March Madness

I know that title is horribly overused, but the end of March really was quite crazy.  Brigham was sick for days, Nathaniel had a concert, and we had two funerals within a week of each other.  Thankfully, Spring break helped us recover from all the madness.  So, here is our March.

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We have this tree in the backyard that's tall and skinny and kind of in the way.  It's useless as a shade tree because it's so narrow, but for two weeks of the year it has beautiful yellow blossoms.  Well, Jaaromy noticed that it had started leaning.  Rather than wait to see where and when it would fall, we decided to cut it down.

 It's not huge so it wasn't too difficult.

 As you can see, there aren't a lot of roots holding it in place.  We wiggled it around like a loose tooth until we could see where it was hanging on.

Turns out there was just one root holding it up.  Also, this picture is misleading.  It looks like a fairly thick root but right after this point along the root it got really thin, maybe an inch and a half to two inches.  So, I'm glad we cut it down before the wind knocked it down.

Here's a picture of it's blossoms, for old times sake.

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Brigham sure looks cool with his roll up sunglasses someone got from the eye doctor.

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I got tickets to Aida last Fall and we finally got to go.  This was our first live opera and it was super fun.

Our seats weren't too bad, either.

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So, we got an email saying that we might not have rehearsal because our conductor had to go out of town on short notice.  Well, a substitute was found, but once tempted with a night off, my basses had decided that staying home sounded nice.  Not me!

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Okay, I know this is weird but...

This is how I like to eat mini M&M's.  It usually doesn't end up this evenly split, that's why I had to take a picture.  It was so close to perfect!

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 My Grandma Harding passed away on the 15th.  She was 102 and one of my very favorite people.  I'm so excited for her to see her family.  She outlasted all her siblings by several years, it must have been a wonderful reunion.  The morning of her funeral was super snowy where we lived but was just a little rainy in Provo.  The service was beautiful.

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The same day as my grandma's funeral was the neighborhood caucus.  It was super fun.  I had to take the minutes of the meeting because our precinct chair and vice-chair had both unaffiliated themselves so it was left to the secretary to run the meeting.  She did a great job even though she was nervous.  It was fun to vote for the presidential candidate since we usually wait until the primary.  That's lame, doing it now feels like it might actually mean something.  Good times!

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Jaaromy's Grandma Hand died on the 22nd, the same day as my grandma's funeral.  She started going downhill at the same time my grandma did and I was worried they would go at the same time.  They were close but it was doable.  It was a beautiful service as well.  We are well acquainted with death, it seems.  We were able to visit before she died and I'm so glad we did.

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We almost didn't color eggs this year.  It had been such a busy couple of weeks that I was just exhausted and I didn't realize how close Easter had come and I wasn't prepared.  I decided to make a quick trip to the store for the rest of the Easter things I needed on Saturday night.  I'm glad I did, it worked out pretty well.

Just a boring regular egg dyeing kit.  Perfect for us.

This egg cracked in the boiling process and I was just going to save it for deviled eggs but I decided it looked like it was sticking out it's tongue so I had to make the most of it.

Jonathan made a Toon Link egg and was very proud of it.

It looks just like him!

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My parents invited us over for dinner Sunday night so we had our Easter lesson for FHE the next day.  That works out pretty well for us and we do it pretty much every year.

 We had our special Easter Egg Hunt inside because it was too wet outside.

Then we opened up each egg and read the scripture that went along with the item inside.  The last egg is empty and I love that.

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So that was March.  Very unexpectedly busy.  Nathaniel's concert was the same week as the funerals.  Also, the YM/YW activity for that week was an etiquette dinner that the boys had to wear their church clothes for.  Then we had the viewing for Grandma Hand on Friday and the funeral on Saturday.  So, Nathaniel had to wear nice clothes every day that week except for Thursday.  Brigham was sick almost that whole week.  Thankfully, he was better by the second funeral.  Grandpa Hand passed away yesterday so we will have another funeral coming up soon in April.  One of my nephews noticed that Grandma and Grandpa Zierse died in March too.  I guess that's the best time to go.

I wonder what else April will bring.

Fun February

Like January, February was fairly laid back.  In January it was nice because it was a break from a busy December but now it's February and it's getting a little old.  We need a little more excitement.

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Brigham wanted to wear his Hulk gear on our way to pick up Jonathan from Band.  I asked him to smile for me and he growled.

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The week after the Klondike Derby I mentioned in January the Scouts had their snow caves activity.  I didn't make Nathaniel go because I thought two weekends in a row sleeping in the snow was just a little much.  Jonathan went though, and he had a friend who is 11 and is able to go on three of the camp-outs this year and he picked this one.  That made me feel better.  Unfortunately, or fortunately, the snow was too powdery to make into snow caves so they hung out in the snow and then slept in a heated garage.  I'm glad he had fun, and I'm glad I got the snow camping activities over with and all the gear washed.

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I was super excited to see the new Provo City Center Temple but I procrastinated getting tickets and then I was worried there wouldn't be any.  I considered just showing up Friday afternoon with the boys but I didn't want to risk a long stand-by line.  So, when I heard they were releasing more tickets I decided to grab some whenever I could.  I decided to keep Brigham home from school and take the boys on a Wednesday.  I never take my boys out of school for things, but I just couldn't pass this up.

It was such a beautiful day, but still pretty chilly.

We didn't have to wait long before we were ushered into a room to watch a video on temples.  After that the wait was a little longer but once we actually got inside the temple it started moving okay.

When we got outside the boys noticed all the coins in the fountain and wanted to throw some in so I gave them each a penny.  Jonathan told me that he wished for Super Smash Bros. 4 for Wii U.

It took me forever to work up the courage to ask someone to take our picture, it's hard being shy sometimes.  I loved the temple, though.  It was so beautiful!  I loved how the woodwork was made to look like the tabernacle.  I loved the antiqued design.  I loved that they had the original pulpit in the chapel.  I loved the stained glass window of Jesus Christ.  I even loved the Victorian font of the exit signs.  I'm always nervous to bring the boys by myself to places with big crowds but they did great.  We even stopped at Wendy's on the way home for lunch.  It was a fun day.

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I was walking through our back hallway when I heard a weird hissing sound.  I looked around and realized that water was dripping from the ceiling and the carpet below was soaking wet.  This didn't make sense because there was no water source above that spot so I called my father-in-law over to take a look and he figured out that it was a leak in a pipe that was spraying up and hitting the underside of the floor and then dripping back down.  It's kind of hard to explain and pictures are even more confusing, but here is my FIL pulling down a soaking wet ceiling tile from the hallway.

He knew a plumber and the plumber was able to come over and fix it without too much trouble, thank goodness.

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This is kind of a funny picture, I know.  Remember all our pumpkin drama from last Fall?  Well, when it was time to toss them, Jonathan just couldn't do it, not when we had lost so many to dirty thieves.  So we put them in the backyard in our "garden" to let nature take it's course.  Well, I don't know if it's the paint or if it's because they were covered in snow for so long but they look like deflated pumpkin balloons.  I thought that was kind of funny.

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February was nice, maybe March will pick up the pace a little.

Awesome October

It's not technically alliteration but they both have the same vowel sound at the beginning so it works.  I have a goal to catch up by the end of the year so I'm going to do the entire month of October in one post.  We did a lot in October so it will be lengthy but better than several separate posts, I think.

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 I put up my Halloween decorations at the beginning of the month and Suki had issues with my Halloween cat.

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 For school, Jonathan and I learned about chemical reactions.  Luckily, I had all these things on hand.  It was a fun experiment.

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 I've used electrical tape for a couple of years now to decorate my outside light fixtures but this year I got some orange light bulbs to go with them.  I love them!

Because of the plug adapter, the orange light bulbs wouldn't work in this one so I did something different.  I like this one too.

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We went to the pumpkin patch on a Saturday so that it wouldn't be too dark for pictures.

 Suki was a little agitated for the ride for some reason, but Brigham enjoyed having her on his lap.

 Everyone found their perfect pumpkin.

 I was hoping to get there right after the sun set but before it was too dark.  We were a little too early.

 But the boys had a lot of fun playing on the hay.

 I love this face!

 And this one too.

 Brigham enjoyed the corn pit.

 Jonathan did too but wasn't a fan of the corn in his shoes.

They had ponies this year which is new.  This picture makes me laugh.

Suki wanted to sit on Brigham's lap on the way home too.

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We took a trip to Yellowstone over Fall Break.  I was going to include it but I changed my mind.  I will make a separate post about it.

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Nathaniel had his first concert with the Granite Youth Symphony, not the junior youth symphony.  We had to get him a tux and everything.  I had my own concert so I wasn't able to go.  Also, it turns out he got the concert date wrong so they showed up at the school a day late.  Oh well, he still looks nice.

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 The morning of the day we were planning on painting our pumpkins we found that two of our pumpkins had been stolen.

Jonathan made some signs for the pumpkin thieves.

My sister-in-law was nice enough to let us come pick two pumpkins out of her garden to replace the ones that had been stolen.  Halloween was saved!

Nathaniel was nice enough to take pictures for me.

Brigham liked to use the paint first, then go over it again with water.  You know, whatever makes the biggest mess.

The replacement pumpkins were smaller but so adorable!  Here is Nathaniel's.

Jonathan was really into Super Meat Boy(a relatively obscure video game on Steam) so his Halloween was all about Meat Boy.

Jaaromy's pumpkin

He was really happy with his pumpkin.

So adorable!  Thanks Megan!

The pumpkin line-up.  I love how the whole pumpkin glows!

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If you can believe it, two days later three of our pumpkins were stolen.  Honestly, they are just pumpkins, but having to tell Jonathan that our pumpkins were stolen AGAIN was not my favorite thing.  I remember when I used to love Halloween.  Yeah, those days are gone.

 At least Jonathan still had his pumpkin.  We brought the remaining pumpkins inside and Jonathan made "No Stealing!" signs and taped them to the pumpkins.

 To try and cheer everyone up I had them make these paper pumpkins.  I think it helped a little.  We started making plans for next year.  We discussed everything from bringing them inside at night to hooking them up to a mild electrical charge.  That was my favorite idea but Jaaromy wasn't a fan.  He thinks it might be frowned upon by law enforcement or something.

That night at orchestra we started rehearsing for our Christmas concert.  I can not express how wonderful it was to feel Christmas.  I've never been so happy to welcome the Christmas season in!

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So, every year I tell myself that I'm not going to put off putting costumes together and every year I continue to do so.  Also, I seem to blog about this every year too.

As I mentioned, Jonathan is really into Super Meat Boy which totally worked out for me because it was a fairly easy costume to assemble.  Although it was hard to find plain red sweats.  I would have gotten them online but, as I also mentioned, I put it off too long and they wouldn't have arrived on time.  I decided to venture into Wal-mart to see what they had and they had red sweats in Men's Small.  They're a little big but it worked.  My neighbor sold me some sticker paper that you can print on and I had never used it.  Turns out it was exactly what I needed because it wasn't actually paper but more of a fabric.  Sweet!

 We also stopped at PetSmart to get a costume for Suki.  They had exactly what I was looking for and since I procrastinated, I got it for way cheap!  I couldn't decide between these two so I go both.

But I think this one is my favorite.  It's made for a cat but it totally works.  It was hilarious watching her walk around in it.

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And now for Halloween night.  The weather was nice so we didn't have to do much to stay warm.

 Jonathan was ready to go!

Brigham decided on a pumpkin again.  This time he remembered that the pumpkin face it taped on so he didn't have to worry about it falling off.  We had a good time trick-or-treating.  It's a great way to find out who your neighbors are that you don't see all the time.

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So, that was our October.  It was a busy month.  I will write about our trip to Yellowstone next and then I am on track to catching up by the end of the month!