It's hard to believe that we started March out with the college kids in town and we are ending the month about ready to head down to Southern Idaho to pick them up. This all coincides with Bryn's spring break. Rexburg isn't the most thrilling place to go for spring break but it is what it is. LOL!
On the first day of March, our little Karson turned one month old! This little sweetheart is such a gift!
This grandparent thing is pretty darn fantastic! We highly recommend! He is the sweetest and most snuggly little guy! He is super content to let us all hold him. This month he is so much more alert and it is so cute to see him looking all around and interested in what is happening. Karson is now 12 lbs and 6 ounces. He's in the 99th percentile for everything. He's growing and developing really well! Reilly and Hunter are doing great! They are wonderful parents!
The first week in March, Kam and Ailey came home for a quick visit to meet Karson. They couldn't wait to get home to see their new nephew!
Gotta love the crazy pictures they send me from the plane! The guy behind them too. LOL. Kam's hair has a life of its own! I thought it was wild at Christmas. Ha ha! I guess he has proven that, yes, his hair is still curly. Also after 2 years of missionary life it's okay to go a little crazy. Tyler did this too.
Let's suffice it to say that it was love at first sight for all three of them:
It is amazing how you can just instantly love and adore someone. Once they got ahold of that baby they never put him down. They were total baby hogs the whole time they were here! We also packed in the fun while they were in town. We grabbed breakfast at Chaps the morning they flew in.
It was good to have all of our kids back in Spokane!
Reilly, Karson, and Hunter came right over after breakfast and the fun began! I mean look at that face!
This mom is always happy when her chickies are home! Even when they are uncooperative for pictures! Reilly spent a lot of time at our house with Karson while the college kids were here. Everyone got lots of time to hold and snuggle him. Tyler and Bryn had to go to work and school on a couple of those days but Reilly, Kam, and Ailey got a lot of good sibling time together. I loved hearing and being a part of their conversations. They are all such interesting and diverse people. It was kind of surreal listening to them and realizing that three of our kids are ADULTS!
Kam and Ailey took right over Karson's feeding, rocking, burping, and diaper changing. Both kids were so cute and so good with him. They will be great parents too!
They also did a lot of this! Those college kids were tired!
Around all of our Karson time we did some shopping, ate out a few times, had family dinners, watched movies, and went to church together. Tyler also taught the college kids how to do their taxes while they were home. #adulting
All of us (but one) were even unintentionally matching on Sunday! Tyler refused to change his tie even after seeing everyone else emerge for church wearing green. LOL. Rebel.
The morning before the kids flew out Tyler, Kameron, and I all went to the temple together which was really fun! I loved all the new changes and especially the changes to the clothing!
After the temple we ran home to change and then met Reilly and Karson for lunch before dropping the kids off at the airport. Poor Brynnie had school that day and she couldn't miss or she wouldn't be able to play in her basketball game that night. Ailey checked Bryn into school late that morning after she took her out for a sister breakfast date while Tyler, Kam, and I were at the temple.
This was the cutest smile from Karson when Reilly opened up his car seat and he saw who he was with! He was grinning at his aunt, uncle, and grandparents! Absolutely darling!
The kids were squeezing in as many loves as possible!
This was Karson's first public outing and first time going to a restaurant. He was a fan!
The kids visit was short but definitely sweet! Soon they were back in Southern Idaho and prepping for finals. Ailey is dating someone and they are enjoying every last minute together before the semester ends. He's from Arizona.
Kameron and his friends headed out on another road trip to Jackson Hole. They love it there!!
Kam is still figuring out what he wants to do schooling wise next year. He bought plane tickets to Florida to tour a flight school there at the end of April. He is leaning toward becoming a pilot. He has so much to figure out before next semester. He would definitely prefer the climate in Florida over Rexburg!
While the kids were home we got the news that one of my uncles has stage four colon cancer that has spread to his lungs and lymph nodes. This is the uncle that lives in Rexburg. Things are somewhat estranged. He is married to my mom's sister. His children contacted us and other family members with the news. Not good news and yet with things being as they are it's hard to know what to do and how to reach out.
March for Bryn (and us) was all basketball! 5 days a week! It was really fun to watch her play and see how much she has improved. Their team was awesome! They had a great season! These girls had such a great experience. Their coach was TOUGH (and a yeller) but they absolutely loved him!! They were crying their eyes out at the end of their last game. He was so fantastic with the girls and told them that they were his favorite team that he has ever coached. This was such an amazing experience for all of them especially as they leave middle school and head to high school next year.
I am NOT a sports photographer!
We love the girls on this team. Most of them Bryn has known since elementary school. That made it extra fun for the girls and the parents.
Reilly has been busy this month with all kinds of things. She has a very interesting business in the works that she is starting. She presented her business plan to our family when the kids were here. Tyler and I were her first investors. She is such an entrepreneur! She thinks of all kinds of businesses and business ideas for all of us! Ha ha!
One Sunday afternoon she came over because she wanted to learn how to make homemade bread and homemade butter. Who is this person?! I was happy to walk her through the process while doing this:
And so was Pops!!
Bryn also made honor roll for first semester. She also had a great orchestra concert! We are so proud of her and how hard she works at everything she does!
Bryn was super excited because she moved up a chair in time for this concert!
She did a fantastic job!
Bryn and I had a few opportunities to do some service together this month. The YW were short some leaders this month and needed some parent helpers. I volunteered to help out. One night they made freezer meals for several families in our ward. I helped drop off Bryn's batch. Then another night the YW were volunteering at an assisted living facility making fleece tied blankets. I got to go along with them. This was extra fun because this activity was at the place where Ailey has worked as a server the last two years and also where Reilly and Kam had their first jobs.
Several of the residents that we did the blanket activity with knew Ailey and wanted updates on how she was doing in college. This cute lady wanted us to send this picture to Ailey and to say hello to her. She also made Ailey a cute knit hat as a graduation gift last year and I think she is the same lady who made one for Kam too. We had a great time! I am not good at making those blankets but I am good at talking to the residents!
This was a rough month for some people that we love. One of my friends in my ward and book club fell and got a concussion last month and hasn't seen any improvement. It has pretty much incapacitated her. She is a super vivacious and busy person and it has been hard to see her struggling. Our ward had a special fast for her the Sunday that the kids were here. My uncle's ward, friends, and family did a special fast for him too which we also participated in. My niece was injured and taken by ambulance to the hospital this month. That was a scary phone call. We fasted for her too. Thankfully by the end of the month she was doing much better. One of my friends (a sweet older lady) just had her husband go on hospice and then one of the moms that has been a fixture at my kids schools...she is also a mom of one of Ailey's friends...passed away unexpectedly. That was a rough one. This month had its share of heartache and worry.
It was also quite snowy for most of the month and rainy the rest of the month. There were only a few sunny days here and there. I tried to hygge it up but I am all out of hyggeness. It only lasts so long. We have had 5 months of winter and I am so sick of it. A couple of things did help...trying to be outside and going for long walks...no matter the weather. Also the robins returned. One day Bryn said she could hear birds singing that morning and after I dropped her off at school about a hundred robins descended on our two mountain ash trees and our crab apple tree. It was crazy. I sent videos to Tyler at work. It was very cool to see. Yep...old lady bird watcher. I've embraced it. Also Daylight Savings! Bring on the longer days and sunshine!
St. Patrick's Day rolled around. Green lunches were requested by Bryn, Hunter, and Reilly. Tyler gets off of work early on Fridays so we delivered Reilly and Hunter's lunches to them and brought our favorite little leprechaun a green balloon!
That day the sun was actually out and it hit 56 degrees. Tyler and I ran errands, grabbed lunch, and split a slice of grasshopper pie to celebrate and even ate it at the park. That night Bryn wanted our traditional McDonald's filet-o-fish meal and a shamrock shake. It seemed extra good this year. Maybe only eating at McDonald's once a year helped! Later that weekend we had our corned beef and cabbage meal. So good! We were down quite a few little leprechauns but we partied it up!!
We've also gotten Beverly's lazy behind out for regular walks again. This dog hates snow, wind, and rain. She will sit down and refuse to budge. On the days when we had good weather though she was up for her walks and excited about them!
Our beloved Beverly turned 4 years old this month!! It's hard to believe! She continues to be a spoiled...yet lovable...diva! She had her yearly vet check-up and she is healthy and her weight is perfect despite months of refusing to walk in the snow. We love our crazy dog!
Speaking of walks...at the end of the month the weather improved a little bit. Reilly and Hunter started taking Karson out on daily walks which he LOVED!! They have been trying out all kinds of walking trails. One day they invited both sets of grandparents along and Bryn and Beverly too. It was a really pretty day as we walked on the Medical Lake Trail.
The whole crew.
Still some ice on the lake.
The grandparents: Don and Colleen aka Grandma and Papa Donkey with Lovey, Pops, and Karson.
Aunt Brynnie managed to get Karson away from his doting grandparents for a few minutes. No easy task! It was fun to get outside and to do something all together! Karson is one loved bebe!
This month our Stake Primary Presidency planned a big Stake Temple Primary Activity. The stake center near our temple was booked for months so we had to get creative. We dragged this behemoth of a mini-temple out of stake storage to use for our activity. Me, Tyler, Jen, and her husband Joel put it together one Friday night! What a process. LOL.
The temple was so enormous that we couldn't even put the top on it. It also wasn't the most stable of structures and took Tyler and Joel putting their engineering minds to work to get that thing up and stabilized. Pictures were needed after getting that gigantic thing up!
Our Stake Primary activity turned out great! We had four stations for the kids to cycle through to learn all about the temple...ending with getting their pictures taken in front of the mini-temple. Tyler and Bryn both volunteered to help out. The activity that I was in charge of was the marshmallow temple cookie station. It was a big hit! The kids made marshmallow temples on top of a square frosted sugar cookie that they could decorate with all kinds of sprinkles. Royal icing was the glue that held the marshmallows together and glued the gold candy on top.
The kids loved this! It was much better than making sugar cube temples with toothpicks like our kids did... which they ate anyway. So might as well make them out of marshmallows and sugar cookies.
I had four big groups come through! It was a little crazy but fun.
We were all exhausted by the end of the activity but I think it turned out really well and the kids learned a lot and had fun! We also had multiple ward conferences this month. I was in 4 different wards. Tyler was busy with his calling in the ward that he is over so Bryn was getting rides to church. She was extra happy the week that Kam and Ailey were there. She's been a champ about it though!
I took Tyler and Bryn out to lunch to thank them for their help with our activity and then we went home for some lengthy naps. Later that night we had a wedding reception to attend. Kam's good friend and our good friends' son, Tyler, got married so we headed to that. Kam's friend Tyler and Kameron both got baptized on the same day and now Tyler's married. It is crazy how many of Kam's friends are married now. Sheesh.
This month quite a bit of my time was spent studying. I've got to cram it all in. I have until July 1st but I am trying to get a lot done before summer and we have a full house again with all of the noise and distractions. I've also been working on a lot of projects to get things stock piled to go into my booth for our Spring Open House in April which is the week after we get home from picking up the college kids.
This month my feet have been killing me with a nasty plantar fasciitis flair up. It has SUCKED! It has been the worst flair up that I have ever had. I do constant stretches and exercises and use the massage gun. Ugh. I also had my yearly mammogram this month. I always dread it and then I get there and it is so fast. My results were normal. I felt so grateful especially with two of my friends being diagnosed with breast cancer over the last two years. I still need to do my colonoscopy. Yay...50.
Tyler had another eye appointment and his eyes look really good! No more shots in the eyeball. His doctor is going to have him do a more extensive eye test for diabetic eyes next month but he was thrilled to not need any more shots. I don't blame him. Tyler is also doing some AutoCAD tutoring on the side. He loves helping people learn AutoCAD. He has had a lot of fun with it!
Kameron lucked out and got tickets to three sessions of General Conference. He is super stoked! He will be heading down to SLC with several of his friends. Ailey's good friend Elsa got her mission call to Everett, WA. Unfortunately it's on the west side of the state not the east side. Oh...I forgot! When Ailey attended church with us she walked in to Sacrament Meeting and was like "Hide me!!" It turned out that she dated one of our new missionaries at BYU-I. Ha ha!! The world is small. Be careful who you put your lips on because you might run into them in your home ward! She dodged him but he ended up seeing her and sending her a FB friend request right after church. Tyler wanted to invite the missionaries over for Sunday dinner. Ailey was not amused. Too funny!
Tyler, Bryn, and I have had some fun as "The Cool Kids Club" before the college kids come home. :) We have done a lot of shopping, gotten sushi, found a cool boujee plant store that Bryn and I loved, binged some TV and watched the movie A Man Called Otto (the movie version of the book A Man Called Ove) which was so good! I was dubious. I was bugged by the name change and the casting of Tom Hanks but we all loved it and bawled our eyes out. The three of us have been hitting the gym together too. This has been so fun!!
A Stretch Lab clinic opened up near us and I gifted Tyler a session as one of his birthday gifts. He finally went. He needed it. He has zero flexibility. It was good for him to get a good stretch and to learn some stretching skills. Hopefully he will go back. He has decided that he might like to try yoga! Will wonders never cease!
Bryn registered for Trek this month and attended the kick-off. Now to find her a pioneer outfit! LOL. Ailey completely missed out on the Trek experience due to COVID which cancelled her Trek but both Reilly and Kameron have gone and both had amazing experiences. In fact when Kam was home this month and we were downtown he ran into his Ma and Pa and the hugs and joy they all had reuniting with each other was actually really special! That bond lasts!
In other random news...there was a moose loose in our neighborhood one night but we never saw it and we were even doing a night walk in our neighborhood. That would have scared the heck out of us! Bryn has had a good month with her friends and a lot of activities. One of my good friends stopped by unexpectedly and brought me a card and a sweet gift. It made me feel loved! Some people are so good at that! I need to be a more thoughtful friend. A few weeks ago Hunter unexpectedly ran into my sister Kelley. I guess it went okay. She was nice to him so...yeah. Poor guy though. Awkward. In other craziness...Donald Trump was indicted. And...Succession is back! Tyler and I are stoked. I have no idea why I love that show. It isn't my usual vibe but I do!
Here's hoping the weather warms up and SPRING actually arrives!!
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