Talk about a busy Saturday

The day started out bright and early with a 6:30 wake up call from my alarm so that I could get showered and pack up the car before heading out to our Ward's annual Pancake breakfast and egg hunt.  Paul left early to help flip pancakes and per the normal I didn't see him most of the activity. Fortunately the kids are getting older and it's a bit easier to handle everyone alone. I use to dread these church activities because they were so much work. Now they're pretty fun. 

Brandon being his normal silly happy go lucky self.

Carter striking his normal super hero pose.

Ashlyn as sweet as can be.

And Leah playing little Mom to the younger girls, who all look up to her and adore her.

(that pretty much sums up my kids)

I have to say Brandon is pretty darn sweet and gentle with little girls. Makes me happy to see his softer side. 

Then it was game time and Brandon pretty much didn't leave this catapult table he was having so much fun.

Stilts, hula hooping, balloon tosses, stick pull, and sidewalk chalk were some of the fun activities the kids got to enjoy.

And then the egg hunt was on. Carter and Leah were diligent, but not too rushed.

Brandon was basically a blur.

And Ashlyn…well she got her typical 4 eggs. Luckily Brandon is super good about sharing and gives most of his eggs away. He just likes the hunt.

Wish I would have taken a picture in the grass or something. Instead of having the yucky parking lot in the background.

Ashlyn and her good friend Haley.  

The activity ended, people cleaned up and left and I kicked it in to high gear and started decorating for the RS dinner that night. Brooke stayed to help and of course Paul was there, along with a few other people who were nice enough to stick around and make sure I had all the tables and chairs I needed. 

It was my "Little Women" themed dinner before the General Broadcast and I did my best to make it look festive and nice. I know I'm not the most creative or crafty person around, but I had some checkers and chess sets up at a couple of tables, some books, flowers and pictures at others, and tea sets at the rest.

After set up, I took the girls with me to the store for some last minute items I needed for the night. Then I realized the crack in my windshield decided to split more from the added heat of the day, so I had to take it to be fixed before the split was too big to be repaired. Then I rushed home to get everything else loaded and ready. I headed back to the church, set up my last minute items, got the food out and waited for people to come.

 We had a letter writing table with quill pens made by yours truly (without the help of pinterest I might add). Every once in a very great while I have an original idea. Either that, or I forget that I've seen it somewhere and then go on to claim it as my own. haha...

The Activity Day girls got to start their own cross stitch. I was so happy to see them all get in to this so much and really have a fun time with it. 

We had a great turn out. I even had to set up an extra table at the last minute. Nothing makes me more happy than to have an activity go well. Especially when I feel like I spend so much time prepping it. We probably had at least 50 people there. Maybe a little more. I didn't get a picture of everyone but I tried to get as many as I could.

Stephanie Fast and Mindy Albee, who don't really know each other, so I probably shouldn't have taken their picture together. Oops.

Ginny Taylor and her daughter Jamie. New members/newly reactivated. Super sweet family!

Colleen McDonald, Jane Sells and shoot…I don't know this lady on the right. Still figuring out who everyone is.

Mindy and Jenny Albee

Jenn Bledsoe with her daughter Morgan, Sherry Gottfredson and Jenna Livingston

Cute sister missionaries

April Lawler, Brooke McCoy and Carolyn Ruston

Karen Evans refused to let me take her picture, but I did anyway. Stinker!

Jenny Fogg, Beckie Brammer, Maria Karimi and Susie Richan

Ten of our now fifteen cute Activity Day girls who sang a song for us. And did a pretty dang good job at it too.

Brittney Miller, Kalli Wardle and Sharon Defiguerido

Laurie Nguyen and her DIL Perla

Our super awesome RS President Erin Wilson and her daughter Natalie. So lucky that I get to work with this amazing lady. I love her more and more every day.

Becky leading her Activity Day girls.

Becky and Jenna cuz they matched and I thought it was cute.

Some of the table decors.

 Letter writing women. 

Activity Day girls working hard on their cross stitching with Susie helping. I was so grateful to her for  being willing to help me out with this. 

I thought Ashlyn's first finished cross stitch was a nice tribute to her love of music so I sent a picture of this to her piano teacher. 

After the dinner, I rushed to help clean up as much as I could (Note to self to not wear three inch heals when in charge of a RS activity. My feet were dying.) and then me and my girls headed over to the General Women's Conference at the Stake Center. We were a little late, but we heard most of the talks and it was really nice to just sit and listen. 

I got home a little after 9pm and started to pick up some stuff (a huge shout out to my hubby who stayed after and made sure everything was picked up and the building was ready for church the next morning while also wrangling the two boys), but I was pretty darn beat so I sat down on the couch to relax instead. Not five minutes later we hear Leah yelling from upstairs that Brandon was throwing up all over his room. Yeah….true story. So Paul and I kicked it back into high gear, got him to the toilet to finish throwing up and then proceeded to scrub like crazy to get the carpet clean (all while still in my church dress). We got everything cleaned up and got Brandon settled on the floor next to me where he tossed and turned and threw up three more times that night. Needless to say I wasn't too upset to have to stay home from church with him the next day. He finally settled down around 5:30 am and we were both able to get some sleep. I slept until 10 and he didn't wake up until 11:30. He laid around all day but by evening he was starting to get back to his regular self and luckily was able to go to school the next day. 

Whew….what a DAY!!!!

Getting back to normal life

The day after we got home from our Boston trip was pretty much a blur. I was so tired from the late flight home and then getting up early that I stayed in my pj's all day and slowly unpacked, cleaned my house and hung out with the kids. It was kind of a perfect re-entry back to real life though so I was glad I had a slow day.

I was sitting at the dinner table with Brandon and noticed his arm. It was totally swollen and had these two little bite marks. I asked him what happened and he was like…uh…I don't know! My guess is a spider bit him. How he didn't feel it, I do not know because it was pretty irritated looking. I pulled out some essential oils and slathered up his arm. I can't say oils are a cure all for everything, but they definitely have their place and totally helped in this case. Within a day the swelling had gone way down and it healed up quite nicely in no time. There were some pretty big holes in his arm from the fangs of the spider though. It was crazy!

This boy has taken off reading. I'm so proud of him. He is doing super good in his AR reading at school and has gotten a 100% on every test he has taken all year. That's over 30 books. I'm almost nervous for the day he misses a question. I hope it doesn't crush him.

He likes to read books that are way over his level. Books like Diary of a Wimpy kid. I just let him because I don't want to squash his desire to read and I figure even if he can't take a test on it and even if he doesn't understand all the words, it's got to be doing some good right?  I went in to check on him one night before heading to bed and found him asleep with his book in his face. He must have literally fallen asleep reading. Cute boy!

The day my mom flew home we went to breakfast together while all the kiddos were at school. It was fun to have some one on one time with my mom. It doesn't happen very often….or like EVER. I got pancakes with an egg on top (super yummy if you've never tried it). These pancakes were HUGE though. I mean seriously, they made my egg look like a pat of butter.

Found this light refreshing sparkling water at Cost Plus World Market. It had just a hint of cucumber and was quite delicious. I've never seen anything like it.

My silly boy playing with my sunglasses one morning while I was at school volunteering.

We missed the official screening of Home because we were in Boston, but luckily DW did a smaller screening of it on the campus the night before it came out in theaters. I must say I was pleasantly surprised. It was a really cute movie and we all really enjoyed it.

Paul got his cintique at work a month or so ago and has been loving having it. It's basically one big computer tablet for drawing. 

Carter took a turn drawing on it as well. Hard to see, but he drew a little person. I love 4 year old versions of stick people. They're just so cute!

Basically a head with arms and legs coming out of it.

I decided to get myself some clippers to cut Carter's hair myself. It was a bit shorter than I was going for, but it turned out okay. I think next time I better just finger cut the top instead of using an attachment.