16 questions

I have waaay too many notes on my phone. I’m trying to clean them out, so to the blog i go. 

Last year I gave the girls this quiz about me. I wrote their answers in order of their ages with Addie first, Frankie, then Delaney. I didn’t write down the questions though, and I can’t remember what all of them were. But you know one of my mantras for life since 2012 - it’s good enough. 

*****

What is something I always say to you?

I love you, Addie

Clean up your room

clean up

What makes me happy? 

A clean room

Running your back

Us cleaning up

What makes me sad?

A messy house

Not cleaning up our rooms and not obeying

Us not cleaning up

How tall am I? (I'm 5'5)

Approximately 6 ft

Ummm, 14 inches long, I think

50

What is my favorite thing to do?

Get together with your friends 

Watch tv with us

Go to the beach and see a lighthouse 

1What is my favorite food?

Mandarin lemons

Those pearl things, cous cous

White chicken chili

What’s my favorite thing to drink?

Cola/Pepsi

It’s either Coca Cola or Dr Pepper

Water

Where would I go on a vacation?

I want to say cola/Pepsi land, but that doesn’t sound right...

To like an all family reunion in Oregon, and you would drive there. That’s what you’d like to do

To a lighthouse

I can’t for the life of me figure out what this question was?

No

Never!

No

Idk, maybe what do I do that makes you mad?

When we make you mad

When you yell 

Tell me what to do

What’s my favorite tv show?

Jumanji 

Ummm, Dr. Seuss, I mean Dr. Phil 

Walking Dead

What’s my favorite song?

I don’t know

Heaven is a place on earth

Rock

What do I do for a job?

Tutor and mom

I already know because you talked about it in first grade, a home mom. Oh yeah, and tutoring. 

Tutoring

How old am I? 

40 or 39

Uhhhh, like 29. No! 39!

39

What’s my favorite color?

Pink

Uhhhh, uh pink 

Pink

Maybe how much do I love you?

I’m thinking of a way to say super, super long. 100 times 100 miles giant. And more. 

A thousand more. 

Ummm, up to the stars and down to the ground 

Dates and stuff

Frankie and I went on a special date to get pedicures. 

She’s so sweet. When we left she said “do you think they like doing work on our feet?” She said she didn’t think they did, and I told her I didn’t know either, but that’s why we are kind to them and give them a nice tip. I love that she’s caring and empathetic. 

Because she’s a kid and has smooth kid feet (as opposed to my old lady feet) she got her fingernails done too. 

Then we headed next door to Sweet Feog for dessert. And she’s ready for another pedicure asap. 

Papa sent us a St. Patrick’s Day card, and Delaney loved it. 

These 3 girls are going to miss walking to school together when the biggest sister heads off to middle school next year. 😢

When you live life with lots of daughters, you sometimes find scenes like this in your shower. 

Addie is very much her own girl. And I love our home updates. 

Playtime. 

And an oldie but goodie. 

This and that

Delaney looks so sweet and little working on this big computer.

She read a book about fairies and one of the girls wears a headband like this. So now Delaney has worn various headbands for about a week straight. Even to bed. 

Love. 

The parentals were in charge of the fhe activity tonight, and momma was about done with the box fort. We let the girls kick it, climb it, punch it, and otherwise tear it apart. Then we all worked together to bring it upstairs, and then Matt and I shoved and squished the cardboard into ours and peters recycling bins. Then the girls asked for another activity. 🙄

On Saturday we celebrated the birthday girl with a movie.

It worked out because Delaney had given Abigail a gift if taking her to a movie. 

Luckily it also happened to be pajama day at Bruesters. So the girls got a movie in their pjs and ice cream. What a life!

We brought Abigail home to play and the Aina girls came for a few hours too. It was a fun Saturday. And this little midnight snacker/reader. 

I went through my scrapbook bin and found this gem. This was in a pamphlet for our school district in New Mexico. I spy two of my nerdy children right in the middle.   

This picture represents a time of death on my scrapbooking adventures. 5 books, in various stages of done’ness. 4 school memories books (not sure why, since i have 5 children?), 2 mini photo albums, and 3 completely empty scrapbooks to boot. Plus lots and lots of stickers, embellishments, and papers. Thankfully I’m cheap, so I only ever bough michaels stuff, and all on sale, but still. 

I gave each of the girls a blank scrapbook and called it good on the others. A halfway done scrapbook is just gonna have to do. And it feels good to have emptied our another storage bin. 🤗

A froggy celebration!

Frankie turned 9 on Sunday. She woke up on her 9tth birthday about 2 miles from the hospital where she was born. 💕 Lexi and Cade sent a pretty new dress and new earrings for church and Frankie loved it!

Sweet big girl. 

Frankie is the best present opener. She is appropriately excited about every gift, it’s so fun.  

Also fun - watching sisters reactions to her opening the gifts they chose. 

Sunday birthdays can sometimes be a bummer because we eat at home, so we made sure to invite friends over to make it special. Frankie requested shrimp and since Bubba works at crabknockers he hooked us up with some yummy gulf shrimp. We all worked together to cook and Matt did all the dishes as we went. I’ve never hosted 18 so smoothly. Everyone brought food to share and it was so nice. 

We went on a Mormon parade for a grand tour of the Aina’s new house. 

It was a beautiful day, perfect to celebrate our sweet new 9-year-old. 

Isla got a couple fun shoulder rides. 

The v big 10 year olds. 

We came home to sing happy birthday and share Oreo cupcakes and ice cream. 

We finished the night reading her birth story and cuddling. I’m so grateful for this happy girl that teaches me so much every day. 

Also it’s St. Patrick’s day

Super Sunday. Cherissa shared this fun picture of the girls class. They split up the girls and boys in Orimary now, so now Addie and Frankie are in the same class. They learned about the 12 apostles today and made this cute pyramid. We are so blessed to have such great teachers for our girls. 

Addie and I went to Mother Daughter Book Club where we discussed Jefferson’s Sons. It’s a book about Thomas Jefferson’s children with his slave Sallie Henmings and it was an excellent read about a horrific bit of our nations history. I cried big time. 

Yesterday was Stake Women’s Conference and that’s always a wonderful day. This years theme was Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness. They had a counseler talk about life, an attorney talk about liberty, and a happiness expert talk about the pursuit of happiness. He is an author and excellent speaker. And then the lunch they serve is always delicious. We had a ton of sisters from our ward and now we’ve got a tradition to take a group picture together. 

Debby drove us to the stake center and I had picked up Maggie and Laura on my way. So on our way to drop them off I got talked into a movie. Incidentally, that’s not hard to do. I texted Bubba and talked him into coming also. Maggie wanted to see “5 feet apart,” a tear jerker about teenagers with Cystic Fibrosis. The theater was full of cute teenagers and we all cried together and gasped where we needed to. I’m a movie talker so I dig hanging out with a full theater of movie talkers. And also movie popcorn. 

Friday evening we drove up to Virginia to go to Denise’s baptism. Donnie and Marie’s favorite nephew (his words, not mine) Nathan Osmond baptized her and sang several songs. The spirit was so strong and it was a really wonderful experience.

We drove up there as a family and then I got a ride home with the Browns. Matt wanted to get the girls one more day of skiing in before the season ended. Since we were already 2 hours up the road in Virginia, they were that much closer, so it was perfect. They got a hotel in Hagerstown and ate a yummy breakfast Saturday morning. 

Not sure who these homeless kids are that Matt picked up. 

This trip wasn’t as magical as the last one, but it was still wonderful. 

Matt is already resigned to being 50 and keeps talking about how he’s not too bad for a 50 year old. 

Addie and Laney went off skiing together for awhile. 

He took D up a higher run and she was pretty nervous. But check out her cute little squished nose. Love her. 

Pi day

Pi day celebration at the school and i signed up to bring cupcakes. I tried these new lemon creme cupcakes that were super delish. 

And these old faithful s’mores cupcakes that I made last year too. 

Other notable Pi Day activities included tutoring, a difficult weaving project at Maker Space, teacher workroom cleanup, meeting a new friend of Frankie’s, and Shepherds Pie for Pi day dinner. 

Delaney’s class went to the planetarium for a field trip this week. This baby genius told me all about the constellations and drew several pictures and then looked up more information online. She loves to learn and share what she learns. 

On Monday Matt and i were in charge of the the activity for fhe and when i told Delaney what we were doing she said it would be boring. We worked through last years Friend challenge and recorded memories into Family Search and then looked through the new games section on the website. The girls loved it! They laughed and laughed and wanted to play it more. We found one game where you can put a picture of your face into historical photographs. 

Like this adorableness. 

It was warm today and on Monday when we went to piano. The girls bought jewelry with their piano allowance and played all around outside. Delaney bought two bracelets and promptly lost one while she was playing. She and Addie said a prayer and just before we were leaving, Addie found it. 

This is not a picture of her finding the bracelet, incidentally. 

Sunday was our Stake Indexing Challenge. Addie and Frankie are both old enough to have  Family Search accounts, so I worked for a few hours on Sunday to set those up. Because why would I set them up before the day of the challenge? Delaney was v upset that she couldn’t have her own account yet, but we did let her index some on Frankie’s account. 

Indexing is basically digitizing old records. We found some old tax records that were printed, so we did those. Matt worked with Addie and i worked with Frankie and Delaney. 

It was slooooow, but we did what we could and we explained to the girls how awesome it was that they were helping and remembering these people. They all felt pretty good about themselves. And our ward blew our goal out of the water. We wanted 50 indexers and ended up with 62. We also beat our goal of how many names we wanted indexed by each person, sweetness. Our ward rocks. 

We went to the Darrow’s after church. Actually, Alecia took my girls home again and then josh watched them so Alecia and I could do a visit. They fed them waffles and the kids love playing together, so it was a good day for them. It’s been a good week and the Spring weather is  super energizing.