School, neighborhood fun, family olympics, and Easter

Come follow me continues. It has been a great blessing this year as the kids have not had primary since last March. It was great to have gospel learning at home already happening so the kids still have been learning gospel principles and hopefully growing in their testimonies. Next Sunday we finally get to return to 2 hour church and the kid get to go back to primary for the first time in over a year. Hallelujah! 

Here's Megan modeling the armor of God:

We continue riding bikes to school most days. With the addition of some neighbors we easily have 10 people every day, sometimes more than 15 people in a row on the way to school before the middle schoolers split off. It always reminds me of a mama duck and all her little ducklings following behind. 

After Spring Break schools returned to more normal operation, still using masks, but able to group desks together again, the elementary kids attending 5 days a week and Rachel going 4 days instead of the 2 days a week she was doing. As more and more people get vaccinated for COVID, life is starting to return to normal a little at a time. It is refreshing. Here's Annie completing a circuit at school--the first one in her class to figure out how to make it work: 

Megan is loving gymnastics and is happy to put this bar up to practice. It is rather in the way, and as she grows she will soon be too big for it, so we're planning to get an outdoor climbing set that has a bar she can practice on instead of this indoor bar. 

Our neighbors had a bake sale last weekend. The kids were happy to see the prices were so low ($0.50 per item) and took advantage of the sale. Ryan was so kind he bought Megan a brownie so she didn't have to use her money. He's a great brother.

He was very excited to hear that his basketball season that was canceled last year is resuming next week. He pulled out his uniform and got some practice in. I think watching the U of A women play in the Elite Eight and the Final Four this past week has increased his enthusiasm for basketball, too. 

B organized a Knight-Campbell Olympics last week. It was good to get everyone moving. Megan won the bum war on the trampoline, beating out all the girls first, then beating the winner of the boy's heat in the final matchup. 

Everyone cheered each other on pretty well for the most part. 

When Ryan went on to win "The Fastest Hands in the West" (rock, paper, scizzors tag), the bike race, and the foot race people started to get a little miffed that he was dominating, but all in all it was a fun day and Ryan got to show off his athletic prowess. 

I've been able to volunteer once or twice a week at Casa Alitas now and it is so nice to feel like I'm doing something that is helpful and productive. Every time I go in to volunteer as a floater I end up being a driver, taking guests to the airport or greyhound to get them on their way to their families. 

I'm working on my Spanish again, and studying Portuguese since there are a lot of people coming through from Brazil lately. I think the Portuguese is messing with my Spanish and we all just end up confused. 

Megan has had two loose teeth for a while. Last week one finally felt loose enough to come out. Megan tried to pull it, then tried to get me to pull it, but it was too small for me to get a grip, so Ryan tried. I always love to see when they serve each other and try to help out.

He couldn't get it out either, though. We were at grandma's and grandpa's a little later and I went to show them how loose it was, and managed to catch it in just the right way so I pulled it out right there.Yay! Now she just has one more loose tooth to take care of for now.

The kids were super excited for April Fools Day. I told Megan she should go get her tooth, run into someone, then show them her tooth and pretend like they had just made it fall out. Unfortunately that joke didn't work out. But she was a quite a prankster, moving Annie's underwear to Ryan's drawer, and his to her drawer. She switched Jacob's and my shoes. And I helped her print out a bunch of Paw Patrol pictures to tape on the other kids helmets and on Rachel's computer so when she opened it at school, everyone would see her Paw Patrol picture. It was pretty funny. The one joke I played on the kids was freezing some cereal and giving it to them for breakfast. I'm usually not a big fan of April Fools, but the kids had fun with it this year.

I love having readers. Megan has gotten more into reading on her own lately so this is not uncommon:

Grass! The last two years I've been meaning to redo our grass, but never get around to it, then it's too hot. This year I made the calls and had someone come put some sod in for us. In a couple of weeks it will be beautiful!

Since Sammy's birthday fell so close to Easter this year he wanted to decorate eggs for his birthday party. 

After the egg dying we had cake, then let the kids loose in the pool Grandma and Grandpa just filled last week, just in time for his birthday. Water season has arrived! 

This morning was Easter. I didn't get a good picture of the kids and their baskets, but they had a fun morning. It started with our tradition of going out onto the balcony at 6am and watching the He is Risen Bible Video while the sun rose. Rachel is ready for that tradition to come to an end as she is well into her teenage sleeping in mode. 

They had fun checking out the stuff in their baskets and doing the Easter egg hunt. Then to top it all off we get to enjoy General Conference today! President Nelson's talk was especially wonderful this morning.