Un-Spring Break

Today Rachel woke up bright and early and it was all my fault. I had mentioned last night, you see, that our neighbour's rabbit had had some babies a couple of weeks ago and they had invited us to see them...in a couple of weeks...which would be now...so maybe that was something that we should do "in the morning." I should never mention that we'll be doing anything exciting/different "in the morning." Or ever, for that matter. Rachel wakes up early excited to do things that won't happen until after dinner.

So, using one of Miriam's favourite phrases I said, "What the hiccup are you doing up?"

Too excited to eat breakfast, she headed off to the office to draw some pictures of rabbits. Only after she'd gone through several sheets of paper was she able to settle down long enough to eat breakfast.

Then we got all packed up for the day, including packing a picnic lunch to take to the park, and headed down the street to see if the neighbours were home. They weren't. It's spring break so it's possible they're out of town for a while. Who knows?

We headed to the park instead, and stopping by Naanii and Bumpa's house on the way so that we could pick up the sticks in their backyard. They have a couple of trees and trees do annoying things like drop branches and things over the course of winter. Rachel was a big helper and gathered up several sticks—she wanted to make wands out of all of them.

Then we played at the park for a number of hours. It was 80 degrees today and was as lovely as could be! The girls played with some of their friends who'd met us at the park and we all enjoyed a picnic lunch together. My friend Tracy noticed that Rachel was with us and said, "Oh—did you know that preschool's still in session?"

"It is?!" I said. "I asked Miss Elise about spring break at the end of March because I knew the dates on the school calendar were wrong! She said it wasn't the first week of April but that it would start on April 9th, which was yesterday. So I didn't send Rachel to school today. Obviously."

"Well, I guess they decided to change it to next week. I just found out about it from Michelle this weekend."

So nice of them to inform me.

The end of the semester!

At approximately the same time this afternoon Andrew and I finished up the projects we'd been working on all day long. Technically we'd been working on them for longer than "all day long" because mine was the Hancock Hummer (a family newsletter), which I'd been working on for a number of weeks, and Andrew's was a final project that he'd been stressing out about since January. My project ended up being 14 pages long. Andrew's project ended up being 155 pages long. We were both incredibly happy to be done for the day!

I'm sure my poor girls were happy about it, too. I'd been shooing them away all day long, asking them to play nicely together, to leave Mommy alone and let me work!

We went to the BYU ward's FHE tonight, which was their closing social for the semester. Poor Karen, who'd just put on a huge Easter dinner last night, spent the better part of the day cooking yet another meal for those BYU kids!

This party was at the house of the parents of someone in their ward and they have a huge yard with a volleyball pit, a treehouse, a "playground" and a ton of trees and lawn area. It was beautiful and the girls were in heaven. They played on the swings and slide for a while before we migrated to the sandpit where Rachel ran around screaming about how she'd never had so much fun in her life and Miriam slathered herself with sand and Andrew and I rallied a volleyball for a while.

It was the first evening we've had in a long time where we haven't been stressing about needing to be doing something else (well, except maybe laundry but my laundry is very patient). Andrew was relaxed and happy and we just had fun together. It was awesome.

After dinner there were BYU kids playing everywhere so we decided to leave the party early (good thing our girls didn't hear the part about s'mores) and Andrew suggested that we stop by the park on our way home. I said that I thought that was a good idea but that Rachel had school tomorrow and we should probably get the kids to bed. Then Andrew reminded me that Rachel's on spring break this week and we could party all night long if we wanted to.

Instead we just partied until the sun sunk down behind the mountains. And that was long enough.

I sat back and let the girls show Daddy everything they can do at the playground now—this was his first time joining us at the playground this whole year so they had a lot to show him.

Easter 2012

Here are my cute girls this beautiful Easter morning:

It was such a beautiful day today and we were all ready early enough that we walked to church so that we could enjoy the sunshine—well, the girls and I walked. Daddy had to drive so he could get to church on time to practice the organ before church.

Easter Eve

We've had such a busy weekend so far. Last night Andrew and I went to the Marriott School closing banquet—he had to go because he was nominated for the Bateman award—and we didn't get home until nearly eleven o'clock (after a quick stop on the way home to get some Easter things...because we didn't put that off at all). We were a little tired, then, when the girls ran into our room early in the morning, wondering if the Easter bunny had been here. We didn't tell them when the Easter bunny was coming but I guess Grandma, who had put them to bed for us last night, suggested that he might come on Saturday instead of Sunday because he knows that we're so busy with church on Sunday.

I just realized I used the word "we" up there. What I meant to say is that I was a little tired when the girls ran into our room—Andrew somehow slept through both of them climbing into bed and talking loudly about the Easter bunny and Star Wars (which they had watched last night before bed).

They ran out to the living room to check for baskets as soon as they heard noise in the kitchen (the noise was Grandma getting things ready to head to Manti for a ward temple trip of sorts).

They were thrilled and a little dazed. Miriam kept saying, "Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!" It's her way of expressing disbelief. "Bubbles? Whoa! Candy? Whoa! Barrettes? Whoa!"

School, paper mache, playgrounds

On Thursday I set my alarm for 8:30 thinking that I would have time to shower before waking Rachel up for school. Andrew woke me up to say goodbye before he left for campus and asked me if I had remembered to set my alarm clock. I was like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah." And then he left. And then my alarm went off at 8:30 and I realized that Rachel has school at 9:00.

I had meant to set my alarm for 7:30 not 8:30.

I'm surprised the girls hadn't gotten up and pounced on me because they're usually up by 8:30. They probably slept in only because it was a school day. Tomorrow isn't a school day which means they'll probably join me in bed before 8:00 wanting to get a start to their day.

Getting Rachel off to school wasn't too difficult: we quickly got dressed, packed a snack, did hair, and popped some toast in the toaster—we ate that on our walk to school. Thinking about getting into the routine of getting up and ready for school everyday is kind of giving me anxiety. I have no idea how to prepare Rachel for this but luckily we'll be moving a couple of time zones away so getting her in the habit of waking up early should be relatively easy because her little body will be waking up two hours "early" once we get to North Carolina. I know it's not for months but I'm pregnant and emotional and I can stress out about preparing Rachel for kindergarten (and college) just because I slept in one day if I want to!

Yesterday was chilly and windy. We didn't spend a lot of time outside but we did do some paper mache of sorts. Our projects ended up looking a little disgusting but Grandma says she has paint so we can paint over the mache work we did if we decide to, I guess.

Chalky day

Earlier this week it was warm and lovely outside. It's supposed to be warm and lovely outside tomorrow—we've had a couple of days of cold and windy so I'm looking forward to it being warm enough to go to the park again. Anyway, March 29th...we made little pots out of a toilet paper tube and planted some sunflower seeds from last year's sunflowers. We'll see if they'll grow...

It looks like they're praying but really Rachel was just folding her arms while she watched her pot for signs of growth (oddly enough nothing happened, which she found disappointing) and Miriam was trying to copy her (she does this a lot).

When the girls got sick of watching the dirt just sit there they decided that they would start playing and broke out the sidewalk chalk. 

Pictures from General Conference

I made cinnamon rolls for breakfast on Saturday morning and timed it so that they'd be ready by the time the girls usually wake up. But then they didn't wake up so we had to go wake them up. They were excited for the cinnamon rolls, though they were even more excited when I gave them permission to visit the neighbour's plum tree, which is covered in pink "popcorn" blossoms.

Bike fail

These pictures are actually from last Wednesday (March 28) when we went to the school to try riding our bikes in the parking lot. We live on a hill and that isn't a very good place for a four-year-old to ride a bike. I had initially told Rachel that she would be in charge of pushing her bike because I had Miriam and Miriam wanted to bring her bike but wouldn't be able to push it the whole way.

Turns out Rachel wasn't able to push her bike the whole way, either, though she did give it her best shot, so I ended up carrying two bikes to the school which left only my foot to prod Miriam along. Rachel's good about staying by my side (across busy roads and things) but Miriam's a bit of a wanderer.

We won't be repeating that any time soon (considering I'm growing more pregnant every day) especially because we got to the school and Rachel rode her bike across the parking lot once. And then decided that she needed to run for a while.

Stroller Brigade

This afternoon the girls got out the doll stuff and started playing—get this—together. Miriam was the baby and Rachel was the mommy. Eventually they're going to have to stop using the doll stuff on Miriam because although she's still small she's definitely getting too big to be treated as a doll.

Through the eyes of a toddler: General Conference

This has been a very confusing weekend for Miriam.

The girls are in the habit of watching "Music and the Spoken Word" with Grandma before church on Sundays. I usually take the opportunity to either get dressed without an audience or to eat breakfast without having any stray bits of food flung in my direction—all while listening to the strains of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir drift through the house.

Guess what General Conference looks like to a two-year-old?

If you guessed that it looks a whole lot like "Music and the Spoken Word," you'd be 100% correct.

All day yesterday Miriam was insisting that it was Sunday.