We’re going to make it to summer vacation. Repeat after me: we’re going to make it, we’re going to make it, we’re going to make it. 8 days of school left (not that I’m counting) I’m pretty excited to not have the morning bustle yelling that it takes to get everyone out the door in a timely fashion but I’m getting ahead of myself daydreaming of summer break. Let’s talk about what has happened around here lately as the title of this blog mandates.
April 17th my parents flew out for a springtime visit. This year they were here closer to Christopher’s 
birthday (April 24th) which he got a kick out of. After William’s big birthday to-do this year I didn’t want Christopher to feel left out and a big picnic in conjunction with Grandma Laura and Grandpa Bruce’s visit seemed to be just the ticket. I managed to create a Ben 10 themed cake which was sufficiently awesome for a certain 5 year old critic. He managed to have a Saturday picnic birthday party, a preschool party on his actual birthday, and they celebrated him at daycare the day after his birthday on Friday. Easter weekend was right there in the mix also, so there were Easter baskets and all kinds of fun goodies. Talk about spoiled!
While my dad was here we put him to work on some projects as usual. It wasn’t the craziest amount of work we’ve had him do, but it was exciting nonetheless. Perhaps the most exciting project was starting to frame a portion of our unfinished basement to make a play room/someday movie room. The boys have been reluctant to play down there and I can’t blame them. Previously it was an unfinished room with cement walls and a single 100 watt light-bulb, kind of cold, dark, and spooky if you’re a little kid. After my dad’s initial work we now have framing on the walls and he quadrupled our light fixtures. We moved the futon downstairs (thanks Jamie for the new-to-us couch for the upstairs!) and the boys are playing down there more frequently already. I’m now impatiently waiting his next visit to do drywall. It is a room with such great potential! The other exciting-to-me project was that my dad plumbed in some drip irrigation for our garden. It’s entirely experimental this year (I hope I don’t kill anything) but should save oodles of water compared to overhead watering in 90 degree weather with 15% humidity.
The garden went in shortly after their visit, and then it got cold and wet for the next month. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve really liked spring in Utah overall this year–it was much better than going straight to 90 degrees. It’s just unusual to be so close to the end of the school year here and still be wearing a sweatshirt and running my fireplace while simultaneously tending my pumpkin seedlings. It’s been a slow start but the garden is all outside now and looking pretty good in spite of the cold weather and rain.
Guess who is playing rec soccer again this spring? William and Christopher of course. Now guess who got suckered into coaching William’s 7 year old soccer team due to lack of volunteers? Did you guess me? You’re right! I’m such a sucker, a sucker who, from my previous life, knows a lot about coaching 
athleticism (running, jumping, cutting etc) and almost zilch about soccer. What I’ve discovered though is to coach 7 year old soccer you just have to be more athletic than the 7 year olds you’re coaching. A friend of mine with tons of soccer experience told me it’s like “herding cats that will cry if you yell at them” and he wasn’t that far off. Other than the poor weather we’ve been having fun though, and I’m pretty sure I’m still more athletic than 10 out of 12 kids on the team–those 2 athletic kids should probably be playing up a level so needless to say our team is winning almost every game and the kids are having fun. One of the downsides of coaching William’s team is I haven’t gotten to spend nearly as much time watching Christopher practice/play. Sometimes their teams play at the same time so Jason and I have been doing a lot of dividing and conquering at the soccer fields while Andrew patiently waits or plays on the nearby playground. I haven’t decided if we’re going to commit to another round of soccer but we will be starting swimming lessons again right as school gets out. I will have to figure out if the soccer schedule is compatible with the swimming schedule as well as a summer trip to WI, and factor in that I could be roped in to coaching again. Decisions decisions.
Let’s take a moment to reflect on why we take our children out in public and try to do fun things…ever. Flash back a few weeks to Mother’s Day weekend 2019. I thought it would be fun to make a quick little weekend family getaway and do something the boys would really enjoy–see the largest steam 
locomotive ever built aka “Big Boy 4014” which was rolling through town in celebration of the 150th anniversary of the transcontinental railroad. Sounds like little boy heaven right? Instead of seeing it 45 minutes up the road in Ogden as it passed through town, we decided to splurge on a hotel room in Evanston, Wyoming (pop 12,000), play in the hotel pool and not need to fight the city crowds to see the train. I thought the trip was about perfect, we had the hotel pool to ourselves, we beat all the crowds, and could have practically touched the train as it rumbled into town. 
Now let’s talk about how it really went. The kids fought in the car, not constantly, but enough to make the 90 minute drive seem much longer. They had fun in the hotel pool but the next morning when it was time to see the train wanted nothing more than to go home. Oh, the whining! The train was running late and they wanted to just give up and go home. The weather was beautiful, the crowds were minimal, and the boys just wanted to load back in the car. Even after they saw the train their reaction was lukewarm at best. We traveled 90 minutes, and splurged on a hotel in the name of the kids seeing something awesome and all we got was “meh”. Funny thing is the big train has come up in discussion at our house in the weeks following our excursion and the boys memories of the outing, now seem much more positive than they did the day of. We had near repeat of this scenario when we tried a baseball game for my summer work party a couple weeks later. Parenting is confusing.
In other exciting news, after 7 years our house is now crib-free! Andrew officially moved to a big boy bed without missing a beat. Although his older brothers were evicted from the crib by around 21 months, Andrew was still a strong crib sleeper at 3 years. It’s a wonder he hadn’t decided to climb out, 
he would have totally been capable if the idea had struck him. We moved him directly into a twin bed with toddler bed rail. As an added bonus, I can now lay down next to him if he wants a quick snuggle as he settles in to nap, or sleep at night. Today as he settled in to nap I told him I was going to clean the fish tank while he rested. I asked him if I should go clean the fish tank or snuggle a little more, “you nuggle little bit more”, oh this boy is the sweetest (and naughtiest), but that “I lub you too” kinda takes the edge off. The only downside of the new sleeping arrangement (that we discovered last night) is that the bed provides Andrew easy access to his bedroom light switch without even getting out. Last night we completed our normal bedtime routine only to discover over an hour later that he had turned the lights back on and was quietly playing with his toys on his bed. Jason and I were both busy with stuff in the living room (I was starting this very blog actually) and he was in there just playing it up. Now we know we need to keep a better eye on the lights in his room!
I’ve already written a novel and am realizing how busy we’ve been. Let’s wrap this up shall we? In no particular order the last 6 weeks also included our 10 year anniversary (Go us!), William’s dual immersion song/dance performance (which was adorable as he and his dance partner both obviously wanted to lead), Jason, William and Christopher went to the ranch in Logan to celebrate Garth’s birthday at a party complete with cousins and a petting zoo (thanks to cousin Jess), Andrew and I shopped for all sorts of pretty plants, buzz cut season is in full swing, we installed 2 more new windows, and I’ve been trying to work more despite my spring fever! Whew! Now here are the pictures:
(mouse over the photo to pause)
