Phoenix overnighter

Since we had to take Rachel up to Phoenix for the state math competition, we decided to make it into a family vacation. We found an Airbnb with a pool and left right after school was out on Friday to head up. The place we stayed was a 3 story condo with the garage on the bottom floor, the living room and kitchen on the 2nd floor, and 3 bedrooms on the top floor. It was a good place for hide and seek. The kids were happy to get to swim and watch some Penguins of Madagascar before going to bed. 

The next morning I dropped Rachel off at the competition, then the rest of us went to a nearby park to play. 

 After the park we stopped at a gluten-free bakery, then headed back to our place for the kids to get one last swim in while I packed up the car so we could be out of there before check out.

 Annie had some fun with the waterproof camera while swimming.

We went and picked up Rachel from her math competition, (yay for getting 20th place in the whole state, Rachel!!) then we headed to downtown Phoenix where we grabbed some Chick-Fil-A for lunch, then went to the Children's Museum for an afternoon of fun.

The biggest hit there is always the huge 3 story playhouse that is completely enclosed and super fun to climb around/in.

 We hit the face painting station

 Jacob decided to paint my face while I was working on Ryan's. Of course the girls were all to happy to help him with his face paint.

 We spent a lot of time up in the noodle forest, the grocery store, and the theater area. The kids put on a nice dance number. Especially Rachel.

And the puppet show:

We spent a bit more time in the tree house, then headed back home.

We listened to Fablehaven in the car and it was overall a pretty good one night trip. Megan whined the whole ride home that she wants to move to Phoenix. And Annie went to bed teary that night because she was sad our vacation had to end. I'd call that a successful (if short) vacation.

The Fair

The week before the Pima County Fair came, I called Jacob to ask if we should go to the fair this year. We've managed to avoid it the last couple years. The kids love it, but I don't always. Jacob said yes, we should make it a FHE activity, so I bought ride tickets that were on sale for the last day. Then the day before the fair Jacob got sick, and wasn't feeling up to going still by the time the next day rolled around. I told the kids we probably wouldn't go after all and they were devastated. So I sucked it up and took them by myself. My mom came and met us there, so I didn't have to do it all alone. And I picked up the kids from school and headed straight there, so by the time our ride tickets were gone, the fair was just barely starting to get busy. 

 Annie was eager to ride everything. Rachel was conserving her rides, but we convinced her to not wait too long or she'd miss out because we weren't staying forever.

 Ryan's favorite was this jungle obstacle course. It may have been Rachel's favorite, too.

 The kids were surprised to find they liked the rocking boat.

 Annie and Megan's last ride was on Jumbo. I had to ride with Megan because Annie wasn't tall enough to be her companion rider, and Megan wasn't tall enough to ride alone.

 You could control how high you went, so we went up to the top, and every time I tried to let it go a little lower Megan chastised me and we had to go back to the highest height. She doesn't have my fear of heights, I guess.

 Neither does Rachel. I was so glad my mom was along to go with Rachel on the Ferris Wheel. I don't know if I could stand to let her go alone, but I definitely didn't want to go with her, so I was glad my mom went on it.

 That is just too high for me. And it's the kid version. In the other part of the fair is the extra huge one that I will never go on. I was glad we were out of ride tickets because Megan wanted to go on that one, too. No way.

 We skipped the fair food and stopped at Panda Express and Freddy's for dinner.

5 star reviews from all the kids. It was definitely a winner FHE activity. Too bad Jacob couldn't come along.

YW fun

Mixed in with all the family activities and the school stuff, it's been a busy month for Young Women stuff, too. Pretty much every mutual in April was cancelled because of a YW event happening another day that week. 

One of my laurels, Ella, was the lead in Aida, so we moved mutual to Friday and went to see her performance. She was amazing. Seriously a voice that could fill the whole place. 

We planned a Young Women campout for Easter weekend because everyone had Friday off of school, so we went Thursday night to Friday mid-day. With 12 first years at Girls Camp from our ward this year, we thought a trial run of one night away from home would be helpful before they have 3 nights away. The girls all seemed to have a really good time. It is fun to get to have Rachel along on our YW adventures now. 

 We rented canoes and a lot of the girls got their first time out on a lake under their own power. They had a lot of fun.

 The water was freezing, but everyone still got wet (to varying degrees) and we had a good game of frisbee in the lake.

A week later we had the youth temple trip. So many things crammed into a short amount of time. I breathed a little easier after we got through all the planning and execution of April activities. We had a decent group come out to the temple.

Afterwards we changed clothes and had a picnic and some time to play and hang out at the park.
 
 I have never played 9-square before, but we set it up and everyone had fun. It's basically 4-square, but elevated and you have to hit the ball out of your square if it comes into your square.

 The last week mutual was cancelled because we had Stake Girls Camp kickoff.

 The theme this year is Love Rocks. Everyone had fun and Rachel is pretty excited about going to camp. I probably get to hang with the first years this year since Rachel will be there, and literally half our ward YW are 1st years. Let the fun begin.

Now that we're in to May it's weird getting back to our regularly scheduled mutual nights. But also nice to get back into the regular routine.

School fun

So much has been going on... here are some of the school-related things that have been keeping us busy. 

In April we got to go see Annie and the rest of the 2nd grade in the concert they've been working on in music this year. The music was based on cats and dogs--Annie's class were dogs.

 She wore her baptism dress so she could look extra fancy. She was glad Grandma and Grandpa got to come hear her, too.

 Rachel finished her last reading fair project ever! Yay! It was low priority on her teacher's radar, so it was low priority for Rachel (and me), but she got it done.

As a side note, Rachel was a little obsessed with the Harry Potter series so we encouraged her to take a break from rereading it again and again and again (Jacob hid the books). So Rachel discovered the Ranger's Apprentice series and is on her second time through that series and has taken to making her own bows and arrows. Archery at girls camp will be pretty fun for her, I think. 

In March Rachel got 5th place in the Tucson Region of the Mathleague competition, which qualified her to go on to the State competition.

 She got to do that competition last weekend and did really well, placing 20th place in the state, which is only 5 places away from qualifying for nationals. Right where we wanted her--good enough to show how awesome she is at math, but not so high up that we have to figure out how to fit a trip to Texas in to our short summer. Way to go, Rachel! We're proud of you and your mad math skillz!

Annie had an invention project where she had to learn all about something and when/why/how it was invented. Since she has a decent mini eraser collection that she loves, she decided to research the eraser.

 Interesting fact I learned from her research: rubber got its name when one of those guys on her poster realized that if you rubbed it on pencil marks, the pencil marks would go away.

Megan has been having fun at preschool. Her teacher planned a super fun drive in movie night in her back yard. Megan decorated a box to look like a car and Ryan brought his dump truck to sit in. It was a fun family evening watching Tangled.

 I got to go with Rachel's class on a field trip to Old Tucson Studios. I had 4 girls in my group, including Rachel, and we had a pretty fun time.
We rode the train, the carousel, went in the haunted mine, locked the girls in jail and got to have the stunt men show us how they did some different stunts.

 We even got to see a stunt man fall off the top of the tower on the right. On purpose. And yes, that is where The Three Amigos was filmed. :)

Last night Rachel had to help with a fundraiser at Arby's as a part of the National Elementary Honor Society. She stood outside for an hour passing out fliers, then toward the end of her shift we ordered dinner for the family and sat down to enjoy dinner together. The bonus was that several of Annie's classmates showed up while we were there and Annie had fun eating together.

It's been a busy month an a half with a lot going on with the kids at school. But we just have a little over 2 (very full) weeks of school left, then it'll be SUMMER and a much more open schedule. Yay!

Family Fun

So many things have been keeping us busy the last month or so. We've been super busy with school and church things, but have managed to squeeze in some family fun time, too.

For FHE one night Jacob decided learning how to mow the lawn would be a fun activity. And it was more fun than the kids thought it would be.

 We ended the night playing catch with a football and frisbee on our newly mowed grass.

Megan loves this dress. I had to hem it a little since it was the same length as Annie's that was 2 sizes bigger. With the extra fabric I made a headband. Loving Megan's wink here!

 Annie and Ryan got to go to the big kids open gym at Springs Gym and Megan was super jealous, so I made sure to take her to open gym for her age group the next week. She had so much fun and spent most of the time playing in, or jumping into the foam pit.

 She is so close to the age for the older open gym, and it is so much less crowded, that I think we'll just let her go with the big kids next time.

General conference is always great and associated with lots of traditions that the kids look forward to. They were all eager to take notes and play bingo when April conference rolled around.

During the rest hymn Jacob was doing some stretches and PT exercises, so the kids jumped in to join in on the fun.

Between Saturday sessions we kept up our family bike ride on the Julian Wash trail tradition. Grandma came and joined us, too.

 This was Megan's first conference bike ride that she was not riding in the bike trailer. Yay for riding your own bike!

 We decided to invite some neighbors over for a BBQ in April. Our neighbors to the east of us had family coming into town for Easter, so they couldn't come, but they invited us to bring the kids over to swim with their nieces, so we gladly took them up on that.

 The kids had a lot of fun, and the neighbors were super nice and let us know that we are welcome to come use their pool anytime. They just resurfaced it and don't want it to go to waste, so the more it's used, the better.

 Ryan had a pretty big crash one day at school landing right on his upper lip. The bandaid was in just the right spot, so I finally convinced Ryan to let me draw a mustache on it. He wore it through dinner, but as soon as we walked into his karate class he pulled it off, embarrassed, even though it was the best bandaid ever.

For FHE a few weeks ago we went down to the park to play and throw around the ball and frisbee.

 As always, lots of fun was had at the park. It's nice that the sun is out later now, and that it hasn't gotten super hot yet this year, so we can enjoy evening trips to the park.

We took our neighbors up on their offer a few weeks after swimming with their nieces, and plan to swim there plenty this summer. It is so much more convenient to walk next door to swim rather than gathering everything up to drive to the pool, then getting back in the car dripping wet. It is so nice!

 Jacob was sick last week, but was trying to save his time off for summer trips, so stayed late a couple days last week. We didn't have anything going on one of the nights, so we packed up some dinner for him and drove in to see him. After dropping off the food, the kids had to take advantage of the grassy hill before we headed back home. They got some good rolling in for sure, with minimal crashes. :)