March

While serving as the Stake YW Secretary, I was volunteering to help with our ward's Personal Progress.  I organized a March Madness competition.  We did a basketball kick off night at Heritage.

Playing at the park between getting Benton and Alec from school and getting Ethan.

Nana sent the boys McDonald's gift cards for Valentine's Day.  I picked Benton up during his lunch time and took him for a Happy Meal.

For Dr. Suess' birthday Ethan's school put on a reading under the stars night.  We were reading The Series of Unfortunate Events.

Each time we finished a book, he and I did a movie night.

I love this age where they run every where.

Ethan's school concert started at Asher's bedtime.

Playing the drums.

Ethan started Spring Break a day before Benton, so he got to hike with me and Asher.

I did a really fun trail race at the White Tank Mountains.  The sunrise and wild flowers were beautiful.

And I got first place in my age group for the first time.

I took the rest of the family back later in the day to see the beautiful scenery.

Every once in awhile I take the time to curl my hair.  I really like it.

One of my friends organizes a Holi Festival on the first day of Spring each year.

A landscaper turned on a few sprinklers to repair and instead of getting frustrated when the kids started playing in them, he offered to turn on all the sprinklers.  I'm not sure if it was the water or a different type of powder, but not all of the color washed out of the kids' hair this year.

The boys played a lot of Monopoly during Spring Break.

We spent the end of Spring Break at LegoLand.  This time the Jeppsons met us there which made it even more fun!

We started on St. Patrick's Day, so everyone matched.  The boys had fun being silly in line.

Asher slept for 2 hours at the water park.

Good bye LegoLand!  It was a fun year!

Asher got to sleep in the closet.  The first night in a new place is always the hardest, but it went pretty well.

The debut of 2017's (mostly) matching swim suits.

Swimming before we left was a great idea.  They all crashed and Asher slept a lot longer than usual (until we had to pull over for one of the boys to go to the bathroom).

Lauren and the kids drove to Phoenix a day or two after we got back.  On our first day we went to McCormick Stillman train park.  They mostly wanted to play together and weren't too interested in riding the train and carousel.

The next day we went on a kid friendly hike and showed the kids the different kinds of cacti.

We also found a bunch of Blister Beetles, which amazed the kids.

Back at home we did singing time with the younger kids while the older kids played.

And while the little guys napped, we took the older kids to Scooptacular.

I love how Ethan and Joseph ended up sharing a chair without even discussing it.

The water was still pretty cold, but they braved it for about 20 minutes.

Benton nailed his first class picture.  They were allowed to dress up and he said he wanted to.  After getting dressed, he realized that that meant he would have to wear "church clothes" all day and decided to change back into his uniform.  He had been wearing soccer socks pulled up to his knees to schoolwhen the weather was cooler, so I bought him a few pairs of fun socks, as you can see.  Make sure to look at his face.

Benton wrote this for me all by himself at school.  He confirmed that he meant he only loves me sometimes, but at least he is doing great with his spelling.

The 10 year anniversary of our move to Arizona was at the end of March.  I celebrated by making our favorite fajitas and adding in cactus.  I couldn't really taste it in the fajitas, and by itself the cactus wasn't that great, but at least I've done it now.

On Wednesday nights, the guys play basketball at the church.  I got a call one night from one of the other guys after I'd gone to bed (good thing my FitBit vibrates) and knew it would not be good news.  He told me that one of the guys had taken Mike to our local hospital (with a dislocated shoulder).  We hung up and I realized that we didn't discuss if I should go to to the hospital or not.  The boys were all asleep and the hospital is about a mile and a half from the house, so I got dressed and drove over.  When I walked into the lobby all of the guys (except the one that was tangled up with Mike in the incident) were there looking shell shocked and not sure what to do with the intake paperwork.  They seemed relieved to see me.  I stayed with Mike and our friend Tyler went and sat at the house.  They told us it would be less than an hour, but it ended up being 3.  They did an X-Ray and then gave him an IV med that is in the same family as LSD so that he would be paralyzed and relaxed and not feel them putting his shoulder back in.  Apparently it was a pretty severe dislocation.  Mike was a champ joking with the doctors even while it was still out, but he was in A LOT of pain!  After they placed his shoulder, they had me talk to him as he came out of his "trip".  They said his heart rate dropped as soon as I came in and started talking to him.  It was really strange watching him as laid there paralyzed, but with his eyes shaking back and forth.  When he started coming to he kept repeated "that was weird!"  He said he could see where I was, but my face was blurred out.  It took a long time for him to be able to see straight and get his balance back.  They gave him anti-nausea meds, which helped.  Once he could stand up and walk, they let us go home.  He didn't milk it at all and was really tough during his recovery.

The next day the NCAA Final Four Championship started in Phoenix.  Mike had to be on call and at the emergency control center at times during the weekend.  Fortunately, he was able to take Sunday and Monday (10-12 hours/day) so that he had more time to recover and so I could take the winners of our Personal Progress competition to the concerts.  Not all of the girls wanted to go to the same days, so I spent 8-10 hours on Friday and Saturday at the outdoor music festival.  It was fun, but my feet were definitely sore (a long hike that morning didn't help).

Izzie (our rock star babysitter) and her sister Mary with Katie (YW leader and my good friend).

Keith Urban was the headliner on Friday.

The headliner on Saturday was The Chainsmokers.  I was disappointed because they only sang 2 songs and the rest of the time just did remixes of other group's songs.  It was a fun atmosphere though and I like Capital Cities.

Me with Daisy and Kaylee.

Because we reached our goal as a group, we had an awards banquet on Sunday during YW.  The theme was white, so all the food was white and we all wore white.  It ended up being good timing because I was sustained as our Ward YW President that day so we got to use the time to say good bye to the old Presidency.