Happy Memorial Day

House progress. 

My cutie niece was in her school's musical and we went to see it. Very cute show. We really enjoyed it. She was quite long-suffering taking photos afterwards, haha!

Went to a FiA/F3 bbq on Saturday. Bill and I discovered these workout groups last year and they have been lifesavers for us in finding friends here in Utah during Covid when we weren't around hardly anyone else and also just for our health and well being during this intensely anxious year. 

I've had this end table on my list for years. Finally ordered it and I like it just as much as I'd hoped. It'll be in our bedroom sitting area in our new house, but for now it's serving as my nightstand. 

Birthdays and preschool graduation

Genevieve and Spencer are both such great little artists. Genevieve drew this at school the other day.

And his is the beginnings of one of Spencer's Ironman drawings. He is so detailed now in his drawing. It's pretty amazing to watch. 

My two nieces were born on the same day, which is pretty amazing. We celebrated their birthday this weekend and one of the activities was of course a piñata. Bill ran the activity and you can see him in the background laughing maniacally. Haha! 

Grandma still packs a punch with that little bat. 

Chloe had her preschool graduation yesterday. They sang so many songs for their program. It was so adorable. 

We got her ice cream afterwards to celebrate and she was SO excited about it and wanted us to take pictures of her with her ice cream. 

The good and the hard

We are letting Spencer watch the Marvel movies. He's in heaven. I'm watching with him as I can. So fun. 

Chloe was going a little crazy on costumes one day this week. So cute. Harry Potter, ninja, Wonder Woman here. 

Harry Potter! 

Fourth of July Table runner done. 

Purple and gray because those are Bill's absolute favorite colors. I love this one so much. 

Our finished creations from Mother's Day. I adore how my pitcher turned out. 

The kids are always thrilled when they get to ride with Grandpa in his convertible. 

I survived making slime with my kids yesterday. Parents and teachers everywhere relate to despising something our kids love so much. 

Bill and I spent three hours reorganizing our two storage garages that are holding all our worldly possessions this year while we wait for our house to be built so that we'd have room to store our fridge and washer/dryer we just bought. I'm glad we snagged what we wanted there so that they'll be ready for us when our house is as opposed to my worries for months now about ordering them at the right time so they're in stock when we need them as there are crazy appliance wait lists. We're on week three of waiting for framing to start on our house and it's an anxious time wondering how this is all going to go down. This is a hard time to be buying/building a house. We found out this week our contract has a clause that the builder can pass on added costs to us beyond what we signed for back in December. They haven't done that yet, but it's just very nerve wracking. 

Mother's Day weekend

 What a fabulous weekend I had! Saturday started with a FiA workout where we invited our 2.0s (kids) along, and had a super fun workout with treats at the end. Then we headed to Chloe's soccer game, which is always adorable.

My brother has a limo business and we worked out an elaborate plan that turned out fabulous. He chauffeured his wife, me, and my sister from his house in Pleasant Grove down to Payson and Spanish Fork to pick up my mom and grandma. We brought them flowers and then headed up to the Riverwoods to Color Me Mine, where we painted pottery for almost two hours. We all made some super cute pieces. I did a pitcher. My brother and sister-in-law did square bowls. My mom did a little candy/nut dish. My grandma did a vase. My sister did a couple mugs. It was relaxing and super fun to just chat with the adults. While my brother was chauffeuring us around, Bill and my brother-in-law took care of the six kids, and then we had a babysitter come and they came down to meet us and we went out to eat at La Jolla Groves, which I'd never heard of, but was really, really good. We went to this cool rare books museum/store also in the Riverwoods afterwards that was fascinating. Got to hear a presentation and see a bunch of really old Bibles. I would go back there to keep exploring. It was basically a small museum with so much cool stuff in it. 

Sunday we were treated to a brunch at church second hour and then Bill and Suzanne and I teamed up and made a roast, buttery pull apart bread, a boule, chicken salad, fruit salad with lime, asparagus, and finished it off with strawberry shortcake. Doug made it home from taking care of his dad for a few days in the evening and it was lovely to finish off the evening just chatting. Oh, I got to go on a walk with my FiA ladies too, like I usually do Sunday afternoons as well. And the kids were fabulous all day. We got a family picture. It was perfect. 

It continues to make me happy how many great things we get to do by being here in Salt Lake. So fun to live near family and be able to hang out and do just really enjoyable things together. Last time we lived here all of our lives were much more in flux and we just didn't have as much flexibility. It's really wonderful to have college behind us, past the super tiny baby stage, etc. Family get togethers even with kids are a lot less chaotic. Loud, but not chaotic like when they were all tiny. I really love this new life phase. 

Soccer, running injury, table runners, haircuts

Kind of a strange week. I injured my hamstring somehow last Saturday and it still hurts a lot. I need a physical therapist on tap to just talk to every time I do something like this instead of having to go get a referral and find one and make a whole to do about it. I just need like five exercises to do a bunch to make the huge painful knot feeling go away. No luck so far. I don't know if I'm making it worse by still exercising or not. It's not my favorite thing at the moment. 

Aaron and I did get haircuts this week and I really love them. Love Aaron's curls that show up here a bit. And I had them shave up the back of mine this go around to deal with some annoying hair length disparities I get because of the way my curls work, and that means that even though it's shorter, I can still put it in a ponytail. I love that! 

I finished these two runner tops. Still need to quilt them. 

Spencer got this RC car this week, with help from us parents, and he is in heaven. He's having so much fun playing with it everywhere we go and showing it off. Oh, and great news for Spencer, after losing all six of their soccer games so far this season as they developed skills and figured out how to work together after a year and a half off from soccer, Spencer's team won 8-0 on Saturday! It was so awesome for him to finally see the work pay off! 

Hard to see, but our kayak had 12 inches of water in it from the tarp sliding off during the winter. 

And just a batch of banana muffins to round out the weekend. I also made a cinnamon roll cake that is entirely too decadent and oh so tasty. I don't bake too much right now since all of my kitchen stuff is in storage and I have a fairly piecemeal set of kitchen tools in my current kitchen and a tiny amount of counter space to work in, but it's nice to make tasty things when I can. 

This and that

It's been a pretty chill week. We had soccer practice and games this week. My mom came over to help out with a crazy games schedule where we had three games at different parks at the same time, and then she stayed the rest of the afternoon. It was delightful to hang out with her. I truly love that opportunity we have of living here in Salt Lake. 

I bought a console table and it arrived this week. It's blue gray and will go in our front entry. I'd like to buy all the things we will be getting for our house, but don't have anyplace to put much furniture currently. so this table is under the window in my room right now, definitely out of place. We're in that stage where the house is being built but it'll be a while but we're super excited stage. 

Genevieve's class is doing an ABC countdown to the end of school. Today was letter D for Disney and she dressed up as Merida and got me to curl her hair. It's a little startling how much older she looks when she's dolled up like this. I haven't curled her hair in a while, so that was really fun. She has a lot of hair, but it's fine, so it lays fairly flat most of the time. She has natural curl but it isn't to the phase where she knows how to make it show, so it just gets brushed out. But when I curled it, it was like I'd never get through all the thickness. I love how it turned out.

 

Two weeks post surgery

I'm two weeks post surgery and feeling SO much better! The splints came out last Tuesday and it was the best feeling in the world. My nose is still sore and there are still scabs and what not healing so my nose feels dry, but I can breathe so much better and both of those things are improving daily. I've had a whole lot fewer headaches of late too, which was a hoped for but not for certain benefit of this surgery. So I'm very hopeful that is going to happen as well. Huzzah! I've been working for a solid three years to figure out some of the crazy health issues that hit me about a year after Chloe was born, and this feels like I finally took a big step forward on fixing one of them. I'll take it!

Chloe is the cutest soccer player ever. She is hilarious. Her team missed their practice last week because of bad weather, and their coach had to be gone for their game, so they had a substitute coach. It was like they had never played before. She ran around the field looking at everyone's faces, never the ball, and didn't seem to remember the point was to kick the ball into the goal. It was pretty funny. She loves it anyway, so it's all in good fun. 

We had a family celebration for my sister-in-law who finished her bachelor's degree. So fun! And Chloe really enjoyed her root beer. 

My grandma asked me to reupholster her seat cushions like a month ago. It took me probably a few hours to take the old ones off and redo them, but at least three weeks sitting in my house. Whoops! It's been a busy month for me. But these three are done and I'll do the other three this week. 

 And Chloe and Aaron finished this puzzle last night all by themselves and were quite proud. We've had this thing for so many years, and every kid has loved it.