April in a Big Nutshell

 April 1st - announced on Instagram that we are expecting our sixth baby!

Went to Walmart to see the Wienermobile with these three.  They all thought it was cool!

Our first Sunday in our new church building. We share a common parking lot with the temple.  We are so blessed to be this close to a temple and we get to go see it every Sunday.  While the weather is cool, Kevin took the time to go every Sunday with the kids for a walk around the temple, just like he used to do in Utah.

 Annual Easter Hunt with Merrill cousins - Grandma Lorraine hides the eggs and we all show up and have fun.  Allie didn't find the big ticket eggs, and so, hence the look on her face!

Mason is happy to be running errands everywhere with me.  I love this boy and his calm personality!

We colored eggs with our Merrill cousins.  The big kids didn't care so much for coloring them anymore but the youngan's loved it!

Kevin took the three older kids to the Easter pageant.  It was a great experience and they all loved it!

 Kids woke up to their Easter baskets - simple and fun!

Easter Sunday tradition - after church they all pose for my annual Easter photos.  

I turned 36.  Yikes.  Kevin went above and beyond and got a huge cake for my birthday, haha.   

Collin got third place in the school spelling bee - the word "panache" got him out.  He did great and had great composure up there!

For family home evening one week, we went to get Dole Whip soft serve at Menchie's.  Tastes just like Disneyland!

Common occurence in our backyard - these two are always in the dirt, digging and getting dirt baths.  They love it so!  Collin digs and makes tracks for his RC car and these boys go and ruin them.  Dirt and Boys = Fun.  All the kids have asked me if we could please have a big patch of dirt for them to play in when we build our new house.  Haha! Not a problem!

Mason's hair in the mornings, scratch that, all day.  He loves to get in laundry baskets, bins and boxes.  So funny!

Maddie on one of the days she came to preschool.  Since school doesn't start til 12 noon for her, she comes to preschool beforehand.  She says she loves our school and would like to come here forever.  I love her!

 Silly kids hiding !

 Love his winky face in this one!

Cheer season ended with a bang. Allie's team won 1st place at CAA state championships.  This was their recognition night at the school.

Watched the bloody moon (eclipse) one night.  It really did turn into "blood" - super cool capturing from my camera, and wished I had a 400x zoom lens!

 April is perfect weather to play outside!

Mason loves to wear shoes in the house, and knows where the food is.  Here I caught him with a big bag of chips he had gotten from the pantry.

And bigger photos of Easter Sunday:

Allie also got her Young Women Medallion for completing Personal Progress!  Kudos to her for working super hard on all her value projects.  She wanted to get her award before she got too busy in high school.  Go Allie!  We are so proud of her and her great focus.  

My only "pregnant" picture this time around!  

Mason loves my sunglasses and always tries to put them on or on his head.  

Caught taking pots and pans out again!  He loves to just play with them and tries to fit the lids on.  

So that in a big nutshell of pictures was our April!  Life is going at warp speed, and I am glad to have taken a few pics to document our busy life.

Maddie's graduation

This year went super fast!!  Maddie graduated from kindergarten on May 15th!  She always tells me she wishes she was still in preschool so she could stay home with me, or that she wishes I was her teacher at school so I can be with her all day.  I love this sweet age!  Maddie is not just a sweet little helper at home but I hear, also at school.  She is so responsible, and being the middle child, sadly, has to learn how to do things for herself without my help most of the time.  I will always remember how she would come home and go straight to the dining table, get her stuff out, run upstairs and change into play clothes, come back, get a drink or snack, and go right to work on her homework, day in and day out.  She would do it all by herself with no prompting from me (since she can read very well!).  When she was done, she would go to our big bookshelf in the theatre room and pick a book to read.  She would come back to the kitchen, set the timer on the microwave for 15 minutes and read her book.  When it beeped, she would come find me and announce, "I'm done with my homework, Mom!" She is so independent, one of the things that I love about her.  She would usually help me make dinner and clean up (she is the best vacuum helper there is) and loves to do dishes too.  She always says she is just practicing so she can be an even better mom than me!  I love it, I said that she would definitely be a much much better mom since she is practicing so young!  Of course she kept straight A's all year and would tell me from time to time that she really needs to be in first grade since kindergarten is so easy (not so fast, Moo!)!

She grew a few inches and the same dress was above her knees before school got out.

Maddie on the last day of school:

Maddie dressed herself for her graduation - she picked out her dress, shoes, hair clip, and sweater to wear.  She ended up not wearing the sweater since it was a little warmer than she thought!

Maddie loved having Ms Jenny Jones this year!  She looked forward to seeing her teacher every day.

Standing outside her class room

Some of Maddie's kinder friends from our ward except for the 2nd and 3rd kids from the left - Jacob, Jackson, and Halle (who also all went to preschool at my house)

Maddie kept asking if her Grandma was coming to watch her graduation!

It reads: My favorite memory from kindergarten was Fun Friday because I got to play and get stuff.

Getting her diploma from Mr. Brown

We don't usually have everyone altogether to events these days but everyone wanted to come to watch Maddie graduate!  We love this girl!!!  Can't believe she is old enough to be in first grade!

Preschool graduation - Year 1 for Zaney!

Yep, May is a busy month and it's always scrambled with all kinds of end-of-year stuff to plan and go to!  Zane was super excited to get to do preschool graduation - I included the first years to this year's program.  It went well and Zane participated in it - was so cute!  He learned so much this year - recognizes most of his letters and sounds and loves the letter Z!  He would always say "hey that's z for zane" every time he sees it.  He likes to name things and tell you things that start with whatever letter he sees.  He loves being the name tag helper at school - surprisingly he also recognizes the names of all his preschool friends - he would take one look at the name tag and deliver it to the right child sitting at the line!  So even though I haven't really paid too much attention to him at preschool (I have 10 other kids to teach) - he has picked up a lot this year.

Zane and his class (he is sitting next to his "best friend Kate") - he loves Kate because she took on being his helper and mentor/teacher at school.

Grandma came to watch too!  

Zane's official first day of school and end of year photos (I take one of all the preschoolers to see how much they've grown and give them a portrait for their graduation gift from me):

Nope, he wouldn't smile!  and darn, his hair wasn't even done, but this is how he looked on the first day of school.

And yep, yet again, not dressed for pictures at the end of the year, but this ended up being the picture I printed since it captured his personality right down to the not so clean shirt.

2014 CAA Cheer State Champions!

Allie has been super busy with cheer this season, practicing daily with her team sometimes til 830 pm at night.  But it all paid off and the Benjamin Franklin High School JV cheer team took first place at the 2014 CAA cheer State championships. The next week after they had their cheer banquet and were recognized by the school for their hard work.

So happy to learn they took first place!

Allie's base team and flyer

Most of the competition squad members

April Already!

Well, my days are running altogether, and need to get this blog updated!  I have so many photos to post and events to tell about, but never have the time to sit down at my desktop computer anymore to post.  I Instagram mostly nowadays, and sometime I will go back and get the longer stories posted on this blog. My only beef with Instagram is that there is no way to see what I shared directly with close family and friends. 

Let me start with the most recent I guess...

"Now we can start planting trees! How funny we ended up with this title company? #nopunintended"

We closed on our new lot yesterday!  End of 2012, I started feeling (and I think Kevin too) that we needed change.  Earlier in 2012 we had that job offer and an opportunity to move to CA (and possibly HI and Guam), but turned it down.  Although we felt like our decision was right at the time, I didn't really know just how right it was 'til now.  I always second guessed myself after that big decision, especially when I started feeling like we needed a change of some sort. Well, change did come, not just in the way I expected. I got called to be Primary President only weeks after we decided to stay here and found out we were pregnant with our 5th child the same week!

After Mason was born in December, somehow we found ourselves starting to look at houses for resale or lots around us.  Prices were still great and fairly low, but either the houses needed work, or the lots were just a little further than we wanted.  In April 2013, our ward split and sadly we lost Pop and Grandma from our ward.  Sad, sad day!  That was when I first mentioned to a friend that we were looking for land, and if she heard of anything to let me know.  I didn't think of it much again.

Since we have not finished our "pool area" yet, I thought maybe we should just put in a pool and stay in our current home for a long time, maybe even til our kids were grown, and put in lots of storage, add a garage, etc.  Our house works for us, although I would want a bigger, more open family gathering space for when the kids were older and all of our family was around.  Adding up the cost of all the improvements was hefty, and made us hesitant to spend the money to improve a house that ultimately didn't have the right floor plan and bones to improve upon, and in the end we will want to move anyway.  So back to the search.

Then one random Sunday after I said "we are not moving or buying land except if it was in our ward boundaries so that the kids wouldn't have to move schools, and keep the same group of friends" (tall order!) - we got an offer to buy a beautiful piece of property within our ward boundaries and within walking distance to the temple (just directly west of it!).  I was floored.  It was so random and out of the blue, that even Kevin didn't believe me at first.  He said I must be joking.  But it was true.  We had a few days to think about whether we were interested or not.  We were interested, but the price of the lot was more than we had planned to pay, but because of the awesome location and awesome neighbors and families who lived on the street, we felt good about it.

Well, the timing of the offer to buy the lot was uncanny!  We had also been thinking about what to do with our house in Utah, with no family lined up to rent it the next summer, and us not wanting to be out-of-state landlords.  In the end we decided it was best to put the rental up for sale, and participate in a 1031 exchange as an investment strategy.  As chance would have it, the sellers had some title-recording issues and were not ready to sell us the lot, which enabled us to do a 1031, and identify the lot as the exchange property.  After listing the Utah house on Zillow, putting up a For Sale By Owner sign, and creating a for sale blog, our rental house had a cash offer within TWO weeks!  The buyers were also anxious to close and long story short, we closed that sale in January. Shortly after that, our seller friends got the land title record issues fixed, and received their permits to build their new home on the south lot.  At that point both sides were ready to sign official papers for the land.  Appraisal came in lower than we hoped (eek) but we still felt good about the purchase, and here we are a few weeks later!

We will keep the land as investment for a time - and are so happy that we have that one acre patch of land in the most ideal spot to build a home (or profit on the investment!).

The Other BIG Thing

Well, the custom home site purchase was one BIG thing, the next photo explains the other BIG thing:

Most were confused about the above photo, so here's a more straightforward one:

That's better!!

Yep...surprise of all surprises!  We found out in late January that we were expecting our 6th child!  I had no idea, except for the fact that I had some head cold that wouldn't go away for a LONG time, and sudden aversions to food and nausea.  Haha.  I suspected when the nausea came that I was pregnant.  And of course I was.  I went in to see Dr. Beck on February 13th and he confirmed that there was indeed a  little babe growing in my tummy!  We told the kids and grandparents on Valentine's Day, and the rest of our family through private messaging on Instagram (see caboose photo with my due date) - with the caption, "Is it Thomas or Emily?"  Oh I have never had so much fun with announcing the coming of a new baby!

And this time, I feel good about saying this is our caboose.  That was confirmed when I went in for my second ultrasound - we are having a BABY GIRL!!!  We are now 3 for 3, like the Brady Bunch, so why mess with it, right?  It's the perfect ratio of boys to girls, and everyone is so excited we get to add another girl to the mix of crazy around here.

So fun! I am finally over my sick days which were not as bad as my other two girl pregnancies, but was certainly worse than my boy pregnancies. I guess I am just too busy to stay sick, and my body just has to do what it has to do to keep up with the normal (but yes, super busy and crazy) family routine! I love it though and cannot believe our kids are growing up (and we are getting older!).  It is going too fast, and a part of me is sad that the little kid and baby days will be over before I know it.

So there you have it ... a couple MAJOR life events, and more to blog later!

Conference Weekend

Conference weekend this year seemed like it just went so fast! And just like all "holidays" around here, I guess my kids have some expectations of what usually happens on this weekend.  The biggest deal I found was breakfast.  It's rare that I make everyone big breakfasts, and I was hoping no one would notice, but the day before I heard them talking about what breakfast was going to be and wondering what I would make.  No cereal or just pancakes or toast I see.  I was of course super busy the day before (a photo shoot in the p.m. for one thing) so I made a quick late night trip to Walmart to get everything we needed.  Maddie was super excited that she took it upon herself to make fruit kabobs all by herself without me asking, and she did a pretty good job of making one for every member of the family.  She sure has some homemaking skills!

 Maddie even made signs for the food we made: bacon, fruit kabobs, caramel syrup, and apple french toast.  She is so helpful and fun!

 Sunday morning they were all starving so by the time I decided to take pictures of a plated breakfast, all of them had started eating!  We had sausage gravy over biscuits, with strawberries on the side.  Yum.

I also ordered a Someburros platter for us to munch on during lunch and whenever we felt like eating, and it was a hit and no mess for me to clean up. It was nice to have that to eat the whole day Saturday - definitely doing it again in October, since it really saved me some sanity and kitchen clean up, which made for a nice break for me.  I also printed the usual activity books for the kids, and decided to just have a 12 pack of mini treats (Kit Kats and Hershey Bars and Chocolate eggs) for each conference session.  I gave out one mini treat at the half way point, and then again right before it was over.  As long as they stayed in the room they got one - it was effective and they loved it!  We definitely enjoyed a physical AND spiritual feast this weekend!