March Activities

I cannot believe how quickly this month went by, it's been such a BUSY one (which is odd for us for March, usually, but I guess now that I'm feeling better I'm making up for missed time the last couple months haha).

-The kids had fun with one of their Christmas gifts, a gum making STEM kit. This was as messy as it sounds and I wish I had known that. BUT I do like to have them doing STEM related things as much as possible. No pics, because I was busy trying to contain the mess haha

-Gwen got to go on her first field trip on the 5th to the Curiosity Museum and had such a fun time. I was hoping to go on her first field trip, but I wasn't feeling 100% confident I could handle 5 kids on my own so close to the surgery (especially at this museum...it's quite large). She was so excited though, she was counting down days for a week before. Then the week of she'd start screaming in the car when she'd remember it was coming up. The morning of she was dressed and ready to go so early (I was just getting up for the day when she was all ready), she even made her own breakfast. I had to tell her school didn't open until a certain time so she can't go to school any earlier. I'm glad she had such a good experience for her first one. Luckily, the teacher mentioned there was another field trip coming up in April, so I told her I want to be first in line for that one, I think I should be able to handle things better at that point.

-We finally upgraded our kitchen appliances! We didn't necessarily NEED new ones, but I've been wanting an oven with an air fry feature on it for a while and Larry has been bugged about our dishwasher (some prongs inside were falling out), and our fridge was fine, but the ice maker never worked on it. So, one day we were looking around the stores and I had enough saved up for new ones and so it was decided we should just get those now. I checked some out at Home Depot during their workshop on the 1st, but then went to price at Lowe's and they seemed to be a better deal. It was so exciting when they got delivered, we paid for them to install them and take away our old ones so we didn't have to worry about that. The kids were even excited for them to be there (Cara says she wants her birthday party at home so she can show her friends the new appliances haha). And we are all enjoying the new ice too!

-We did the kids workshops this month IN store. It was our first time being there (at least for me) since my surgery. It felt good to actually build THERE. Pierce even hammered all on his own! I love that these are available for us and I hope our kids like going to them for a while (even though it does add more stuff to our home, but it's fun to see them learn more skills and gain more confidence with actually building on their own).

-Gwen got to do 1:1s this month. Larry took her to DQ, where they ate in the upstairs dining at Ridley's, which might have been her favorite. I took her to Nothing Bundt Cakes, but it was unfortunately cold outside and they didn't have any seating so we had to eat in the car. And then we realized they didn't give us utensils so we had to eat with our hands. It got quite messy haha. I'm really trying to keep these small, but just enough make them feel a bit more of a connection to us.

-Surgery update: I am happy to say I feel I can do masks now, I can lay on my stomach (this took a while for me to feel comfortable to even try), and twist to pop my back. I've started getting back into working out, just on Sundays since I'm not ready to wake up early during the week to do it, but I'm lifting more and love being able to try new things out. I am sticking to 1200 calories each day, this has really helped me with my eating and changing my mentality (a little) with food. I wasn't planning on doing it forever, it was just for a little bit, but I think I'll stick with it for a while longer. I do like keeping Saturdays as my free for all day though (I don't track my eating that day and I just try and stick to only eating if I'm hungry). It's nice to feel more and more normal each day/week/month, but I do look forward to feeling 100% again.

So happy to do masks again!

-We have officially started swim lessons, again. Only this time, we're going to Goldfish Swim School in American Fork. We've gone back and forth on this a lot, mostly about how much it costs. However, the hours and days they offer lessons just seems to make sense so I talked Larry into trying it for just a few months. Initially I wanted to do it during the winter and have them be "done" by Summer so we could just use the Summer to practice the skills, but with my surgery and everything else going on, it just took until now to get it started. The plan is to keep them in for about 6 months, I feel that should be long enough to learn a good amount to practice. I'll update on how much we like it once we get into it.

-One thing I never took into account when becoming a parent is birthday parties - for friends! Cara and Gwen are apparently very friendly because we've had LOTS of birthday parties this month. I'm very excited they have these opportunities and love that they get to go have fun with friends, but I never built that into my budget so sometimes I'm like WHOA with how much I've spent on their gifts. But it's totally worth it, they always have so much fun (and I love when I've dropped them off and I've heard the other kids get excited that they showed up). 

-And finally, as usual, some silly kiddos this month:

Ashton Gardens, Ice Cream, and Pedicures

Ashton Gardens opened up at the end of this month and they were doing a fun scavenger hunt, which the kids LOVE doing. Since we got the membership, it was a given we had to go. 

I forget how much I LOVE walking the gardens, they are so peaceful and it just makes you feel good to get out of the house and visit. They also had some crafts for the kids and prizes for the scavenger hunt. 

Afterwards, we went to lunch, I originally wanted to do Tower Deli, but it's being renovated so we got stuck with eating in a tent outside, they didn't have too many options so we just made do with what we could. Then we had to hit up the new ice cream place in the Dinosaur Museum, which was SO yummy and had really fun décor (it reminded me of Disney with how much they went out for it)

It was such a fun way to start our Saturday. 

After we got back, I headed back out for pedis with Mom and Rachel. We went to Salon Dante (which is my favorite one to go to) and had a lot of fun chit chatting. Girls days are just perfect once in a while. I used to do those with mom all the time, but it's been a hot minute. We also decided to head out to Southtown to do some shopping. I didn't necessarily needed anything, but somehow I ended up buying something in EVERY store we went to. So, after 4 stores I had to say I was done and had to get home. I joked that Larry was going to wonder how pedis turned into so many bags of thing, but that my defense would be if he thought they took 3 hours then he's a fool and he had to expect I'd come home with some bags of stuff haha.

My loot and new pretty toes

New Home Cleaning & Organizing Plans

Confession: I am a pathological procrastinator when it comes to BIG jobs. I put them on a list to do and maybe get them half done and then just stop and move on to something else (maybe it's ADD...who knows?), but one thing that I'm ALWAYS doing this with is decluttering our home. I'm always SO annoyed at the clutter we have in the house and how it just get shoved in different areas and then just stays there. I feel I've had no time to clean it out with everything else we have going on, so I decided instead of doing our normal house cleaning on Sundays, we'd use that time to start cleaning and organizing a room at a time. 

I've actually felt really good with what I've gotten done so far. I've already finished the Pantry (other than the boxes of kids papers from school we want to keep), Kitchen, Mud Room, Dining Room, Main Bath, and Activity Closet and I'm LOVING how the house is turning out. I have also been sneakily cleaning out Cara's hoarder piles in her room while the girls are in school and I've got more time on my break to use up. 

I've really liked finding new things to help us keep things cleaned up. I found, and ended up getting, some new Mud Room baskets to control all the papers that the girls bring home from school that always end up on the counter and that's been SO nice (such an easy but big change):

They are so pretty!

We also changed out our dining light, because the Death Star one was driving me nuts (we moved that to the front/play room for the kids to enjoy, because I'm all about repurposing rather than wasting/throwing away, if possible) 

I also decided I wanted new bar stools and dining chairs, because our old ones are just SO dirty and I can't find a good way to clean them. That was MUCH more difficult than I anticipated, but eventually I found bar stools on Amazon (well I found 2 sets, one turned out to be not the right color and would've driven me nuts, and apparently I accidentally ordered twice as many as I needed. Returning those was FUN. Thank goodness Amazon offers to do a pick up return service through UPS) 

This coloring is just TOO different
It would've driven me nuts

All the returns we had to have done

I made sure to leave thank you gifts to the
UPS drivers that had to grab the boxes

I also found some dining chairs at Ashley Furniture that are almost perfect in color (they are kind boring, but we can't have fancy ones with such young kids that are still very messy)

Darker, but much better options!

I think one of my other favorite updates is the new sheet organizers I got. We were putting our sheets in BIG bags (they kind of were the same idea as the big bags bedding sets come in at the home stores), but those turned out to be too big and the sheets would just flop around. They weren't as effective as I had wanted. The new ones aren't as big and will help us store them in a much cleaner way and are so aesthetically pleasing

The activity closet got a major makeover (I'm proud of how it turned out...this one is my monster and usually de-motivates me once I get to it)

Before

After

Overall, it's been fun to get things done. I've got a long ways to go still (kids toys, books, games, and rooms are always HUGE ones), but I've made such amazing progress so far I'm excited to see it all when I'm done.

Prince of Egypt at Hale Center Theater

 So one day Rachel sends a text to my group chat with her and Mom saying "your tickets for Prince of Egypt are good to go" and I laughed saying "I think you meant that just for mom" and she said "nope, your Mom said she was taking you to this play." Mom just said "oh yeah...did I not tell you?" Haha. So while it wasn't the first play I was expecting to see there, I have always wanted to see a Hale Center production so I was still pretty excited. 

The show was pretty good, it ended up having a couple interruptions (the main guy got hurt a bit) and the stage was smaller than I expected, but the production was done REALLY well (they even had a couple kids in it that did so good! 

This is the view of the stage from above,
Where they "drop" things down from

This is the crazy board the sound people use
For the plays!

I think my favorite part was afterwards, when Rachel met up with us and gave us a backstage tour. I love behind the scenes sort of stuff. It did end up going pretty late, I was driving home around 12 AM, so I was VERY tired the next morning, but it was such a good night.

Memory Maker: Dreamwalk Park

Okay, surprisingly fun Memory Maker we did was the Dreamwalk Park down at University Mall in Orem. We did Dreamscapes at Southtown a couple years ago and that was okay, but a little different than I expected. I was thinking Dreamwalk would be the same, and it is very similar, but so much fun!

Now, I'm not much of an art person, but this one has fun interactive and cool, immersive exhibits. The kids really enjoyed searching for the UFOs (the challenge/game we chose) with the black light flash light things we got. They had some really fun games to play and I loved the waterfall part (I'm a sucker for a waterfall). 

They also had robots that were interactive and looked at you or responded to your movements. Lucy got a little nervous and needed to be held, so I did a piggy back ride, since that's all I felt comfortable with. And then, they even gave us some fizzy suckers at the end, which were really yummy.

Overall, I recommend doing this and I look forward to their immersive dining experience to open, I'd love to try that!

St. Patrick's Day 2025

Man, holidays are getting to be so much fun these last couple of year! I feel I'm able to celebrate them the way I've always wanted to and the kids really get into it and it makes me get really into it and it's so exciting!

This year, for St. Patrick's Day, I decided on an easy leprechaun trap. After last year, I knew I didn't want to anything too big. I made sure everyone helped, like last year, because it makes it more fun (I'm trying to be less worried about it being done my way/perfect and more about letting the kids do a part of things so they can enjoy the end product more). So this year, Pierce and Lucy glued the cotton ball "clouds" to the paper, Gwen and Cara cute the rainbow road, and I wrapped the box. I made sure to make the trap closer to the actual day (last year, Gwen thought the day we made it was the day we put it out and she kept asking why the trap didn't work). 

The funny thing is Cara and Lucy slept on the hallway and when I asked them why they did it, they said they were trying to catch the leprechaun get trapped, but they missed it. Bummer!

The leprechaun ended up leaving shirts, candy, games, and some small goodies. The kids loved doing the scavenger hunt, which ended at the bottom of the stairs. Cara made a comment about how the leprechaun was much more fun this year haha. All kids have become obsessed with the Simon game, which surprised me. I thought it would be too complicated, but all of them really like playing it. 

We made sure to wear our cute green clothes and we made yummy jello with rainbow strips as our treat. I agree, this year was more fun, but I'm hearing comments that maybe the leprechaun spoiled the kids and we might need to tell him to cool it down a bit next year haha.

Memory Maker: Color Me Mine

One thing I've been so excited to do with the kids is a Color Me Mine project. I knew they'd have so much fun picking out their own item and painting it however they wanted. Well they had a little break this month and since we aren't doing any family vacations I planned my PTO for days they'd be off of school so earlier this week we went!

I showed the girls what it was like before hand so they knew what to expect and they were very excited about it. When we got there, they were surprised I told them they could pick ANYTHING they wanted (if they had chosen something big I probably would've talked to them about something smaller, but the big stuff was really high up so I wasn't too worried about it). Cara went with an axolotl (of course!), Gwen chose a fairy that was VERY detailed and I was a little nervous she wouldn't be able to paint it all or that she didn't realize how many details there were on it. Lucy chose a cupcake piggy bank. I had trouble picking something, I didn't really want to add to our clutter at home, but I didn't see anything too useful. Then Care pointed out a cute mug that looked like a tree with a heart carved in it and, even though I don't NEED anymore mugs, I decided that was perfect!

Picking paints was fun, the girls chose really good colors. After Lucy painted the top of her cupcake pink, I found a cute white with sprinkles color to put on top of it (I thought it would be perfect, even with the pink underneath it). 

At one point Gwen had smeared some black on her fairy's face, so I helped her touch it up and we ended up fixing it really well (they tell you to do 3 coats so that when it's done it looks like a more solid color so we added coat after coat after coat of the skin color she wanted). Unfortunately, us fixing that distracted Cara and she accidentally got black on her axolotl's face. I did my best to help her cover it up, but it didn't seem to work as well as with Gwen's (which is weird because we ended up putting MANY coats of a darker pink color, but I kept seeing the black, whereas with Gwen's it was just a light skin tone color covering the black and that worked perfectly). We covered it up as best as we could and I just hoped that we did enough coats that when we got them back you wouldn't notice the black.

In the end, we all had fun, but the girls hated that we had to wait to get them back. We went and picked them up today and they are all SO cute! They definitely look hand made, but that's the fun of it. If it wasn't so much money I'd be taking them a lot more often, but we really don't need THAT many things in our house. I think they are excited to display them though and I had a really fun Memory Maker day with the girls!

Memory Maker: Butterfly Biosphere

Earlier this month, Larry got us a membership to Thanksgiving Point. We were planning Pierce's birthday party and found a fun venue there that we thought he'd love. Larry found out it would be much cheaper to just get a membership and have the free party. We had a membership a handful of years ago, and I loved it. They have EVERYTHING there and there's indoor and outdoor venues so it's great for a year round thing. 

Well, having the membership means Larry is going to get his moneys worth, and then some, out of it, so he started looking up events and found out this week the Butterfly Biosphere was expecting the largest number of butterflies and were having a celebration week for it so we signed up.

They were definitely right, there were a TON of butterflies. We got to see them snacking on some fruit, which the kids found to be so funny. Gwen and Cara (and me) got to hold one of the butterflies, even. Lucy was way too scared of it all and Pierce didn't want to. It turned out to be an injured one, but we made sure to be soft with it.

After we walked through that area we went out and let the kids go to wherever they wanted and then we headed over to the playground, where they had lots of fun playing. Pierce became obsessed with the slide, Lucy found a butterfly "costume" to wear, Cara made a friend (of course) to play with, and Gwen just enjoyed going all over.

Overall, it was fun. I look forward to many more Thanksgiving Point events for us to go to. Larry seems to love booking them and checking it out on the app. I'm sure the kids will enjoy having this membership (I just wish it gave discounts at the theater).