Mai '22- I'm Done With Elementary School!

Let's see what's been happening in the last month, shall we?

Anders was ordained an Elder. He's being quiet about all of this, but he's decided to serve a mission and will turn in his papers in the next couple of weeks. Obviously we're very happy about all of this, but it's important to know that this is 100% his choice that he's had to make in his own time. We've worked hard to be supportive of whatever he decided. He's got a great job and makes crazy good money so it's a big sacrifice on his part, but he feels like it's what he's supposed to do. After a busy day of people over all day, this was the picture that the boys got late at night to commemorate the day. 

Babies! These are our great nieces Magnolia and Indie. They came for the ordination to help make everything cuter. :) 

We tore up the side of the yard. It seems like we've redone our yard 4 times... because we have. In an effort to not move, we're converting the garage into a shop so Nils has the room he needs. We're tearing up the yard to pour concrete all the way back and will put a carport and shed for cars and storage. Hopefully this will provide the room we need for a few more years. We shall see. 

Nils, Aani and Addie drove up to the top of Lake Mountain last Sunday. I was having meetings, booooo.

Sixth grade graduation for Ava! I'm done with elementary school!! 

Addie and I took a delightful trip to Home Depot to get garden stuff. Such great bonding times. 

Aani got an award at school for having a 4.0 for the whole school year. What a kid! Here is a series of photos and photo bombers. Also, why does she look like a grown up? 

Addie had her final orchestra concert! I slipped in right as her class played, and then left as soon as they were done. She drove separately, and I was expecting her to get home awhile after me. Welp, I pulled into the driveway, and she pulled up to our house at the same time. I asked her how she got home so fast and she said, "I got done, put my viola in its case, walked out to my car and drove home." I said, "Ain't nobody got time for chit chat," and she said, "darn right." So glad we are on the same wavelength- I wanted to get out of there as soon as I could to avoid awkward chit chat with orchestra parents. :) 

Anyhoo- Addie will be attending MTECH next year for her senior year, and can't take orchestra as a result. 

Speaking of Addie's car- this thing is kind of lame. She got a flat tire on the way to school one morning, and it doesn't have a spare tire. We had to get it towed to the tire shop, where they told us it would be $300 for a spare donut. What in the actual heck? The car won't have a spare donut ever. Good thing we have AAA.

For church on Mother's Day, I wanted to have all of the women and young women together to have snacks and visit. We had a chocolate fountain buffet, and the EQ covered primary. It was awesome! I asked the bishop to talk for a couple of minutes at the end about how wonderful women are, and he did. I'm thankful that he goes along with my crazy ideas and basically lets me do what I want. Also so thankful for a presidency that supports my crazy ideas and comes up with even crazier ones sometimes. I love them.

Aani has these really awesome interpretive dance moves that she busts out at random. Most of the time they're not even to music.

Here they made an appearance at Nana's house with Uncle York and Anders to enjoy. 

Here they are while she was sitting in a box. Did I mention she's a 4.0 student? 4.0 in interpretive dancing, that is. 

Look at us, so loving. The lady in back of us took this picture and captioned it, "Loving family." What she didn't know is that we were all freezing because they keep the church so cold, so we were combining body heat. But we do love each other. 

We went to the Melting Pot with the Marriotts and Griffins. It was an hours long experience of lots of good food. They have a wonderful GF selection, and we all rolled out 4 hours later.

They're baaaaaaaaaack!! I had a stare-off with this one- and then I noticed the black one in the background who looks pretty dumb. Sheep are weird. 

There was a double rainbow right outside our window on Sunday! We thought we could see the end of it-the kids went to find the pot of gold, and when they came back empty handed, Anders said, "It's a scam to make you get your steps in."

For summer:

Addie is lifeguarding at the outdoor pool, doing her courier service to the post office, and babysitting.

Aani and Ava are going to do a summer kids camp for kids in the neighborhood for 5 weeks of the summer. I really need them to not sit around all the time, and they will earn some money. So far, we have kids signed up for 3 weeks! We'll have crafts, science experiments, water parties, yahoo! 

Anders will continue working and becoming a millionaire until it's time for him to head somewhere else for 2 years. Crazy. 

Nils and the girls are going to Youth Camp in June- I'll have the house to myself for 3 days! Well, Anders will be here but he mostly stays in his room. Guess I can't run around naked like I had planned. :(

We have a trip to Alaska planned for July with the kids, and a quick work trip to Dallas for Nils and me. 

Should be some good, good times. Wish us luck. 

22 in Cabo: Bring on the Weird!!

This year is our "golden" anniversary! Not 50 years golden, but 22 on the 22nd golden! To celebrate, Nils and I went to Los Cabos for a few days, and partied like there was no tomorrow with our virgin margaritas and sunscreen.

Here are some highlights:

• We spent an entire day in our room binge watching a show. We have never done that before, so we figured we would indulge while we could. It was super fun!

• Spent a lot of time sitting by the pool, being served non-alcoholic beverages whilst reading, napping, people watching, etc. 

• Went on an Eat Like a Local Food Tour! We had street corn, mole, tacos el pastor, octopus tacos, clams in alfredo sauce, and stuffed churros. Everything was DELISH, except the seafood, which is just not our scene- but we did eat it to be adventurous. Nils had the octopus tacos- he ate a lot of it, but when a piece of the octopus fell out of the taco and he saw the tentacles, it proved to be too much. 🤢 

• A sunset cruise with about 40 other people who were partying like crazy. It was fun to watch all of those people having such a great time, while we drank our virgin margaritas. We also saw 2 whales! And lots of twerking! 

• Went snorkeling and saw lots of colorful fish, sea urchins and coral reefs. I also got stung by a jellyfish, which was unpleasant. 

Guess who didn't get sunburned?? Guess who was also the coolest kid on the boat??

Jellyfish sting: Unpleasant

• Tried indoor skydiving- Nils' phone flew out of his pocket like a cannonball, and landed on the street below, which shattered the back. He got the hang of the wind tube and had a grand old time. When I took a turn, the wind blew my shoulder out of its socket, which was also unpleasant. It still hurts! 

 

• On our last night there around midnight, a woman walked into our room. Opened up our hotel room door with no problem and walked in! We were in bed with the lights out, and she walked right into the bathroom. We were alarmed to say the least. We yelled out that she was in the wrong room, got out of bed and got dressed. She came out of the bathroom, looked at us and got in our bed! We kept telling her she was in the wrong room, but she was under the influence of substances and clearly had no idea what was happening. She wouldn't leave. We tried to convince her for about 15 minute that she was in the wrong room and she needed to get out, but she kept snuggling in the bed. I had called the front desk to send security up, but that took FOR.EVER. We were finally able to coax her out of the bed and out of our room by talking to her like she was a toddler. We told the hotel people we wanted new bedding, for obvious reasons, which took another 30 minutes. Nils was super mad and went down to the front desk to talk to them about it. It was a whole thing, and we didn't get much sleep that night. It turned out that our door had been having issues, and it didn't latch when it closed, which was how she was able to just walk in. 

Do weird things only happen to us? 

Don't do drugs, kids. 

• The food at the all inclusive hotel we stayed at was pretty terrible. In addition to the lousy food, they didn't even have Coke products. Like, what even is this Pepsi business??? Anyhoo- one night at dinner, they poured Nils' Pepsi into a wine glass, so he had to get the full flavor profile and drink it like the fancy person he is. 

I didn't hate this, though. Gringa alert! 

Would we go to Cabo again? Yes. It's a fun, warm place. 

We would find a condo to stay in, though, handle our own food, and make sure to deadbolt the door. 

Happy 22 years to us! It's been a good run. I do love me some Nils.

Avril Première Partie- Sequoia and Yosemite

The end of the month draweth nigh, and it's time for a recap...but it's been a wild one. Thus, we will have two posts for the month, you lucky duck.

We went to California for spring break to see Sequoia NP and Yosemite NP. We had never been to this part of California before, so it was delightful to experience a new place. Plus, I'm a sucker for unusual things, so if you tell me the biggest tree in the world is in Sequoia NP, I'm there! 

Sequoia:

We stayed in Three Rivers, CA, which is close to the entrance of Sequoia. I felt like I did a lot of research on these places, and nowhere in my findings did it say how far the entrance of the park is from the actual big trees. We were grossly underprepared for that. It's an hour drive up a long and winding road, hairpin turns and all. A total barf-fest for the car sick type. The trees are at the top of the mountain! Once you get there it's magical, but we struggled with the drive up and down. So, my recommendation is to stay in the park if at all possible to minimize that experience. 

Three Rivers is a cute little town with some decent dining options and lots of charm, though, so if you like long, winding drives up mountains, do it.

Anyway. We had a great time in the Forest of Giants for a couple of days. Like I said, it's magical. We decided that the Keebler Elves probably make cookies there, because the trees are big enough for them to have their factories in them. It makes sense. 

We played hide and seek in the forest, hiked to the top of Moro Rock, which was kinda scary, and walked around for hours in awe. It was good times indeed.

On top of Moro Rock

Can you spy the humans? 

Saluting General Sherman, the biggest tree on Earth! 

You could have an apartment in this thing.

After playing hide and seek in the forest. Glad we found each other. 

It was really amazing to see the scale of these trees. It's hard to capture on camera.

Ma baby by a big old tree.

Aani thought this looked like "Museum IG" which in teenager means, "Museum I Guess".

Dinner at Quesadilla Gorilla in Three Rivers. Cute, fun, yummy. 

On our way to Yosemite a couple of days later, we made a stop in Fresno at the Forestiere Underground Gardens. It's super cool! If ever you're in the area for sure make a stop at this place. Back in the day, a man from Sicily made his way to Fresno, bought some land that turned out to be rock, so he dug down so he could plant citrus trees. It's totally ingenious and such a fun place to visit.

One of the neatest parts of this trip was driving through the California farm country, with miles and miles of vineyards and citrus groves. Lemon trees and orange trees were in bloom with fruit everywhere. It looked gorgeous, and smelled gorgeous as well. 

Yosemite:

We made it to Yosemite! Again, the entrance of the park is a good hour away from all of the famous sights- at least the entrance we went to. We hiked to Vernal Falls which was really beautiful. It was also a really challenging hike, with lots of steep, strenuous steps and rocks, and the waterfall mist makes you pretty wet for a good portion of the way up. There are parts that are hot, and parts that are wet and cold. We explored the Yosemite Valley, and took a little hike right up to El Capitan so we could touch it. 

Since we went before the official season began, a lot of the park was still closed to cars, so we didn't get to see Half Dome or Hetch Hetchy. Yosemite was way busier than Sequoia, even in the off season. I can't imagine what it's like in the summer. It must be a total madhouse. It's so pretty there- almost too much to take in. 

Top of Vernal Falls

On the way down- they were helping each other down the wet rocks, so I had to take a picture of this tender moment. :) 

What a dad!

Vernal Falls showing off

What even is this place?? So much beauty. 

California is a gorgeous place. So glad it's fairly close to us so we can visit often! 

We made the long drive home in one day, and we were all glad to have the weekend to recuperate a bit before going back to school and work and life.