Go! St. Louis and Six Flags

The girls ran in the Go St. Louis race on Saturday. They were excited that it was such a nice day.

We got there just as their school was about to walk over for the race.

They had a mile to run. Kiersten was around 8 1/2 minutes, and Kara was closer to about 13 minutes. She said she was cramping up.

One of the teachers that was right along the sideline told me she was impressed with Kiersten. She ran with a 4th grade girl, and kept right up with her, no problem.

Kara was happy with her time. Her last mile at school was in the 15 minute range, so at least she improved. We will have to practice more so she can build up her endurance. She would like to take karate lessons, so maybe that will help as well.

After the race we had to hurry to Ben's football game. He was  a little late, but got to play most of the game. Of course, instead of watching him play, the girls wanted to run around and play tag in this big field.

It has really started to feel like spring. We did our best to play "red rover" with just the 4 of us. When Ben's game was over, the girls wanted to call red rover to him. He came running full speed, and though the girls wanted to hold strong, I let go, and pulled them out of the way. Didn't want to risk any broken arms, dislocated elbows, or anything. It's kind of terrifying to see him running straight for you like that...

After the football game, Kiersten had some girl scout stuff to do, and then we decided to go to Six Flags for opening day. It was not nearly as crowded as I expected it would be.

The girls had a great time. We were only there for a couple of hours, so they didn't get to do that many rides, but we have the entire summer ahead.

Happy, silly girls! They were pretty tired by the time we got home.

The first of April...

I forgot to plan anything fun to trick the kids on April fool's day this year. So I quickly cut out some paper sunglasses to put on their sandwiches, and slipped them in before they left. Then I went to the store for a few things for a fun dinner. I made this "chicken pot pie". It's really just vanilla pudding with chunks of white chocolate, starbursts, and chewy spree. Then I prebaked 2 pie crusts and placed them on top. It turned out pretty tasty, though the chewy spree candy did get a little hard from being in the refrigerator.  

I also made jello in cups, and put straws to trick them into thinking it was their drink. I forgot to get them out for dinner, so I remembered right before bed time. And I didn't have the camera handy.

I knew they would expect meatloaf cupcakes, so I switched it up, and did turkey meatballs. I put a wadded piece of foil in the center of each one, to make it look like a donut. The pink "icing" is, of course, mashed potatoes. They actually were yummy, even though Ben complained that I put too much onion.

Kara and Kiersten were absolutely not fooled this year. I've already decided that next year I really am going to make cupcakes for dinner, and see what they think of that.

Poor Evie kind of was fooled. Look at that happy donut face. After she bit into it, she was upset. She made Ben scrape off the potatoes. She was happy to eat the leftovers for lunch the next day, so I guess it wasn't that bad.

Kiersten tried to act like she was surprised. She clearly was not.

We were devastated to learn that Ben's Grandma passed away on March 18th. She was such a fun person, and we miss her like crazy. We decided to drive out for the funeral, and flew my Mom out to stay with the kids so they wouldn't miss school. We drove 18 1/2 hours straight to get there. Ben was a real trooper. We had taken the kids to the circus Saturday night, and left right after, around 11:30. Ben did all the driving, so I was able to get a little sleep. We got to Smithfield, UT around 5pm. We had just enough time to shower and change before heading over to his aunt's house to spend time with family. The funeral was the next morning, and after lunch, we spent a little more time with family, and then drove about 8 hours to our hotel for the night. We drove the whole next day, and got home at around 9PM. It sure was a whirlwind few days. I wont say it was pleasant being cramped in the car all that time, but it was nice to have time just to hang out, talk, and be silly with Ben. It sure is different when you don't have kids around. Still, I don't want to plan any long car drives any time soon.

The funeral was really difficult, but good to have closure, and mourn. We have so many fun and happy memories with her, so we tried to focus on thinking about those fun times. When we were living in Salt Lake the first few years of our marriage, we used to go over once or twice a week on our days off to hang out with Harold and Shirley. We always had such a fun time, playing games, laughing, and talking with them. She always used to say, "you don't have to come over to spend time with an old lady..." and we would try to convince her that we loved visiting. I don't know how many times we would tell them about an issue, or something that was going on, and Shirley would make us laugh at ourselves, and Harold would give us amazing advice. When Kara was crawling and walking, we had a great time laughing at all of the silly things she did.  I always tell Ben that he won the Grandparent lottery. But I am also so lucky to have had them in my life for these past 12 years. I wish the kids could have more memories of her.

We were really looking forward to visiting her this summer. I feel just awful that we didn't get out there last year. When we moved to Seattle, the hardest part, was knowing we wouldn't be able to see them as much. I feel that I've become a better person for having known her, and in that way, she's still with all of us.

Evie's day at the zoo

Evie was pretty devastated that we didn't go to the zoo during spring break. So I took her on Monday since the other girls have a long day on Mondays.

We are in our annual rush to use up all of our tickets before our membership expires, so she got to do everything she wanted. We rode the train 3 times.

She thought this photo op was the funniest thing ever. I had to take about 8 different pictures of her doing different faces.

She was really happy to go in the big bird cage. The other girls don't really care to go down to it, so I let her run around in there as long as she wanted.

She was really scared of this big bird because it hopped onto the branch as we were walking up, and made a big racket. So I told her to make a funny face at him so he would seem less scary. She made a funny face at me instead.

She ran excitedly up to this peacock, and then stopped, turned, and said, "I won't pull out his feathers. I don't want to get my eyes pecked out". Then she asked "where's the pink one?" I explained that peacocks aren't pink. Then she asked, "then why are they called pink-cocks?"

She said that zebras are her favorite.

I thought she'd like seeing this camel, since it was really close to the edge. But she said it was gross, and wanted to move on.

The chimps were pretty exciting for her.

We made sure to ride the carousel before heading home. She wanted to ride in the carriage, but I made her pick one that would go up and down.

It was a little, rainy, so a pretty perfect day for the zoo. No crowds, and most of the animals out and moving around. I might bring her back this next Monday, to make the most of our membership before it expires. I'm still not sure if I'm going to renew it or not this year. The zoo is free, so the membership gets us free parking, and passes for the special things, but we don't ever use them up, and parking on the street isn't too bad usually.

Spring Break

I have tons of pictures, and am really behind on putting them up. So I think I'm going to do a few posts this week. I think these pictures are from the weekend of Spring Break. It was a nice day to play outside. It kills me, KILLS me that the girls can't ride bikes without training wheels. I thought we would teach them last summer, but it went by so fast. I am determined they will learn by the end of this upcoming summer.

Ben made Kiersten's bike taller, but I still think she just needs a bigger bike.

The girls decided to have a castle drawing contest, of which I was the judge.

Part of the reason I want Kiersten to get a larger bike, is so Evie can have hers, and get rid of this trike.

I only awarded Karalee 80 points, because she said, "I'm not going to finish, just judge it the way it is." I would have given her a higher score, but didn't like that she just gave up and quit like that.

Evie may have had some help from me...

Kiersten won the most points. She had lots of details that I liked.

The girls were so excited to get a package from Papa! He made them an amazing Lincoln log set. They have played with it every day since it arrived. Kiersten said, "we're so lucky to have such a nice Papa!" Evie said she wishes he lived next door so he could play blocks with them every day after school.

It's not often that they all 3 play together without fighting, but they have been doing just that with these blocks.

On Thursday of spring break, Ben had the day off, so we thought we'd go to the zoo. But cars were backed up clear onto the freeway just to get into the parking lot. So we headed over to the Science center instead. We hadn't been in a while. so there were lots of new things to see and do.

Kiersten was particularly interested in this vortex.

You'd never guess they were standing on a shaking, earthquake platform. It was supposed to simulate a 5.5 earthquake.

They loved the wind tunnel.

Evie kept going up to these signs and saying, "according to my computer..." and then stating random animal facts.

Unsurprisingly, Ben generated the most electricity. Kiersten was second, and Kara's number was by far the lowest.

analyzing our fingerprints in the lab. Kiersten was excited to learn that 2 of her prints are a rare pattern. Only 5% of fingerprints have that pattern, so she is proud to be the owner of 2 of them.

Kara and I tried not to be disappointed with our average fingerprints.

Kara built the structure on the right, and mine is on the left. When the "earthquake" button was pressed, hers stood, and mine fell after about 2 seconds. She was very proud. She told me it's because Daddy taught her about engineering.

When you walk over the freeway, there are little windows on the floor so the kids can see the cars zooming by below. They thought that was so cool. It made me a little nervous, though I rationally know it's perfectly safe. Just makes me a little panicky is all.

Evie got so excited when we got over to the planetarium. She kept saying, "we're going to Mars!"

I'm always amazed at how nice and big it is. I still can't believe it's free. We should have gone over there more often when we were living down the street.

It was a pretty fun day! And not too crowded for being spring break either.