I'm noticing a pattern here... busy month comes and goes, then I realize I never blogged anything about it, and I compose a lengthy (and probably pretty boring) recap of the events that occurred. Feel free to scroll through for the main highlights...you won't hurt my feelings :)
May was a lot of fun. It's always a really crazy month in our family, or at least it has been the past few years, but who's complaining when school is wrapping up and SUMMER is just around the corner?!
I promised to reveal the results of Rachel's student council election... SHE WON! I think most everyone who reads my blog is also on Facebook and heard that news a long time ago, but we are still pretty excited about it. There were 26 kids running and the top 6 vote-getters were elected -- three boys and three girls. When we went over to the school to see Rachel recite her speech in front of her peers, I have to admit that I wasn't very hopeful. There were A LOT of candidates and some really cute and clever speeches. Rachel gave a basic speech holding a glass of milk, then at the end took a big swig (milk mustache) and said, "Got Rachel?" That was it. I was hoping that her friendliness throughout the year would make a bigger impression on her classmates, and it looks like it did! We are really excited for her.
I hosted my Bunco group and that was really fun. I made Cafe Rio sweet pork salads for dinner and the most amazing (and pretty difficult) chocolate layer cake for dessert. When Steve tasted the cake he said, "That's my new birthday cake!" and I was happy that he liked it but felt a tiny sense of dread because it was sort of hard to put together! Maybe with some more practice, and a little tweaking (I over-filled my pans and they overflowed in the oven, stinking up the whole house), the process will be less stressful next time! I found the recipe on "Our Best Bites" and here's the link...http://www.ourbestbites.com/2011/05/old-fashioned-chocolate-layer-cake/
For prizes, I did a chocolate theme. Grand prize was a super cute apron in a dark chocolate brown/polka dot fabric with cream and aqua accents. Other prizes were a chocolate melting pot, the cookbook "Chocolate Never Faileth", DVDs of the movie "Chocolat" with Johnny Depp, and bags of chocolates from V chocolates. If you haven't tried V chocolates, they're amazing. They are made here in Utah, and I buy them at Taipan Trading. The pretzel bites are TO DIE FOR! Pretzel on the bottom, topped with homemade caramel, covered with chocolate and sprinkled with sea salt... little bites of heaven, that's all I can say.
On May 21st, Steve ran the Ogden Marathon and I ran the half marathon! I ran the race with my good friend Jen Stanbridge who graciously slowed her pace to stay with me most of the way. It was my third half marathon and my fastest so far (although "fastest" probably isn't the most suitable word...I am NOT a fast runner...but I keep going and that's what matters, right?). Steve IS a fast runner and finished the marathon in just over 3 1/2 hours. He wanted to run it a little faster, but still did great. The weather had been stormy all week, but race day was clear, cool and so perfect. Dad and Marylin came to the house very early that morning to watch our kids (thanks again!). My sister Lydia brought Rachel and Julia to the finish and snapped these few pics...love you Lyd!
If you are fans of the television show "Modern Family" (as we are) you'll understand why the girls wrote those phrases on the posters. We all had such a great time that we've already decided that next May we are going to do the marathon relay as a family. Steve and I and the girls will run for sure, and maybe Cameron, too. I personally don't have the desire to do any more halfs, but I love the race atmosphere and I love running shorter distances, so splitting up the marathon in a relay is going to be perfect! We are already looking forward to next year.
One super exciting development that has happened in our family recently is that we bought a condo in St. George! The Condo development is called Coral Springs (it's actually in Hurricane, a few miles from St. George). We found it online a few years ago when we wanted to head south in the fall to go to Zion National Park. We rented one of the condos for a few days and fell in love with the development. We have been to the St. George area several times since and have stayed at Coral Springs nearly every time. There is one unit in particular, on the back side (less direct sun), on the lower level (not as many stairs), and right next to the pool area...we'd walk past it on our way to the pool, point to it and say "that's the best one here...wish we could buy it."
Well, a few months ago we were in St. George, staying in a rental home we had found (it was one of those super last-minute trips and Coral Springs didn't have availabilities), and we decided to drive to Coral Springs just to see if anything was for sale. It was pouring rain, and Steve got out to look around while I stayed in the car with the kids. I'll never forget his face when he got back in the car...he looked hopeful and nervous and excited all at once. He quickly told me that the "dream" condo we had always had our eye on had a paper stuck to the door saying it had just gone into foreclosure...that very day! We almost hated to even hope that we could get it, but over the next several weeks, we stayed in contact with the powers that be, and with tons of help from Steve's dad, Ray (our realtor), we made an offer which was accepted!! We got a screaming deal and we are beyond excited.
Since we want to put our unit in the rental pool, we hired Jonna, who is the person who coordinates the rental process, to furnish and decorate it. She has decorated several of the condos and does a great job. The condo should be ready in about a week and Jonna's already rented it for the last six days of June! I'll post pictures of the inside when it's finished, but here's an outside pic...the building you see in the background is our building, and our unit is the lower 3 windows on the left.
So nice, right? The condo is a large, 3-bedroom unit that will sleep 10+ comfortably. We can't wait to make many memories there with family and friends!
We were all excited that school got out BEFORE Memorial Day this year, although the excitement turned to dismay when two days after school got out, we woke up to a few inches of snow on the ground. The kids were incredulous! How could it be SNOWING on summer break!! Thankfully, it melted quickly and we are just starting to warm up around here (although still in the low 70's which is pretty cool for June). Overall, it was a great school year that went by in a blur. I was worried that the addition of the twins would possibly put everyone in a tailspin and the schoolwork would suffer, but the kids were so resilient and amazingly adaptable...the three older kids got straight A's all year despite so many disruptions in our routine. I am so proud of them.
We are looking forward to a fun summer together...it will go quickly, as it always does. We are headed to Lake Tahoe next week, and that will be our "big" trip for the summer. We had reserved a beachfront condo in San Diego and had given $600 as a deposit a few months ago, but with all of our expenses on the new St. George condo we decided that we'd probably need to postpone our San Diego vacation for another summer. We were so disappointed, sure that we'd most likely lose our deposit, but contacted the San Diego people and were able to have our deposit refunded (minus a small cancellation fee). We thought the kids would be more bummed about having to cancel the California trip but everyone was great about it.
We spent hours in meetings and tests with Emily in May as we are preparing to send her to Kindergarten in the fall. We know she'll do great and we are excited to see how she'll continue to learn and progress. We are confident that she'll learn to read and do basic math. She surprises us often by how much she understands. Emily is such a joy.
Okay, this has turned out to be a long one (again) but one last thing... I was thinking about blogs and blogging the other day and decided to add something to my blog (at least occasionally). I realized that I mostly write good things on this blog... accomplishments, fun times, happy events, etc. I think it's part of our nature to only feel like sharing the good stuff, but I personally love it when people show their imperfect sides... warts and all. Therefore, I am going to incorporate something into my blog which I'll call my WART REPORT.
Wart Report (1): One morning in May I was getting Emily ready and realized that her glasses were missing. It was a very important day where she was going to be taking more tests and she NEEDED her glasses...it was imperative. As I mentioned above, Emily IS a joy, but one difficult part about having Emily in our family is her habit of losing/hiding things. It seems like we are searching every corner of our house on a very regular basis, looking for cell phones, Ipods, the Ipad, her glasses, etc.
This particular morning I was so fed up with having to look for those dang glasses again. I raised my voice to Emily several times, asking her to show me where her glasses were...all she would say was "downstairs," which is her response every time. After a few minutes of searching, I began to cry. As I continued to look, I started sobbing...like the loud, gasping, really dramatic kind of crying. I had no idea where it came from but I couldn't stop! It was weird and sort of scary. After searching for two hours straight, I pulled her bed away from the wall and saw the glasses down in the corner (I had looked under the bed at least 3 times but the glasses were wedged where I couldn't see them). Does anyone else ever have crying spells that come from nowhere? Of course I had a headache for the rest of the day but every time I thought of how distraught I was I had to laugh at myself.
Wart Report (2): Cameron lost a tooth at school on one of the last days. He mentioned it after school but didn't say a word about it afterward. About 5 days later, Julia was helping him organize his room and came to tell me that she found Cameron's tooth, STILL under his pillow. Uh-oh. What a flakey tooth fairy. To make matters worse, Cam found a little baggie in one of our cupboards with a few of his teeth in it, dated a few years ago. He said, "What the...? That's weird. I thought the tooth fairy kept the teeth." I think he's probably beginning to figure things out!
Wart Report (3): A few years ago I was watching "The Bachelor" on TV. I'm sure that most of you have either seen it or heard about it, but it's a somewhat ridiculous show where 25 men or women "compete" to win the heart of some lucky bachelor or bachelorette. While I was watching, Rachel and/or Julia came into the room and asked "why is that guy kissing that girl when he just kissed the other lady?" I promptly shooed them out of the room, but Steve talked to me later and encouraged me to not watch the show again, especially in front of the girls. I wasn't too attached and agreed that it was all a bunch of crap, and I stopped watching.
Well, a few days ago, I was hearing all kinds of chatter from some of my Facebook friends about this season of "The Bachelorette" where this crazy, rude guy from Utah was really shaking things up. Steve had gone to bed because he had to work early the next day, and I casually went over to abc.com, intending to just look at a picture of this Utah guy. Well, one thing led to another, and 3 hours later I had watched the first 3 episodes in their entirety, even spending extra time reading comment boards. I crawled into bed at 2 am feeling pretty lame and disgusted with myself. I confessed to Steve in the morning and he laughed...he had heard about the jerky Utah guy as well and we talked about it for awhile. Wish I could say that I had stayed up until 2 reading my scriptures or cleaning or doing something way more productive! The babies woke up earlier than usual that morning, which I suppose was what I deserved after sabotaging my precious sleep schedule for something so ridiculous!
I've got plenty more warts to show but will wait for a later post. Thanks for stopping by!
