easter.

Easter Pageant. Every year I vow to get there approximately 3 hours earlier than we did. But thats ok, cause do we really want to sit there for 4 hours for a one hour event? This time we brought Kosty's friend and our neighbor, Cohen. Cohen was SO excited to come. As soon as we sat down, he was hungry. And thirsty. And then he needed to go to the bathroom. I was across the street already with Brayden, grabbing food when I got the text from Jer. It said "Cohen really needs to use the bathroom. And he's kinda annoying as well." I was laughing about that for a while. Oh. And Cohen fell asleep 5 minutes after it started. Like really, snoring asleep. Jer was lucky enough to carry his 9 year old body a mile away to our car afterwards. HA.

We only have one tree in this house, but its a dang good tree. Every spring the kids and I marvel at how crazy quick it goes from barren, not a SINGLE leaf, to completely green and full in just a couple days. It's like magic. Or spring. 

We had our annual neighborhood egg hunt, and Brayden set his basket full of eggs down to climb a tree. While he was in the tree, another kid came and took every single egg out of his basket. Dang. It was really sad. And the sad part about it too is that we brought 40 eggs, so we were 'allowed' to take 40 eggs. But the kids agreed when I said to just take 10 since there were a few kids that showed up unprepared. They were totally happy with their 10. And then Brayden ended up with zero. He had to work on some serious forgiveness. 

The easter bunny came. And Kosty did a fine job of telling Brayden that the easter bunny was not real. Not the other way around. Brayden seemed genuinely shocked & asked us to tell the truth about a billion times. Then when we did, he was sad. And wished we didn't.  He is so innocent and young for looking as old as he does. Kosty made a point to mention that I bought every single thing for their Easter baskets from Dollar Tree. In my defense, I think less is more with these holidays and we had just been to Dollar Tree a couple days before and they each pointed at like 10 things they wanted. I bought them all. Cheap bunny.

Easter pictures. No camera man. Boys thought it was torture. Enough said. 

This picture was just around Easter time, randomly he smiled so sweetly and I love it because he actually looks so young in it! Sweet, innocent, and baby faced. Just the way I like em.

and whoops: these I just found but after I had already captioned. 

 

spring break.

brayden said, "hey, that mannequin looks just like daddy when he goes to work!" Totally does.

fun with the 'chubby mirror'

My favorite days with my boys are the days where there isn't a care in the world, no school, no appts, no where we need to be in any amount of time. We sleep in, eat a late breakfast, and go do something in the afternoon. We spent 6 hours at the mall one day during break. And could've spent longer. We don't really shop, at all, but peruse as slowly as we want to. We usually spend about an hour at  the lego store, get pretzels, hit Barnes and Noble, play at the game store, try out every massage/anti gravity chair and gadget at Brookstone, laugh at ourselves for a long time in the "chubby mirror" at Nordstrom, and always go to See's to get lollipops and samples. 

I've been trying to be better about establishing scripture reading habits for all of us before we go do anything for the day. Uncle Zach sent us a challenge from his mission president where you highlight in certain colors names of the Lord (yellow), times he is speaking (blue), gospel principles (red). Anyway, I totally owe it to this, but the boys (mostly Kosty) have been reading every day since. Kosty loves to highlight and it just melted my heard when I walked in the kitchen one night and he was reading for the second time that day. He may be tough, but that kid has some serious self discipline. 

Another day they decided they wanted to make Spongebob crafts. They gave me the list of supplies and we spent an entire day gathering supplies (rode our bikes to dollar store) and then coming home and watching the 'how to' on an old episode of Spongebob. They played with them for about 10 minutes after that and never again. Awesome.

We had a our radiator hose break on our (new!) van and spent a lot of time at the dealership eating donuts and drinking hot chocolate and playing on the pirate ship next door (thanks Jamie!) We also got a brand new VW bug as a rental car and it was a fun little perk. (I've always listed it as my "dream" car). 

We rode bikes to Subway and had plenty of Wii dance parties.

We finally tried out the pedal boats at Tempe Town Lakes. It was a fun afternoon and a whole lot of pedaling that didn't take us very far from the dock before we had to turn around and not pay for another hour. But, super fun for that one hour ;) 

Kosty has been drawing pictures of my brace face every week in Sacrament. He even remembers to make the tops clear and the bottoms silver. I also love the four buttons on my shirt. 

Oh, speaking of church, I got called to be the Primary President in February. Just a few weeks before girls camp. Talk about a shocker. Never saw it coming and still have to wonder if I have what it takes. Leadership and communication skills, not my thing. There are so many women better suited for the calling. I just know that its to force me to grow. There is so much growth I need. Dang it. Every calling is right outside my comfort zone. However, I want to include this: two weeks before my "call", I was in line at Someburros on a Saturday night with Jer. I saw a phone number I didn't recognize and put it back in my purse but then randomly decided to pick it up. It was the Sunbeams teacher and he needed a sub. Sure I could. The next day as I was sitting in sharing time, I must have looked ridiculous, because I could not stop the smile that was ear to ear on my face. I kept looking around at all the kids, thinking how great it felt to be in their  presence. I almost felt like my heart could explode with the love I felt in the primary room. When I walked out of sharing time that day, I thought, wow, that was odd...but no doubt in my mind, my next calling will be in primary. As a teacher. After girls camp. 

Right. Wrong. Wrong. 

There is much I should record about my feelings since the change, but mostly I want to always remember that special confirmation I received that day. SO grateful for it. Although I OFTEN doubt my abilities, I never wonder if I'm where I'm supposed to be. These (150) kids have my heart completely. I feel honored to be around their sweet spirits every Sunday. I am so very happy/cheesy/in love with being in Primary. What a special place to be. 

jer's 33rd birthday.

Jer is really the nicest. REALLY, TRULY the nicest. I got braces for his birthday--nice. And he just told me I "wear them well". We had talked about a couples relaxing resort weekend for his birthday but our friends invited us snowboarding last minute and even though he LOVES snowboarding, I knew he was more looking forward to the resort weekend. Snowboarding when it involves just him and people who know how to snowboard, FUN. But that's not us. We're the 3 who trip all over him and stayed on the bunny hill the entire last trip. Its work for him. BUT. I insisted this time to go and play like he used to do. No messing around with the rookies. He finally listened. And had some great runs. I love seeing him snowboard. He's just quietly awesome at it and never shows off or brags. Kosty had an off day (ha!) but once he talked me into buying him a 10 lb hot dog at 10 am, he perked right up. (and ate the entire thing too- as I watched and was just a little selfishly thinking about how there was no way his tiny body was going to digest it, and how I would have to see that thing come back up) Anyway, he tried his hardest to look as miserable as possible in every picture he could. And succeeded. He's moody, straight up moody. But when I told him to take a break as long as he wanted, he did and then hopped back on the lift. Brayden's friend, Ethan, decided his sister's pink pants fit him much better so he wore them and didn't bat an eye as he told everyone, "pink is the new black!" I hoped my boys would take note of his confidence and that he never once got embarrassed about the bright pink pants. Brayden and I finally made it off the bunny hill--well Brayden did way before me, and he had some very frustrating runs. His board which is borrowed from his Uncle is a little too big and a little too fast and after so many falls, he got a bad headache. Some points of the day all I could do was laugh at the miserable faces on these boys. When I finally made it up off the bunny hill, Brayden and Ethan came with me and coached me down. Brayden had a really good last run with no falls at all, and with him turning around every 5 seconds to check on me, it was really impressive. I'm so glad the last one was a happy one. After a long day, we went to the cutest little log cabin restaurant that my friend Amanda had been craving since the night before when they ate there. It was the perfect little place with hearty comfort foods and they even brought Jer his favorite, a big slice of apple pie a la mode. But, being Jer, he maybe ate one bite as he insisted everyone at the table try a bite. Or two. 

I still owe him a resort weekend. 

oh hello brace face.

once upon a time when I was 12, my mom took me to the orthodontist. I wanted braces so badly. All my siblings got them. And he said that my bite was majorly off and that it would continue to cause my teeth to get more crooked as I aged. BUT. My mom and dad thought they were "fine" so...they saved some money instead. 

They were "fine." But I wanted GREAT. Teeth are a huge thing to me and the first thing I notice on other people. I wanted nice teeth. But I didn't want braces now. I went in for a consult, thinking I would be able to get away with some newer less invasive technolgy since they weren't horribly crooked. There was invisalign, or maybe a retainer of some sort, or worst case scenario, just 4-6 brackets across my top teeth. My bottoms were already straight and I thought I could get away with any of these great options in my head. Well it turns out that none of the above would correct my bite. And without a correct bite, my teeth wouldn't get straight or stay straight. I didn't tell anyone I was getting braces because even the day of my appt, I almost called 10x to cancel. Even on the drive over, I thought what am I doing? just go home and forget it, your teeth are FINE! But somehow I ended up there and walked out in full braces. 

The real cincher though was that Brayden also had a consult, and he would need them in two years. I would need them for 1-1.5 years. So I knew it was now or never. I would never justify paying for two sets of braces at the same time. SO. Here I am in my brace face glory. Its been 5 months now and what I wouldn't give to go back to just braces. If someone had warned me about rubberbands, I would have stopped in my tracks. Rubberbands are the very worst. They make me grumpy. But it will be worth it in the end. I think.

Phoenix half marathon.

I trained for and ran in my first half marathon on March 2nd. When I heard about the Phoenix Marathon I knew it was my chance, it was the only Saturday marathon that I'd ever known of. I've always put it a race on the back burner in focusing all my efforts on fertility. But, we were finished with our final treatment, I decided to sign up. The timing of the race was perfect, the weather for training was perfect, and the course was flat and perfect too. One of my friends, Tenneal, was also running it and she had run several races so I wanted to stay with her. I told her from the beginning that I didn't care about the finish time, as long as it was under 2 hours. Thinking that was a perfectly generous goal, I was surprised when she said otherwise. We drove to the race together at 4 am, and stayed together for the first couple miles when I asked where the 2 hour pacer was. She said he was way ahead, so I tried my best to catch up to him and we said our goodbyes. I saw lots of friends and my cousin along the way and finally caught up to the 2 hour pacer. I ran ahead of him and then when I was pretty far ahead, I focused on my running. I couldn't help thinking how grateful I was to be running and for a healthy body. I thought about the day I first tried to be a runner and barely made it around the block. There was such a great energy all around and yet it was such a quiet and still morning. There were people all around so even though I was running without a friend, I felt in great company. I was surprised at how great I felt the whole time and how easy it felt to run in a race. My training runs were SO SO SO SO much harder. My longest training run was 11 miles and it felt like 1100 miles running alone. I continued to feel better than ever until just past mile 10. The last 3 miles were the first that felt even a little challenging. But the last mile felt very difficult. When I had been passing people all along the way, that last mile lots of people were passing me, and I couldn't seem to go faster or even care to. I crossed the finish line at 1:54. I was really happy, just under 2 hours! Jer and the boys were waiting for me at the finish. I ended up keeping an 8:45 min per mile pace and placed 45th (ha) in my age bracket. I couldn't have asked for a more perfect first race. 

march.

March highlights:

-Koston was particularly pleased with this dinner. When I set it on the table, he said, "Wow Mommy, this looks amazing!" One of my life's greatest pleasures is seeing satisfied faces around the dinner table. I love that they like what I cook. 

-Brayden had his pack meeting where you bake your own cake. I can't remember what its called and I don't even have the final picture of it since I was working at a wedding that day. He was supposed to make it on his own, so I really tried not to help him. Kosty and I watched as he added the oil, water, and eggs and mixed them all up. Then we couldn't stop laughing when he was ready to pour them in the pans and bake them WITHOUT EVER ADDING THE CAKE MIX. I was so tempted to let it happen. SO SO tempted. But with Kosty giggling hysterically, Brayden spent the next 30 minutes trying to figure out what he did wrong. We wanted him to figure it out on his own. FINALLY we pretty much spelled it out for him, and he added the cake mix. When he took it out and let it cool, we told him to wait to release it from the pan and he didn't. One whole layer crumbled. So he was left with a one layer cake. Chocolate frosting. And M&M's on top. The other kids in his pack had cakes that looked straight out of Cake Boss. His stood out at least ;)

-Kosty finally agreed to sign up for a sport. Well, he said no until he met his coach at the first practice, but once he did, it was magic. He LOVED soccer. We always knew he would be great at a sport but he is so timid he refused to give any a try. Finally we just signed him up and forced him. We spent many  chilly Friday nights and Saturdays at soccer games. And the boys each had two practices a week. We pretty much lived at the soccer fields 6x a week. (again a blessing of just 2 kids...how in the world do big families do that?) Tuesdays were ridiculous. Brayden had scouts at 4:30. Kosty had soccer at 5. Brayden had piano at 5:30, and then he had soccer at 7. And dinner in between.

-Jer helping the boys with their minecraft crafts

-a quote I really really like

-right before I yelled at brayden for not taking his bowl to the sink I looked down and saw a cocoa puff happy face.

-Kosty started reading chapter books by himself at night, always a big milestone that I treasure.

-Brayden told me the night before at 8pm that he needed to dress as a pioneer for school the next day for pioneer day. We borrowed a hat from our neighbor, and he wore his church shirt with suspenders I made out of black grosgrain ribbon. And he wore my black boots, good thing his feet are as big as mine. The finishing touch (and his very favorite detail) was the matte brown eyeshadow I applied all over his cheeks and nose to look like he'd been covered in dirt along the trail. 

-I was so lucky this year that I got to go on so many field trips. I was a chaperone for Kosty's blonde brigade at the zoo. I love watching him with his classmates. It was a perfect zoo day. 

-Another favorite thing I love at the boys school is Read Across America Day. I literally get giddy as we drive up and all the staff are lined up along the street wearing cat in the hat costumes and waving. They have guest readers throughout the day and I've always been able to go read in both their classes. This year was the first year I didn't get to read to Brayden's. 4th grade and up don't do guest readers, sadly. But I was happy to read two books in Kosty's class.

-A cute brunch place opened up across the street, and we were excited to ride bikes down on Saturday morning. It happened to be a freezing morning, so we drove. And waited for over an hour and a half to get our food. But it was a good breakfast. Then we stopped at Lowes and the boys did their build n grow project and then we decided we should plant a garden. We spent a long time at Lowes but we got our stuff and came home and planted our first ever spring garden. Kosty insisted on daises for the backyard planters. I thought it was cute that he liked them so much, and thought that those daisies should feel pretty darn special to be loved by him.

-My sister helped Brayden hold one of her chickens. And then she offered us to dog sit for the next two days. She said it in front of the boys so there was no way I could say no. Although her kids were in tears, she insisted it would be good for all of us, and soon we were driving off with Tux. The boys were in doggie heaven and spoiled him with walks and attention. I wanted to touch him as little as possible out of everyone, but I'm learning that somehow dogs know that....he wouldn't leave my side. The boys didn't think that was fair but it was funny. I think a grown and trained dog could be right up our alley. I loved watching Kosty skipping through the park with his blonde hair bouncing up and down, right alongside that little black dog. Sweetness.