Temple Open House

We kicked off spring break this year by attending the Jordan River Temple Open House. Danny has a pretty busy schedule these days, so we decided to go to this open house with out him. The kids actually did really well. Tyler wanted to be carried towards the end, but other than that, it went well. We feel so blessed to live in a place where the kids have an opportunity to go to multiple temple open houses.

Easter

We had a nice Easter this year. I took the kids over to our neighborhood Easter Egg Hunt on Saturday morning before conference started. It wasn't much of a hunt, but at least they split them up according to age. Camden was in the first group(0-3 years), Tyler was in the second group(4-7 years), and Ashley and Alyssa went together in the last group(8-12 years). Alyssa pointed out that this was her last year to be able to participate.

After the first session of conference, we dyed Easter Eggs.

 On Easter morning, we enjoyed our usual breakfast of hard boiled eggs and blueberry muffins.

Even though we didn't go to church on Easter this year, I still made the kids coordinating Easter outfits.

Camden's turned out a little tight, which made me so sad, but we still squeeze him into it. There was even enough of the girls skirt material to make myself a matching knee length skirt. My favorite part about Easter this year was being able to spend the day with family and watch conference together.

Laura's Triathlon

I'm a little behind on posting so I'm going to attempt to catch up over the next few days. A couple of months ago, I competed in my first triathlon. It has been on my bucket list since we lived in Missouri and I saw some of my friends there compete in one. I chose a sprint distance just to get a feel for it. It went about as I suspected. My strongest leg was the swim which was, unfortunately, the shortest portion of the race. We were in a pool, so it was a bit tricky placing myself in a place where I wouldn't catch up to anyone or be caught from behind.

As you will see in this video, I failed. Even with being slowed down a bit, I was still second place on the swim portion for my age group.

As I predicted, my slowest leg of the race was the bike portion. It was quite frustrating to have 100's of bikers pass me during the 60 minutes I was riding. I was told a week before my race that having a road bike makes a huge difference when competing in a triathlon. I tried to borrow a road bike from one of my neighbors, but everyone that I asked, owned mountain bikes. I gave up and decided to stick with the bike I trained on, knowing that it would make my times worse. It was still frustrating during the race. Someday, I'm going to ride the same distance on a road bike and see if it really makes a difference. I'm the purple spot in the middle of this picture. I was transitioning to my bike in this picture.

Here I am riding past the fam after my first lap.

Here I am finishing the race off.

I finished the race in about 1 hour and 40 minutes. When we went back and looked at the times, we realized that I finished my 5K in 29 minutes which is the best 5K time I've ever had. I told Danny that it is probably because I was chasing this 69 year old man the whole run and I couldn't believe that I wasn't able to catch him.  I may not have been the fastest competitor, but I did have the best cheering section out of anyone in that race.

I was glad to have finally been able to cross this item off of my bucket list, but part of my hopes to one day be able to do a longer length triathlon(after I find a good road bike to borrow.)

Tyler's Dr. Suess Day at Preschool

Tyler got to celebrate Dr. Suess's birthday at preschool by dressing as crazy as he could. This is what we came up with.

 He thought it was the coolest thing to wear 2 different shoes, turn his clothes inside out, and spike his hair up. He had these fun glasses on too, but decided that he didn't want to wear them when it got closer preschool time.

They also got to make these fun Cat in the Hat masks. He kept his crazy garb on all day and we enjoyed the comments from people.

Daddy/Daughter Sock Hop

Our Stake had a Daddy/Daughter Sock Hop for all Activity Days Girls and their dads. Ashley was super excited for the one on one time with Danny. I thought that we had a poodle skirt, but an hour before they were going to leave, I went to search for it and couldn't find it anywhere. So this is the costume we came up with for her. I think she still looked super cute and 50's.

Danny...not so much. He didn't have anything in his wardrobe that went with the theme and we didn't plan far enough ahead to get him something(I don't think he minded not dressing up, though).

Before the dance, he took her to dinner at Black Bear Diner(Ashley's choice). Then they had a lot of fun dancing together at the dance.

Alyssa was a little jealous that she didn't get to go, but she forgets that she got to go to a murder mystery dinner with her dad last month, and all of the other combined youth activities.

Some of Alyssa's Baking Creations

 Alyssa hopes to open a bakery one day. Part of her plan to achieve that goal is to apply to be on the show"Kids Baking Championship." In order to prepare herself for that, she wants to bake almost every day. I limit her to one thing at a time. Meaning, if we have leftovers from the day before, then she doesn't get to make anything new. Here are some of her most recent baking creations.

Brazilian Brigadeiro

Homemade Oreos

 Pumpkin Spice donuts(for Valentines Day)

 French Macaroons

 Donuts-She made 3 kinds:S'mores, maple bacon, and glazed

 Homemade marshmallows turned into homemade peeps

 And my favorite, Lemon Cheesecake for my birthday.

She also makes treats for our neighbors almost every Sunday. She is getting pretty good at it and loves to share with people. The downside is that her goodies do not mesh well with my diet plans.

Tyler's Grocery Store Field Trip

Tyler had another preschool field trip last month to the grocery store. There were a lot of kids and parents there and I'm sure the tour guides were a little overwhelmed, but they did well with the large group. At the beginning, they gave each of the kids a little shopping list so that they could mark off the food items as they found them during the tour. It had things like bread, eggs, milk, and cheese on it. Camden even got one to mark off. The tour started off in the bakery.

They got to each have a cookie from the bakery at the end of the tour. Next they visited the deli counter.

 They got to walk into the large refrigerator and visit the dairy section all the way around the store to the bank and customer service counter. At the end, they each got a little prize with a granola bar, fruit snacks, a sticker, and a pack of smarties. I took this picture of Tyler with his best friend(from preschool), Tayber, at the end of the tour.

Ashley's Devotional

Ashley had her 4th Grade devotional last month. They are learning Utah history this year and shared a lot about pioneers in the devotional. They sang some really fun/beautiful songs and all did really well on their speaking parts. I wonder if pioneers wore pearl necklaces. :)