All about Ashley

Ashley had a lot of big end of the school year things in May. First, she had her yearly devotional. She did a good job with her memorized part and the songs they sang were really pretty. They talked a lot about Joseph Smith and the Restoration and also about the things they learned from completing the Master Project. Ashley was one of 3 kids that had a mask on during it(since it is a private school, a lot of students stopped wearing a mask months before the state lifted the mask mandate for schools. We told her that she should continue to wear her mask until it was no longer required). 

The school also had their dance festival. This year, Ashley got to do the long awaited stick dance from the Philipines(I think)

My video was too long to post, but they did their dance to the "Lollipop" song and the sticks would bang twice on the perpendicular sticks and then once together. The girls would step in the middle with each leg and then out when the sticks bang together. Ashley even did a cartwheel through the middle, but I didn't get a picture of it. She had a lot of fun with this dance.

And then there was her master project presentation. She had 20 minutes to present the things she learned about Mother Teresa this year. She decided to do a power point and created it mostly on her own. Danny and I both went to watch her present. She did a good job and she was so glad to have the Master Project over. She got an A on it, by the way.

Around the end of school, Ashley was playing outside during a wind storm and something blew into her eye. She was complaining about it and Danny and I were thinking she was being overdramatic about it. Finally, we showed her how to flush it with water. Unfortunately, that still didn't work and she didn't sleep well that night. She was crying around 5am, so I got her in the bath and tried using the bathtub faucet to flush it out of her eye. I took her to the doctor that day and they put numbing drops in her eye and something that made her eye glow under a black light.

The doctor found something small in there and flushed her eye with some saline drops. She said it came out and we went on our way. She started complaining about it again that night when the numbing drops wore off. So we went back to the doctor the next morning(this was with our pediatrician). He did the same thing with the numbing drops and the glow in the dark drops. He said that the eye lid looked swollen, so that was probably the cause of the irritation and that it should get better over the next 48 ours. He said there was a small possibility that there was something stuck to the inside of her eye lid and that if she still felt irritation after a couple of days that we should go to an eye doctor. When she complained about it 2 days later, I called an eye doctor. I didn't see what he did differently, but he found something small in her eye, removed it and told us to keep her eye moist with eyedrops for a few days until it heals all of the way. She has been fine since then. Who knew something could get so stuck in your eye. 

Camden's 6th Birthday

Camden turned 6 this year. He requested a super mario bros cake, so I looked up some ideas and showed them to him. This is the one he chose. The layers were fairly easy to decorate, but I was a bit nervous about having it stacked so high. It was also tricky to back 4 different sizes of cakes, but I think it turned out pretty well. He was happy with it, anyways.

Camden's birthday fell on a Saturday and he requested that we go to Boondock's so that he could play some mini golf. We let him invite a couple of friends since we knew we would be doing a birthday party for Tyler this year and I don't do multiple parties so close together. He invited his friend, Cameron, and his friend, Pierce. Boondocks was a mistake, for Saturday. I have never seen it so busy there. We basically did everything they could do, once, and called it good. 

Pierce fell into the water getting off of the bumper boats. I felt so bad for him.

Danny had a Karen moment when the lady in front of us on the 4d ride decided it was okay for her to wait in line while the rest of her family went off to do other things. And then when it was her turn, she called them over and they all went in front of us, delaying our wait time 10 minutes. He gave her and the employee a piece of his mind, though it didn't change anything.

We also had a few mishaps during mini golf because the kids thought they were playing actual golf and the clubs hit others during their swing.

After boondocks, we headed back to our house for presents and cake.

He had a fun birthday, celebrating with his friends and family.
 

Tulip Festival

We went to Tulip Festival on the last Monday in April. We were going to go a week earlier, but the weather was cold and rainy that day so we changed our reservation. The weather ended up being perfect. The tulips were beautiful.

The kids had fun finding the wooden shoes hidden throughout. I think we only found 4 of the 15.

 

We love the Thanksgiving Point Gardens and the fun events they put on to encourage us to get outdoors and enjoy the beautiful world around us.

Lula's Third Litter of Puppies

Lula had another litter of puppies in February. Usually the breeders are pretty on top of things and they check her often when they think she is getting close. On Thursday, Feb. 4th, I was eating lunch and heard her whimpering. As I looked closer to see what was bothering her, I noticed some fluid in her crate. I called the breeders and they came right over to check her. They said she was in labor and they took her back to their house. She had the first puppy 2 hours later. Then another one shortly after. We were worried that Ashley was not going to make it home from school in time, but we got her there to see number 4 born. And that was the last one. She only had 4 puppies this time. But they were still cute and fun to watch grow up.

This is Alyssa with one of the puppies right before they went off to their new homes. It is 8 weeks old.

We should only have to go through one more pregnancy and litter of puppies and then they are done breeding her. That will be nice to have her with us full time.
 

Spring Soccer

Camden played spring soccer. He was so excited to play because soccer is his favorite sport. His first game was amazing. He scored 3 of his teams 6 goals. We thought it was going to be a great season. And then he fell off of the monkey bars a week later and pulled a muscle right above his knee. He was not able to run after that which is kind of a necessity to succeed at soccer. It didn't get better until after the season was over. He still had fun, but we would have liked to see a bit more of what he did in the first game. We will probably sign him up for fall soccer and have another go at it.

 

Another Graduate from Braces

Ashley got her braces off on April 15th. We were shocked how quickly her orthodontics experience was. She got her braces on Jan. 20th, 2020, then COVID hit a couple of months later and she had to wear a mask in public for the following year and few months. By the time she could remove her mask, the braces were off. It is a good thing that she had them on shorter, because she complained a lot more than Alyssa ever did about the discomfort.

Before

After

 Her teeth were really sore, so she was not pleased about me asking here to smile so big for the camera.

Catch up - Spring Break in St. George

I am way behind on updating our blog, so I am going to attempt catch up over the next few days. I'll start with Spring Break. We went down to St. George. The idea was to get away and soak in sum sun while Alyssa got a lot of time on the tennis court and the other kids spent a lot of time in the pool. We rented a condo in Las Palmas resort. We had access to multiple pools and hot tubs, as well as playgrounds, sports courts, and games. We only ended up using the pools and hot tubs at the resort. 

We chose to play tennis at a nearby park because the courts were much better quality. Alyssa especially loved the the tennis courts had lights so that we could play night tennis. Shortly after we got back from our trip, our closest tennis courts finally made the tennis lights available to the public, so she has played quite a bit of night tennis since spring break.

On one of mornings we were there, we headed to Zion National Park. We failed to secure bus tickets, so we went up to the Kolob Canyon area of the park instead. We went on the coolest day of the week, which we discovered was a mistake once we were there. Kolob Canyon is higher elevation and quite a bit colder than St. George...and we left all of our sweatshirts back at our condo. So it was breezy and cool(like high 50's to low 60's, and we found ourselves seeking sunshine and moving as much as possible to keep warm.

We drove up the canyon as far as we could go and then got out and did a hike. the view at the top was spectacular. We also had a picnic lunch before heading back to our condo. It wasn't as long of a National Park visit as usual, but a nice getaway. And the kids were not disappointed to get back earlier than planned and have more time in the pools.

The next morning we split up. I took the 3 younger kids to Thunder Junction all abilities playground and Danny played a very hot round of tennis with Alyssa. I guess I forgot to take pictures this time, but they had a lot of fun and played for a few hours. They also got to ride the train twice.

The last full day there, we went up to pioneer park and the gardens. It was hot but we still had a lot of fun. The kids especially loved climbing on the rocks at pioneer park. 

And they even braved the super thin slot canyon. Danny didn't even attempt it and I chickened out after about 10 ft in.

We also stopped at the Brigham Young winter home. We couldn't go inside, but we walked around the grounds and peered through the windows. We were going to visit the temple grounds too, but forgot that it would be under construction right now.

That evening we hiked to the rock quarry where they got the stones for the temple. It was the perfect time of day for the hike because most of the hike was in the shade, due to the setting sun.

We had a lot of fun and the kids keep asking when we can go back and stay there again.