Spring Break

    Time goes so quickly when you are busy.  I’ll start by talking about Caleb’s birthday.  It was on Friday the 17th.  He was so excited for it.  I bought donuts to share with his class.  I bought enough for our family too.  He loves donuts.  He loved that the school had some activities for St. Patrick’s Day.  He wore his green and was very happy.  When I picked him up from school he was all smiles.  As we walked home he was singing “happy birthday to me.”  I made him a shamrock shaped cake.  The borrowed cake pan worked great.  We had a nice family evening time.  We played some games, the kids enjoyed balloons and Caleb was very happy to open up some gifts.  He had asked for simple things this year.  I bought him what he asked for, sidewalk chalk, pom pom balls to play with, and a small monster truck to play with outside.  It is nice to have simple requests.  Now he likes to tell everyone he is 7 now. Caleb also lost a front tooth on his birthday.  Well, he let me pull it out before he ate dinner so it wouldn’t bother him any more.  He was very excited to loose another tooth.

 Caleb at school with his donuts for his class

 the donuts for home were a little more colorful

the cake

Becky and Caleb

    We had Spring Break last week.  Ruth had been asked by our friends in the ward, to feed their chickens and parakeets.  She was checking on them about every other day.  She gathered the eggs every time and refilled food and water as needed.  I went with her the first couple of times, Neal went with her once to help her figure out the water dispenser.  Then a couple of times she rode her bike over.  One trip Andrew went with her.  They were gone longer than I had expected and I wondered what was up.  When they came home they told me that the chickens got out the gate when they were going in to refill their food.  Then they had to chase the chickens down and get them back into the fenced area.  It sounded pretty funny.  We have enjoyed lots of fresh eggs this week.  Ruth told me Monday, her last day checking on them, that she was glad the job was over.  She didn’t really like taking care of animals.  I am proud of her that she would accept the job and do it.

The eggs were colorful, we found we liked the green ones better, they were bright
yellow inside and clean "whites" while the brown ones sometimes had speckles inside.

    We have worked in our yard this week.  I got the kids out there helping me weed.  On Saturday I was able to get some iris plants from a ward members, who were clearing out a flower bed and didn’t want the irises.  I was happy to take them.  On Saturday afternoon I was able to plant about half of them in the area that I had wanted iris in.  I still have a lot, so I plan on clearing an area to plant the rest of them in. I have always loved irises and I am excited to have gotten so many for free. It has rained this week so I haven’t gotten out to do more work.  Maybe this afternoon it will dry up enough for me to work on it.  The trees are finally blooming and so are the daffodils.  I was wondering why our yard seemed behind things I was seeing around the neighborhood, so I am glad that things are looking better.  We have lots of tulips coming, maybe they will be blooming in a couple of days.  It is fun to see the yard waking up after winter.

The pear tree

the apple tree with the tulips

we have two small purple trees in our yard, I think they are pretty, our neighbor has big ones in their yard.

A view of our back yard

    A week ago I had a visiting teaching appointment set up after church and my companion wasn’t able to join me.  I invited Ruth to come with and she did.  I enjoyed going with her.  We had a nice visit with the sister.  Ruth and I also enjoyed doing some shopping Saturday and found her some cute clothes and then we went to the Women’s session of conference at the church building together.  It is nice to spend time with her.
    Last week for Spring Break we stayed home and enjoyed time just relaxing from our school schedule.  One day we went to a park and met some friends there.  Ruth and I sat around with the moms talking and the kids played.  We brought our lunch and were there for about 2 1/2 hours.  It was a nice outing.  Another day I took the boys mini golfing.  We had fun with that.  They are all getting good with it and it was a close game with our scores.  Another morning we went to the Explora museum.  The kids had fun looking at things and playing.  We discovered a play ground this time around that we hadn’t seen before.  Spencer and Andrew were invited to play at a neighbor’s home, one afternoon.  They spent almost four hours there and came home all happy with making better friends with them.  One morning we had friends Nathan and Xan come over to our home to play.  The boys had a lot of fun together and enjoyed going out into the open space together too.  It was nice weather all week, so that helped with outdoor playing.  Ruth went with her friend Grace to the movie “Moana” that was playing at the discount theater.  She enjoyed going out with a friend.

 The kids had fun playing with the blocks at the museum

 Spencer and Caleb built this little house

    Last Friday evening we had a little family party to end our week.  The kids have asked if we can go to a place like “Cold Stone” to get their favorite mixed in treats into ice cream. We told them that it gets really expensive to go to places like that with the whole family.  So instead we did our own cold stone.  We asked the kids what their favorite toppings were and I bought a big bucket of vanilla ice cream and toppings.  Neal was our mixer and he did a good job.  We did it again Saturday evening too.  It was fun to get our ice cream specialized and mixed in like a ice cream parlor.  Neal used a cutting board he had put in the freezer and two ice cream paddles for the mixing, it worked great, and it was a lot less money than going out.  We had fun playing some games together too.  It was good to have some fun family time.

      Saturday afternoon Neal, Andrew and Spencer were invited to the home of the organizer of the model train club they belong to. He wanted to get to know the boys better and spend more time with them to know their interests with the trains.  They really enjoyed it.  Andrew worked on his train lay out a lot this week.  He is making progress getting the outline and beginnings of things going.  He needs to buy some switches to have the track work.  It is coming together and it was nice he could work on it over his break.

    Saturday when we went to get the iris plants the boys found big snails their yard.  They brought home four of them.  Neal found a large pickle jar for them to make a little habitat for their snails.  They are enjoying having pets.  I don’t mind it because they are quiet and so far haven’t had any smells. 
    This week is going well.  We got back into our school time routines.  Spencer and I have both come down with colds.  We are doing okay but it is hard to not feel well.  Yesterday we got caught in the rain coming home from school.  Today I drove them to school because I didn’t want to chance getting wet again.  We have also had our neighbor boys come over before school a couple of times this week.  Their mom needed to go to work early and asked for some help. The boys have enjoyed playing together for about 45 minutes before school.  Today is their early out day.  Spencer and I plan on making a cake for his Blue and Gold dinner tonight for cub scouts.  It should be a fun activity.  Andrew has enjoyed working on the Sustainability merit badge this month with a Stake merit badge activity.  Ruth enjoys going to her Young Women activities.  On Sunday she was happy saying that it was her last Sunday as a Beehive.  She is excited to turn 14 and move up into the MiaMaid class with all her friends, she is the youngest in her group of 8th grade friends. 
    Sunday I was mixing up some bread dough and heard a clunk and turned to look at the mixer and found it was broken.  The stirring planetary part had broken off.  I guess it can only take so much mixing and over almost 10 years it got worn off.  I have looked up on the internet and found that we can buy a replacement part, so I will only be out of a mixer for a short time until it gets fixed.  Just one more thing to add to the things that have broken this year!

    There is a little of our activities.  Neal has been very busy with work trying to get some projects finished before the end of the month.  We enjoy all our family time when we can get it.