Oh, What A Busy Spring It Has Been...And It Isn't Over Yet

I'm going to use the title of this blog post as an excuse for not having written in the blog much lately. It used to be that May was the "busy" month for our family, what with school getting out, extracurriculars winding down, and the like. But with each passing year, April seems to get busier and busier, as if all these extra activities are starting to venture out of their "natural habitat" of May and encroaching into earlier months as well.

I am trying to grow some plants again this spring! Here's what they looked like the day I planted them.

Of course, this year, my April and my May are both terribly busy, judging by my daily planner. And with our Disneyland trip in mid-March kicking everything off, well...let's just say I am really looking forward to summer vacation! Our spring has been non-stop, and I would like just one week of lounging around doing nothing.

So here's a "laundry list" of a blog post, in which I check off the comings and goings of my family in this spring of 2014. Some of these events will be covered in greater detail in future blog posts, but this should give my family and friends (and future-me) a sense of what our everyday lives have been like lately.

March:

-Disneyland Prep Time. I've written plenty about Disneyland already, so I won't harp on it any more here. However, a trip like Disneyland also required a lot of preparation/packing time in early March, so I'm going to include that in my "laundry list"! Packing, paying bills, making last-minute arrangements, finding a baby-sitter for our guinea pigs...these were the little, tedious things that occupied my time for the first half of March. But that wasn't all!

-Leprechaun Traps. I helped Celeste design a "leprechaun trap" for her kindergarten class, in honor of St. Patrick's Day (which we missed due to Spring Break, but what can you do?). I am no expert at home crafts, but I have to say, this one turned out all right. It's a classic "box held up by twig connected to string" contraption; hopefully we'll be able to find an actual leprechaun to trap one of these days.


-Pi(e) Day. As many of you (and by "you," I mean "math nerds") probably know, March 14th is unofficially known as Pi Day (because pi = 3.14 et al. Get it?). The traditional food of Pi Day is, of course, pie--any kind, doesn't matter, so long as it's round and delicious. For the last few years, the math-loving foodies in our LDS congregation (and there are more than a few of those) have organized a "Pi Day" celebration at a nearby park. Everyone brings pies they've made (or bought), everyone eats, plays, socializes, leaves. Pretty simple stuff, but fun.

I guess life must have gotten pretty busy for everyone, because nobody spearheaded the park get-together this year. But that didn't stop me from getting the pie-making "itch"; I cooked a few pies and bought a few more, so we could feed the missionaries that night:

Yum! I asked the elders what their favorite types of pie were so I could have some ideas. I ended up making a chocolate banana cream pie, an apple pie, and a pumpkin pie. I also made a tomato pie (basically a tomato/cheese casserole in a pie crust), and a chicken pot pie, and then got lazy (hah!) and bought two quiches from CostCo. It was quite a lot of pie, but elders are HONGREH people and so they ate most of it anyway (with our family's help). It's nice to see people happy because of food you made for them.

-Tucson Festival of Books. Maybe if I'd stayed at the festival for longer than an hour or two, this might have merited a whole blog post by itself. But alas, our visit there was quite short; we were busy getting ready for our trip to California, so we didn't have time to linger. That was a shame, because I found myself really enjoying the Tucson Festival of Books. I'd had friends recommend it to me in the past, but this was the first year anyone in our family had attended (I took Lorelai along with me, but everyone else stayed home).

The Festival was really cool, and had a little something for everyone. First of all, Lorelai got a free book of her choice in one tent. That was a great beginning! There were literally dozens and dozens of booths, vendors, performers, and interactive exhibits sprawled across the University of Arizona campus; it would have taken hours and hours to properly sample them all. I found myself overwhelmed at the volume of books for sale, both new and old. There was a whole section of the Festival devoted to science, with lots of hands-on (and often literary-themed) science experiments for kids (like the "Oobleck" paste Lorelai is playing with here):

There was also this "wishing tree," in which kids could write their wish on a bookmark, then hang it on the tree.

These are just a scant few of the many, many activities that were available. Authors were present for interviews, panels, and autographs (I saw a huge line for R.L. Stine snaking around several buildings, for example). There was even a small local circus performing a show as we made our way home! Overall, it was a great festival that was cheap, fun, and busy, and did a great job promoting a love of learning, reading, and writing. I'm hoping to take the rest of the family with us next time.

April

-General Conference/lemonade stand/book club/game night weekend. The first weekend in April is one of two weekends each year that feature the LDS Church's General Conference, a two-day televised series of gospel-related subjects (the other weekend is at the beginning of October). As luck would have it, the April conference also coincides with our community's neighborhood-wide yard sale. Last year, our family participated in the yard sale by selling a bunch of our stuff. This year, we had nothing to sell, but I decided to let the girls vent their entrepreneurial spirit. Nathan and I helped them set up a lemonade stand to sell treats to shoppers traveling through our neighborhood. After going to a book club with Lorelai on Friday night, I made a bunch of goodies for the girls to sell...

...and during most of Saturday morning and early afternoon, one or more of the girls managed to sell off most of the goodies. We weren't able to watch all of the Saturday session of General Conference due to helping the girls out, but we didn't mind, because I think they learned a few things while peddling their wares. All things considered, they had a pretty tidy haul. We took some of the money and splurged at McDonald's to celebrate, and put the rest into the girls' piggy banks. That evening, while Nathan was attending the Priesthood (men's) session of Conference, I took the girls over to a friend's house and we pawned off the rest of our treats there.

All that running around on Friday & Saturday, and we still managed to head over to our friend's house on Sunday night and have a game night. Busy weekend! Plus, I managed to snag this:

My girls have been bugging me for an outdoor play house for YEARS, and they finally got their wish. It's old & dirty, but darned if they don't love it anyway. I hope it will keep them happy for a while.

-Celeste's many field trips.  During standardized-testing week at our charter school, the younger grades are often taken on field trips, so as to lower the noise on campus and help the older students concentrate better on their testing. In past years, kindergarten and first grade have gone on one (sometimes two) field trips during testing week. This year, Celeste's kindergarten class took three field trips in three days! Crazy. On the first day she went to the Reid Park Zoo...

I showed up with Aurora in tow...not as an "official" parent chaperone, but as an extra set of hands, should one be needed. It was fun to follow in the kindergartner's noisy, joyous wake, even if I'd been to the zoo many times before.

The next day the class went to the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum; I was unable to attend this time since I couldn't bring Aurora along. As it turned out, it was a very hot day (mid-nineties), and the Desert Museum is not terribly shady and comfortable (my advice: visit the Desert Museum in the winter months whenever possible!). Celeste had fun, but she was visibly exhausted after school that day, to the point where she begged off her dance class that afternoon. The following day her class was kicked outdoors yet again, this time to nearby Anamax Park, which thankfully had plenty of shade for everyone to share. The kids blew bubbles, played on the playground, wrote on the sidewalk with chalk, and generally had a good time while the adults visited. What a tiring week for Celeste! Hopefully all the older kids did well on their testing, as payment for inconveniencing my daughter.

-I hoted my first baby shower. Although I have attended plenty of baby showers in the past, I had never actually hosted one before. Two days after Celeste's last field trip, that changed. My visiting teaching companion and friend Kristin was having her fourth baby...but it was her first boy, after three cute girls. Many of the other ladies in our LDS congregation agreed with me that Kristin needed a shower, to stock up on the baby-boy gear. Luckily, Kristin is a very laid-back type, and had no expectations about how the shower needed to be. The planning didn't end up being too difficult. I sent Nathan and the girls away for the morning to a school carnival; I had a couple of friends volunteer some food; I cooked some cookies; and I came up with some very easy party games (well, just one...my friend Elizabeth planned the other one, but I ran the game since she couldn't attend that day).  Everything went fine! Turns out I was stressed out over nothing. Maybe I have been to too many "immaculate" baby showers that belonged on Pinterest, so my low-maintenance one didn't look too impressive by comparison. But everyone who attended seemed happy at the end of the day, so I'll call it a victory.

I also hosted Aurora's playgroup in the middle of April, and we made these personalized pillowcases, which were stamped with bug pictures. It was a lot of fun. And that's all I have to say about that.

-Cinderella, my parents, and an egg hunt on an emotional Easter weekend. I say "emotional" because a dear friend of mine had a tragic death in her family on this weekend. Although I wasn't directly affected by it, her sadness definitely put a shadow over the holiday. I spent much of the time worrying about my friend, and feeling unable to aid her in her grief. I was grateful that the Easter season was upon us; it helped me remember that our Savior was resurrected so all mankind can live again someday, and so families can ultimately be together forever. I don't know if that thought comforted her at the time, but I sincerely hope it will give her peace in the months and years to come.

The days leading up to the play were also the time to prepare for the arrival of my parents, who decided to visit us for Easter weekend. This would also coincide with our school's presentation of Rogers & Hammerstein's Cinderella, the play Lorelai had been cast in and had been practicing for over the last several months. I'll write a separate blog post about the play shortly; suffice it here to say it was a very time-consuming experience, especially the week of the performance!

My father flew in on Friday morning. The play's first performance was Friday night. On Saturday morning, we remembered it was also Easter weekend and hurried over to the park, where our LDS ward's Primary was holding its Easter egg hunt. The girls did pretty well for themselves!

We spent Saturday afternoon doing something that, shockingly, our family has never done before: dyed Easter eggs!

 

Usually, we just buy candy for the kids' Easter baskets, but this was a lot of fun for everyone. We even had to boil up an additional batch of eggs to color because the girls were enjoying themselves so much. Plus, we got to make a lot of deviled eggs, so it was doubly enjoyable.

That Saturday night, there was one more performance of Cinderella before the play was finished at last. My mom flew in from Utah later that night (she wasn't able to make it in time for the play, but none of the kids seemed to mind!). The next morning, Grandma & Grandpa made sure to hide a bunch of Easter eggs around the house while the rest of us were in church.

And that night, we managed to eat a lot of delicious food to celebrate our Easter...

My parents stayed in town for a few more days (I'll write an additional blog post about this later as well), and after their departure, I didn't know what to do with myself. I decided to deal with this feeling by climbing up on our roof and hacking off a bunch of branches from the huge mesquite tree in our front yard:

It will probably take us months to throw out all the branches, but at least this monster tree has been pushed back from our house for a time (we'll see how long that lasts...mesquite trees grow like weeds!). I felt a great sense of accomplishment for doing such an intensive task. Later on that day, I began to feel other things...physical things, like intense soreness in my back and shoulders, and weak wobbly knees. Maybe I overdid things a little bit, but at least the task is done for now.

Due to the sore muscles and my parents leaving, I hobbled my way to the end of April. Our family actually managed a second trip to the zoo on the very last day of the month...we went with some friends who will be moving out of town at the end of the school year. They had a lot of extra coupons to burn at the zoo, so we got to feed the giraffes and even ride the train this time! It was the most exciting zoo visit we've had for quite a while.

I can't remember the last time a month went by faster for me than this April has done. Something was going on every single weekend, and my weekdays were ridiculously busy as well (I haven't even mentioned my visiting teaching, and my piano lessons, and all the usual stuff). There are a few big events coming up for us in May; I wonder if this month will breeze by at the same speed?

Yay! My plants are growing...and there are even some tomatoes developing! Keeping my fingers crossed. Stay tuned!