April

April brought some pretty weird weather.  The month started with a fresh 8 plus inches of snow during what was supposed to be Spring Break but then the month ended in all of snow gone and the grass greening up.  Thankfully spring and summer are on their way!

To start off the month, we celebrated Easter.  The kids love dying Easter Eggs and are getting really creative in their dying skills. 

Because of the snow, Easter looked a little different this year.  First, the city did not do their annual egg hunt.  Instead they just had a drive thru thing where we just drove our cars through the parking lot and the Youth Council gave the kids eggs through the window.  Hello Covid all over again.  But the kids were happy with it.  I don't think anyone wanted to search for eggs and candy in the snow.  

We also had our family egg hunt in the house because of the snow.  Everyone joked that we didn't even need to dye eggs this year because we could just hide the white eggs in the snow and no one would be able to find them!  Russell and I hid candy and eggs all through out the basement and one by one let the kids search.  If only they would clean the house as fast as they cleaned up all of those egg...  Brooklyn loved finding eggs and putting them in her basket.  

Well that was our cold winter Easter.  After that week, the weather finally warmed up and the snow began to melt.  Everyone was worried about flooding because of all the snow we had this winter.  There was flooding in some of the lower areas and tons of sand bags were made by the city and ready just in case.  We were fine except for our trailer.  We don't know what happened but even with the tarp over it, our trailer leaked really badly and there was a ton of water damage on the front end.  I don't know how we are going to fix it.  Maybe if we are luck the insurance will cover it...

On to good things, Charlotte is still in Let's Play Music and loves it.  Here she is with all of her classmates.  She is just finishing up her second year and learning the piano.

Russell and his crew was recognized by Logan City for their outstanding work on a pretty severe fire.

I was at station 71 acting in as a Captain for the shift. I had some of the shift off. While I was driving to work, I got a call from Nat Thompson my BC. He told me there was a serious fire out in Newton, and the county requested the Heavy Rescue to help with a body recovery. I got to work and all the guys were ready to go, It was the very first call the Heavy Rescue had been on. Justin was my lead tech rescue man that day. I looked at him and said, "This is your scene, let me know how I can help make things run smooth." He laughed at me and said, "Of course it will be my scene." I had no idea what needed to be done. I was there to make sure people were safe and the crew had what they needed.  A little back story of what had happened. The house we responded to caught fire and exploded. It blew the roof in the air, the sides of the walls off the foundation and the roof came right back down on the foundation. It was a single story with a basement, so all of the top story was now in the basement. This was a slow and easy call to find the person who was entrapped. It ended up being a body recovery because of the timing to find them and get them out. We did end up saving a small black dog in the process. The picture above is an award assembly that the county fire put together to give their thanks for Logan Fire and station 71 crew with help and efforts in finding the entrapped person. 

In other news, I made this baby quilt for Traci's new baby coming soon.  It turned out pretty cute. I hope they like it.

Emily has been busy with school.  She is involved in the Student Ambassadors at South Cache. She is also excited to start high school next year.  Here she is with Truly.

Yeah for High School!  Emily really wanted to run for the Freshman Student Body Representative so we spent a whole weekend making campaign posters to put up in the halls:

We made probably 15 posters and they are all awesome!  Then when Emily and I went to hang them all up we found out that we were only allowed to have three posters... How dumb right?  So Emily was called to the principal's office and told she had to take them all down.  She was so sad... So I went back to the school and took all of the posters down except the three she liked the best.  We were all so mad.  If we had known we could only have three posters, we would have done something totally different and made bigger posters.  Oh well we learned.  In the end though she was not voted in to the position and she said it was really just the popular kids anyway no matter what their posters looked like.  Oh well we had fun trying.  

So April has come and gone now on to the busy month of May.

Happy 2nd Birthday, Brooklyn!

Can you believe it has been two years since this miracle baby joined our family!  Happy Second Birthday Brooklyn!  

Brooklyn is a spunky little fire cracker.  She loves being in charge and the center of attention.  She does not like to be bugged by anyone either and will let you know if you are in her space.  Brooklyn is a little smarty though and talks so well.  She can tell you exactly what she wants.  One exciting milestone she just got down is potty training!  I have been trying for a few weeks now to potty train her because she would tell me when she peed or needed a diaper so we knew it was time.  However, she just did not like sitting on the toilet and would hold her pee until she got off.  This was frustrating because I knew she knew she needed to go but she just wouldn't.  We gave up for a bit and then a few days ago Russell let her go to the bathroom in "Mommy's Bathroom" and that was so cool that everything clicked!  So far she will only use my toilet but that is okay because at least she is not using diapers anymore.  I don't want to jinx it because it has only been a week but so far she is doing great.

Brooklyn is also getting better at going to Nursery as long as "Harvey's Mom" is there.  She really does like Nursery once she is there and comes home telling us about cleaning up and eating treats and singing all of the songs.  She loves "Head, Shoulders, Knees & Toes," "Twinkle Little Star," and "Roll Your Hands."  She can sing all of the words.  

Brooklyn's birthday was on Easter so her party with the family was Easter themed.  Her friend, Harvey, even gave her these cool Easter bunny glasses:

Brooklyn liked opening all of her presents.  She got some new clothes, music makers, cleaning supplies, and chalk. I took Brooklyn with me to Charlotte's music class one day and she loved it.  The shakers and rhythm sticks were her favorite things so she was excited to get some of her own.  With her own broom and mop, Brooklyn can now help me sweep the floor each day. She has been practicing with the big broom so now she has one her size.  Her new clothes were so "beautiful!" she said and immediately wanted them on.  Finally, Brooklyn loves coloring with sidewalk chalk so more is the best.

Next it was time for cake.  Because it was Easter we made this cute little Easter cake.

Brooklyn loved it.  We found this cake recipe on Instagram and thought it looked so good.  Emily and the boys begged me to make it so we bought all of the ingredients including a spring form pan.  We put it all together after watching the video a bunch of times and it turned out so pretty like an Easter basket.

Unfortunately, it was not the best tasting cake.  It was a no bake pudding cheesecake and it was way too sweet.  We could only eat a little bit before going into sugar overload.  So I don't think I will make it again unless I modify it somehow to make it not so sweet.  Other than that it was good.  The kids liked it.  Brooklyn loved it and thought it was ice cream.  Maybe it was just me that didn't like it, I don't know.  

Brooklyn had a great birthday and loved being showered with all of the attention.  Happy Birthday, Brookie!

Spring Break aka 2nd Winter Break

It is the first week of April and finally Spring Break but this is what it looks like outside:

Yes you guessed it, another blizzard came through and dumped 18 inches of new snow on top of what we already had.  This was not the way we thought our Spring Break would be.  In fact we had planned to take a trip to St. George to thaw out and enjoy the sunshine but the blizzard came through on the day we had planned to leave so we we decided not to risk driving in the snow storm.  This has definitely been a long winter and one of record snow fall through out the state.  This is good though because when summer finally does come, we will have enough water to get us through the previous drought years.

So rather than calling this Spring Break, we are calling in it our Second Winter Break.  The kids, especially Emily, were bummed about not be able to go to St. George and see family but we told them we would make the best of the situation and do some fun things around here during the week.  But first we had to dig ourselves out and play in the deep snow. 

There was so much snow on the roof we had to cut it off in slices so it didn't fall on our heads or create too much weight on the rain gutters and roof. It was crazy.

Well we were going to plant some flowers or garden things this week but instead we did some Spring planting in the snow.

After burying each other and building a giant fort, we decided to head to town for some indoor fun.  We headed to the Jump Zone a big indoor trampoline park. 

The kids loved running around and jumping on all of the trampolines.  The whole place was full of trampolines, foam pits, a climbing wall, basketball hoops, rope swings and more.  It was a great place to get the energy out.

Logan was a monkey doing trick after trick and flip after flip on the trampolines.  Colby liked the climbing wall and he and Emily had competitions to see who could climb the highest.  Charlotte loved the rope swing and liked to pretend she was Tarzan.  Brooklyn just liked running all over the place bouncing off everything.

After the Jump Zone, we went to Al's Sporting Goods to kill time and just look around.  While we were there we saw that snowshoes were on sale.  The next day we decided to impulse buy 6 pairs of snow shoes and head out on some trails.  If you can't beat the snow and winter, you might as well join it for some outdoor adventures.

Snowshoeing is actually pretty fun and I am sad we didn't try it out sooner.  For our first hike, we headed up Green Canyon.  The trail was pretty well packed which made the trek a little easier.  The kids had a good time and even Charlotte kept up and liked the hike.  I thought it was easier to go without the poles but the kids liked the poles for balance.

This was also a good workout for our legs!  The best for me was being outside and seeing nature in its winter coat. 

Yes these snow shoes were an impulse buy, but it was way worth it.  We all had a good time and I think this will become a new winter hobby for us for years to come.

The next day we decided to hit the trails again in the snowshoes.  This time we went up the Blacksmith Fork trail.  This was a more difficult hike because the trail had not been blazed and was pretty deep.  We were the trail blazers so we did not go very fast.  It was still a fun hike though.

It sure is different hiking in snow than hiking in the summer.  The cool thing was we were not even cold. A few minutes into the hike we stripped our big coats and were walking in short sleeves.  It was definitely warmer this day than it had been the last few days. 

We saw a lot of wildlife while on this hike which was nice.  First we saw some cow elk on the mountain side opposite from us.  A little farther up the trail we saw a whole herd of deer on the opposite hillside.  These guys were just right out in the open enjoying the warmer side of the mountain.  On our way back to the truck, we saw this beautiful bald eagle flying around and then it land on the top of the cliff.  It was cool to see this big majestic bird.

When we finished our hike, we drove to the American West Heritage Center to pick up Emily.  She decided to volunteer at the Baby Animal Days instead of going snowshoeing with us.  While we were there we decided to check out all of the baby animals.  Because of all of the snow and muck, the big Baby Animal Days festival was moved to Memorial Day so there were just a few baby animals at this smaller day.  

Brooklyn's favorite had to be the baby ducklings.  Charlotte also loved the chicks and ducklings.  The bigger kids liked the baby turtles.  Brooklyn did not like the baby turtles I think because their little claws scratched her hands.  We all liked watching the baby bears play around in their cage.  They were all so cute!

Some fun news we received this week was that we found out Tyler and Ashley are going to have another baby girl!  She is due in October and Mavis is so excited.  Congratulations Tyler, Ashley, and Mavis!  

Well there you have it, our snowy "Spring" Break.