It was an unintentional long hiatus from the family blog over the past few months. Our computer was on the fritz. I had been busily preparing for the upcoming church girls camp and sure enough, the computer decided to break down with my files and preparations all saved on it. Luckily, for that project, I had emailed most of it out, so those were recovered, so haha to Satan for trying to stand in the way of church camp and my sanity. Ok, it worked a little bit to get me feeling frustrated.
Every. single. time. I have spoken in church or planned a lesson, it seems like it gets lost or the computer shuts down. Can works of evil be performed via computer shut downs at our house? Yes, indeed. Good thing we have Dave, whose determination knows no bounds. He went to Office Depot multiple times, Best Buy, etc and the computer is up and running. But, then, blogger wasn't working. That wouldn't stop him, he dragged his laptop to a Microsoft store for them to troubleshooting there. I have debated on letting the blog go, but we both decided it is our family history and want to keep it up--so I will cover the last few months in a couple of posts.
Backing up to Spring....
Spring brought us a few new experiences this year--Dance Competitions for Miss Brenna...
Wow. Boy am I not a 'dance mom,' but looks like I will have to be because dancing is this little lady's passion. It just oozes out of her every minute.
We loved watching her perform this year, even her first grade teacher came to her recital. Mrs Christensen is awesome and will be so glad she came because she will be able to say she knew famous Brenna when she was a wee tike. Brenna's current plans are to reside in New York City and attend Julliard. Dreaming big over here...
Brenna lost her two front teeth and had an adorable lispy talk for a few weeks. She was extremely angry with me because when she put a tooth under the pillow she asked me if I was the one that gave her money for her last tooth. I told her yep, I had and she lost it on me. She said I was not to do that again because if I hadn't paid her, the tooth fairy would have. I'm thinking a dollar is a dollar, so hoping things get a little better with the next tooth exchange.
She was toothless as she performed on stage in Beauty and the Beast as a Baby Napkin!
I had told my girls someday I would do a production with them and Beauty and the Beast was the one we did! (Along with half of the southern valley! The cast was huge, but we had such a fun time).
Brenna the baby napkin, I was a candlestick and Katelee
was THE salt shaker. So she was a pretty big deal. Ha! We had lots of support from friends and family. Even Katelee's teacher came-
the amazing Mrs Clayton and others had to sit through nearly 3 hours with this production, that's some serious love! We'd love to perform together again someday, but probably won't be for a little while!
Grant turned 12 in February, so this spring was his first time attending the Priesthood Session of General Conference. To celebrate the big occasion, both grandpas attended it with Dave and Grant at the conference center. We love having family visit. Harrison was getting the family relations straight. He was saying to Dave, "Dad, Dad, your Dad is here."
Of course, all important occasions in this family's life need to be combined with quality food, so they topped off the night at The Roof restaurant.
Grant is busily working on scouting, he nearly has his Star rank. Here he is when he earned his 1st and 2nd class.
He claims an eagle is his goal, but there seems to be a lot of gentle and not so gentle nudging on some of these merit badges and requirements...so good luck to us the year or so!
The kids had a week off of school before Easter and we took a few days to head south to St George and to explore Snow Canyon. It really was like a 2 day trip, but we had some good times and some near death experiences, if you ask Brenna.
Our first hikes were easy, trekking up the petrified sand dunes,
enjoying the red rocks and gorgeous scenery, then it all became traumatic for #3. Katelee and Grant started up this cliff wall to get to the little cave you can see at the top of the pic below...
Brenna started crying because she didn't think she could make it after she went up a little bit alone. We encouraged her and she got nearly there and broke down. Dave helped her up and then had a rescue party trying to get her down. Harrison and I had this view for a good 30 min...
while we went back and forth between apologizing to Brenna for "trying to kill her" and building her up telling her she could do it. She was certain the little hole in the rock would be her permanent residence. Luckily, they got down and we were able to cheer up with a little swim at the pool!
The next day, there was no scarring of the little people, just park play...
and a stop at Cove Fort.
The kids had a great time there. So, overall I'd say the jaunt was a success.
Easter was a highlight of spring, of course.
We love our church services that remind of us new life and continuing life. Love this little/growing up family of ours. Harrison is just coming out of the phase of wanting to say every prayer for the family. His prayers always included the phrases of, 'we go to church tomorrow,' (no matter what day it is) and 'Jesus is holding that sheep again.' He has seen the painting of the Savior holding a lamb-sometimes he says it like he's totally annoyed that Jesus has the sheep, sometimes it is matter of fact, but it's a prayer I feel confident in saying is one of a kind.
We had a whole photo session on the front lawn, and yet most of the pics were goofy, yep, that's how it typically works around here.
The Saturday before Easter, we had attended the 20 seconds of craziness that compromises our city "hunt." It seriously cracks me up every year. I am always amazed we walk away unscathed. We've never had broken bones there, BUT, we had quite the broken bone experience in May.
Dear little Katelee, of course it was her, our most accident prone child, was riding her little motorized scooter outside. She was trying to avoid hitting a car that was hanging over the sidewalk and she clipped the back of it, causing her to fall and fall HARD. I didn't see the crash, but our neighbor brought her home with Katelee hardly even crying. The minute the neighbor left, Katelee started wailing. She was holding her hand and I was attending to her scratches. I thought maybe she had broken her arm, but thought we'd just watch it. When I asked to see her arm, she let go of her wrist to show me this...
off to the hospital we were. She was screaming so hard, I had to turn to her and tell her she had to calm down or I couldn't stay calm. After I said that, she was so brave and good. She hardly let out a sound after that. We got to the ER and they had a long wait, but once they saw her condition, they hurried us back. We were so grateful. I couldn't even look at her arm, it was giving me the queasies!
Wavy bones are no good.
She had fantastic care in the ER. They sedated her and re-set the bones. It's a disturbing sight to have your kid laying there with their eyes open but completely out of it. The doctor just readjusted the bones right back into place and I waited for the drugs to pass through her system. She was hilarious when she woke up. She kept asking me if she was asleep and if she sounded weird. She was asking me if they cut her open, if I could see her bone, to scratch her nose. She started having some gas and we both giggled. She then told me, "Good thing the doctors weren't here-they'd say 'Katelee McArthur what are you doing?' And Miss Okelberry would say 'everybody makes those-it's part of nature." All of this was cracking me up and I could actually laugh because she wasn't in as much pain, her bone was set, she was cleaned up, etc. My favorite post-sedation antic was when the blood pressure cuff would beep as it measured, each beep it made would be followed by Katelee singing out operatically "Ahh.Ahh" It was great.
So, for 3 weeks, Katelee had a full cast
then, 3 weeks later, she was moved to a case just below her elbow. It proved to be the worst cast ever and we ended up duct taping it together by the end. We are so glad the casts are off!! Her road rash healed well too, we will see if any of it scars.
We are consumed by the doings of our kids, which is just what we want to be doing at this time of our lives, but we still have a few minutes to focus on us. We celebrated the big 15 year anniversary in May!! We went to a playoff game for the Jazz (Dave's choice).
Then, another night, we had a romantic delicious dinner and went to Cinderella (my choice).
It's fun to have different likes/interests but great to know that we will always be each other's choice!
