Easter/Conference Weekend

We had a lovely Easter/Conference weekend. Mostly. Below we have pictures of the egg dying that nearly didn't occur due to misbehavior and tantrums.  We had been in a family time out 30 minutes before these pictures were taken.  But most of us still managed to have a good time.  One family member was still upset and did their best not to be photographed (it wasn't me or John :).  One day we will laugh about it for sure. I hope.

 

Easter egg hunt at grandma and grandpa's between sessions.  Way too many eggs!  But lots of fun!

And we also watched a lot of conference.  This is Barbie conference.  Ken had a lot of important words to impart to all of the barbies.

I also forced my family to do a puzzle again this conference.  This time we did the Eric Dowdle  Boise puzzle. Eric Dowdle's brother lives in our ward.  Just sayin.

I had to do it mostly by myself.  But I finished!  The Monday morning after conference :)

The great lice scare of 2015

I've been living in panic mode for a week now. Last Monday when I picked up Emmie from a playdate with her friends the mother informed me that her daughter had lice. I panicked. And then she told me that she was planning on treating the lice that night. I panicked more. Then she told me that her daughter had been given lice by her son. Who she suspected had had lice for nearly a month. Then I thought about how Owen was in this son's class at school and had been there playing a few days prior. And then my panic reached crazy high levels.

 The thought of lice in my kids hair has got to be up there on my list of worst nightmares! While I'm still not sure what my friend was thinking in having a playdate at her house with lice running rampant, I will say that I know she had had a terrible and stressful week. Maybe she just wasn't thinking clearly... But needless to say. I have still been a little on edge all week. I have spent the last 7 days checking heads of hair, freezing backpacks and jackets, and using smelly lice deterent shampoo. All in an effort to dodge the lice.

 So far I've been successful. But I still worry that we're not completely in the clear. I think I reached my highest level of panic when I found this in Emmie's hair one morning. My sister has recently had a run in with lice in her girls hair. So I immediately called her and txted her this picture.

And then when I still felt that she needed to get a better look at it I took it to her house. We determined that it was a booger. That's right. I went to my sister's house and made her look at Emmie's booger. Gross!!

I might be a little bit crazy... I will be glad when I have determined that we are no longer in any danger of getting lice. And I'm sure my head will stop itching as well.

Trek...In the beginning...

John and I have been asked to be a Ma and Pa for the youth trek experience this summer. We are super excited! Well, honestly, one of us is excited...the other has more of a tolerating attitude at this point. So we have been in the process of gathering our gear, attire, and most importantly making our rice baby. My children love the rice baby. We've named her Pippa. Emmie especially loves little Pippa. She slept with her and lugged around 10 pounds of rice for a week before she tore through the fabric. A little rice was lost (I'm not complaining) but I felt I should take her away for safe keeping.

And here we are dressed up for the kick off fireside.  I love this picture because at first glance you just think, "Oh, John and Jess dressed as pioneers. Nice."  But then you look a little closer and you think, "Wow, they both look creepy!"  Ya, were that cool.

Projects Galore!

When we arrived back home from Salt Lake we spent he remainder of our spring break working on school projects.  Both of my kids decided they wanted to participate in the OPTIONAL school science fair.  I shouldn't complain about being the mother of overachiever children....but sadly I can say I wasn't super supportive.  In 3 days we did 2 science projects and presentations, an additional mandatory science project, a book report and project, and created a musical instrument.  I was not a happy mamma for a few days there.  School projects are not my friend.  But in the end Ainsley and Owen were proud of their projects and both did a great job!  Owen even won for the 3rd grade!  So I guess I need to learn to change my attitude and enjoy the crazy while I'm in the middle of it. 

Spring Break and John's Birthday

For the first part of our spring break we took the kids to Utah for a long overdue visit.  We left Boise the day before John's birthday.  John spent the day researching at the church history library with his dad.  He's such a party animal!  While the kids and I hung out with cousins.  Is it weird that this is the only picture I took on John's birthday.  I swore I at least got one of him blowing out the candles, but I can't find it anywhere! So enjoy the picture of my brother in law Eric playing in a spinny toy at the park.  You're welcome.

We spent the next couple days just hanging out with the Dinger's and made a trip down to temple square to walk around and see 'Meet the Mormons'.  Four of us were fans.  One family member (emmie) thought it was awful and boring.  You can't win 'em all!