Yay Spring!

Spring has exploded, and it's wondrous. We've been enjoying it A LOT for the last couple of weeks. Everything is green and lovely.

Spring Break: We had cousins come visit from Connecticut and Mexico. It's the most fun when we get to see our far away family. The kids can't get enough of each other. 

Nils and I had one day together during spring break, and I made him work out with me. He handled it well.

Nils and the girls texted me this picture while I was at work, to let me know how much they were missing me. It made me feel very loved, and I got to show people my attractive family.

Through a series of sudden, unexpected events, Nils and I got to go to a Jazz game for free and experience it from a suite. Sadly, the game was a boring, blowout win, and we felt very out of place sitting with the upper echelon folk. But, we got free nachos and stuff. We felt like we had to be reverent.

Primary Easter egg hunt. We only have one kid in primary now. Super weird. 

Had a fun night out with these gals. They each got new sneakers, and we all enjoyed some yumminess at In-N-Out. It's nice that they still like to be with us.

Anders got a flat tire on his way home from work. Oh yeah, Anders got a job! He works at a fun center nearby. Anyway, as Nils was teaching him to change his tire, Anders was schooling Nils on how he (Anders) doesn't need to know these things, because if he ever gets a flat tire, he can just YouTube how to fix it. Ironically, he couldn't YouTube it, because A) He doesn't have YouTube on his phone, and B) His phone battery was dead. Teenagers are smart. But, watching Nils that night made me wuv him even more, AS IF THAT'S POSSIBLE.

Easter hunt at Grandma's. These pictures crack me up. Oh man, Aani's face. Our kids sure know how to be soooo good lookin'.

Our anniversary was last week. We both worked. We took the kids to dinner, and to see Shazam!, and then we came home and fell asleep at 10:00. The kids were asking why we were going out to dinner, and Nils told them it was our anniversary, so they wrote these notes to us while we weren't looking. Stinkers.

We went up to City Creek to go to the Cheesecake Factory a few days later, and that was nice. Aaahhh, spring. 💖😍

Anders had a band concert, and let us know he didn't care if we went or not. How nice. I went ahead and went anyway. In this picture, he's resting his head on his hand to show his enthusiasm for band. I won't let him quit.

Aani's class performed 2 Shakespeare plays, back to back, as per tradition of this class. While we enjoy seeing our children perform, we really mostly don't care about any of the other children, and our kids have always had very minor roles in these productions. I'm good for about 30 minutes of any children's theatrical performance, so this was a loooooooooong 2 1/2 hours. Like, listen to an audio book long. Thank you, audio book.

But she's cute, and I made sure to pay attention to the one line she had at the very beginning of the play.

Explosion of Spring. Our grass has greened up like crazy, things are blooming, and we're finally starting to see the fruits of our 4 years of hard labor in the yard. It's coming together! 😭So much blood, sweat and tears.

Working on a deck for the terrace. It's going to have a fire pit and be the bomb.com. Can't wait.

I was in our old neighborhood today, dropping off a friend, so I drove by our old house to see the red tulips I planted all those years ago. They used to make me so happy. I can't drive by the old house without wanting to spray for weeds, trim things and mow the grass, so I probably shouldn't do that anymore.

My life has eased up a lot since Anders got his license. I used to spend so much time carting him around. He's enjoying the independence. So far, he's only gotten one flat tire, and locked his keys in his car once. We decided to end piano lessons for him, after a frustrating many months with his teacher being flaky.

The girls are all doing well. I don't want to jinx anything by writing it down, but they all get along and love each other. Sometimes we watch them and scratch our heads, wondering if it's too good to be true. They all have friends, but they also like spending time with each other. Addie and Aani are really into drawing and fancy markers right now, and Ava is all about the glue gun. She goes nuts with that glue gun, and the things she makes out of cardboard, paper, pom poms, etc. are pretty impressive.

That's all, folks.

Maaaaarch

Food: 

Nils was gone all day one Sunday (as with many Sundays), so I made him this food and sent him a picture to try and lure him home. 

Gluten free bagels from Trader Joe's are quite good! It's been so long since I've had anything like it. It almost scares me how "normal" they are. 

Same with Chick-fil-A GF buns. They're soft and not even dry. Almost scary. I tried one for the first time 2 days ago. What is this witchcraft? 

St. Patty's Day dinner: GF green pancakes and breakfast works. 

In regards to this gluten free life I'm living, here's an update: I've basically stopped cooking with gluten all together. I still buy packaged pastas, crackers, bread, etc., that everyone else is welcome to eat, but when I cook a meal that I am also going to eat, it's gluten free. No one complains about it, and I've gotten a pretty good handle on what GF products are garbage in my mouth, and which ones are totally fine/good.

I had a pretty gnarly flare up from about September-January, and it was very perplexing and frustrating, because I never cheat. Ever. It wasn't as bad as before when I didn't know what caused my issues, but it was pretty bad. My arms and back were covered in this stupid, blistery, bleeding, unbearably itchy rash. I visited the dermatologist (a new one I found about a year ago), and he put me on some medicine that kinda sorta helped. He's very nice and willing to try lots of new medicines, but I think I figured it out on my own- IODINE. I was taking a multivitamin with iodine, and that's when the flare started. I stopped taking the vitamin, and I'm 99% cleared up. This condition/disease/syndrome/whatever is totally perplexing and weird, and I'm learning that it's something that I'll probably always have to deal with in one way or another. Gluten is the catalyst, but many other things can trigger it. It's not awesome, and I feel like a nut job when I think about my list of forbidden foods. Oh well. No one should have to feed me.

Wedding:

My nephew Stockton married Cassie. They're fun and cute. 

Kevin had Nils take his spot in the line for a few minutes. What a joker.

The fam!

Events:

Another Jazz game. It turned out to be the best game of the season. Super exciting, and ended in a win. I love that Nils is converting a little.

Nils got Real Salt Lake tickets from his boss. We're not soccer people- we know almost nothing about the game, so it was a little boring, and cold, and we had to park far away, and... we probably won't be going again. Also, lots of floppers in soccer. 

Addie and BFF Ella spent last Saturday at Teen Author Bootcamp. It was 13 hours of nerdy heaven for them. These two are pretty cute and funny together.

Anders got his license. He's in a suit because he got it the same day as the wedding, and we managed to sneak the DMV in between the luncheon and reception. He's been driving himself all over the place. It's so weird/wonderful/scary. I even had him go pick up Aani from violin lessons the other day! What is this strange new world I'm living in? 

Our fan of 18.5 years bit the dust a few months ago, and we just threw it away the other day. It's very sad. We've slept with this fan on every night for our entire marriage, and as a result, everyone in our house is a white noise addict. We all have trouble sleeping in silence. Anyway, we've had a hard time finding a comparable replacement. WHY DID YOU HAVE TO DIE, FANNY?

Anders had a piano recital. He "won" the recital?? He got a 1st place trophy. It's worth mentioning that his competition was a bunch of small children, so yeah. Anyway, Anders has a talent for the piano, and enjoys playing. He has some cousins and aunt and uncle who are also pretty amazing, so it seems that it runs in the family.

Randoms: 

Ava made a card for her teacher for teacher appreciation week: 

She wrote us this weird note during stake conference. I've had that stationery for 19 years. I found it a little while ago and gave it to her, so obviously she must use it.

Just being precious at stake conference.

Our fridge hasn't been cold for a few weeks. It's kind of a frog in the pot situation- you don't realize you're eating warm yogurt until you put your yogurt in the fridge at work, and when you take it out a couple hours later, you realize you haven't had cold yogurt in a month. Anyway, it's a wonder we aren't all dead of salmonella. NilsyNils got out the blow dryer and he done fixed it.

Aani and Ava cleaned the shelves in exchange for ice cream- this is probably the nicest it's ever looked in there, aside from when it was purchased. 

 

We're happy to see April roll in. Nils' team at work has been working crazy long hours, including the last two Saturdays, and it's been pretty lousy. They're launching tomorrow, so hopefully we can go back to normal life. As Ava said in her note to us, All is well, all is well.

February blur

Man alive, we have been so terrible at picture taking. Our time is spent doing the routine and mundane, so we don't think to document. I guess we need to start taking more pictures of our food or something. Suuuuuper exciting.

What happened this month? I don't know. I don't remember because I didn't take any pictures. Is this life now? Just running around like headless chickens and not remembering what we did the day before? I'm making a goal and mental note to take more pictures of our boring lives.

This week Anders has been doing road for drivers ed. He has one more day, then needs to take the written exam, and do some session online. This process has been incredibly slow, mostly because of him. So excited for him to drive himself places, because then I won't be running around nearly as much. I currently drive him to piano lessons 10 minutes away, a meeting 20 minutes away, to the bus stop or school many mornings, mutual, pick him up from after school events, to and from friends' houses, etc. etc. Part of the problem of living where we do is that nothing is close, so we're looking at a 20 minute drive to most places. Add to all of this: Ava's tumbling, Aani's violin, and Addie's viola lessons, and any other trips that need to be taken. We're dying over here.

Work is going well for both of us, though. We both started these new jobs about the same time, and now we're both feeling much more comfortable. I've stopped feeling like the village idiot most of the time, and now only feel like that when I do something really stupid. Even when I do stupid things, though, they're still nice to me. Go figure.

We all got these pull overs at the clinic, and mine had a wonky Y. I traded it for a normal one, because sometimes I just feel like that Y. ;)

Aani is on this flag at the elementary school. We went to parent teacher conferences and saw it. She never even told us she was on a flag! PS, I'm over parent-teacher conferences. Can we just call a truce and not do them anymore? I love teachers, and have a hunch they would maybe like not having to stay at the school for 15 hours on those days. I dunno.

Ava's in the school choir. They had a festival with every school choir in Saratoga. They did great. And, I was not mentally prepared to listen to every school choir in Saratoga. My, there are so many! But, it was pretty fun and cute.

Super Bowl party. Boring game, hence me sitting at the table the whole time.

We went to Wicked. That was fun! We had box seats that were a little less than ideal view-wise, but it was still enjoyable. Next time we'll try for seats with a more direct view. Box seats were the only ones left by the time we found out Wicked was in SLC. 

Hey look, it's Addie reading in a restaurant. In her gray hoodie.

Nils is 3D printing a storm trooper costume, and it's kind of like another job for him. We basically have a 3D printing factory downstairs. It's sort of ridiculous. Anyway, he's going to have it bullet proofed and then shoot it. Coming to the YouTubes soon.

All is well, all is well. 

January is Awesome

I've heard many people lately talking about how much they hate January, and it's starting to hurt my feelings. Sure, January is cold. Sure, it's gray and dreary, and everyone's cars are dirty. But let's look at the positives and stop being such Negative Nancys.

1- I was born in January.
2- Anders was born in January.
3- Addie was born in January.
4- For most people who don't have half of their family's birthdays in January, the money hemorrhage of holiday spending stops.
5- Lots of people exercise in January.
6- Workout clothes and equipment are on sale.
7- Costco has furniture for sale in January.

and probably the best thing about January?
8- The days start getting noticeably longer.

So, let's give a little love to the month of my birth, okay?

Anders turned 16! His birthday fell on Fast Sunday, which, ya know, is kind of unfortunate. He had a friend party on Saturday night, and they played basketball at the church, then came home and ate and watched the newest Mission Impossible. We had our families over for dinner on Sunday for his birthday, and it was a good time. Anders even said his birthday was "lit", which by definition means good/great/fantastic/I loved it, thank you so much, mom and dad, for being the best parents ever.

 Kneaders b-day breakfast

Party with the fam

Nana and GrandPar took Nils and Anders to a Jazz game. Anders is a Jazz fanatic. They had a great time.

Anders went on his first date. It was awkward, and we don't speak of it, but we were proud of him for giving it a shot!

Addie turned 14! I gave her that gray hoodie she's wearing, and she has worn it literally every day since. I don't even know what to think about that. Like, do I say something? She's wearing clean shirts underneath. I made her take it off over the weekend so I could wash it, and she gave me the stink eye. 

ANYway, she had a party with friends. They sat around a gabbed, as girls do, watched a movie, and had a grand old time. We love Addie and her easy going nature. She's very into drawing as of late, as well as reading. She was called as Mia Maid president, and will do a great job.

She continues to read in restaurants, as seen here, when we went out for our birthday dinner with G'ma. Note the hoodie.

Then it was MY birthday! Nils took me up to Sundance, and it was wonderful. We ate dinner at the Foundry Grill, and they sat us right next to the fireplace. It was so cozy, and we loved it. We spent the night in a teeny tiny room, but it was also cozy. We hit the slopes the next morning, and had a grand old time. Thank you to my mama, for staying the night with the kiddos, and getting them off to school.

We're old, and skiing is tiring, and we're not great at it, but we love it. We may just get season passes/rentals sometime, because it's much, much more cost effective, and when you're tired you can just stop and not feel bad about how much money you're wasting.

Ski boots make you walk funny, and this guy makes me laugh all the time. 

In other news: 

Aani had her Greek Walkthrough- kinda like a wax museum for Greek gods/goddesses. Here she is as the mother of all the gods with her baby rock.

Also, Nils texted me these pictures the other day of Aani and Ava stuffing crackers into their mouths. ???

Pretty Timp.

Nils spent 2 hours shearing Pip, so she looks like a rat now and shivers all the time. She continues to be a bad dog, and we just really think we need to be rewarded somehow for putting up with her.

See how much fun January is? It's a party around here for sure!