in behind it! I was a little sad to see how grown up she looked with it gone! She really looks like a big kid! Her second tooth (the one in this picture) came out about a month later. Collin actually pulled that one out! It was really loose too and the big tooth was really coming in behind it. So, two teeth out! She got 50 cents for the second one, I believe. I think that will be the going rate from the tooth fairy from now on! ;) She was more excited about that than the dollar because it was "more money!"
Other random March things...
80's day at Jerome Middle School
We had a couple of crazy snow days at the end of March. After all the warm weather it was weird! It was like a good 5 or 6 inches in one day!
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