Christiansen Chronicles

I've become a blogging slacker this month.  I am totally lazy with it and only blog from my phone.  The R key is always sticking on my keyboard on the computer and it doesn't sound annoying, but trust me...it is.  And I will justify my lack of blogging on that little R key.

Most of our April activities I already posted, but here are my random pictures and thoughts of from the month.

April 1st.  I have usually pulled some sort of April Fools trick on the kids, but this year I let it slide.  I did take all four big kids to the dentist though.  And they all passed with no tears and no cavities!  

Eli continues to take selfies with my phone.  All the time.  Hundreds of them.

Lucy has discovered the car carts at the grocery store and she loves these rides!  

Watch out for these two crazy ladies on the road!

Sometimes I just want to cuss when I want something and I know I own it and it's packed away in storage.  Wade thought it was SO funny one day when he found me buried in boxes looking for an Easter Egg lesson.  I found lots of new-to-her baby clothes for Lucy, but still never found  the lesson.  Our life is in boxes and I am LOVING it.

Lucy rocks the one shoe, no pants look.

She also loves to climb up on the mower and drive.

This yard hasn't had a garden in at least 10 years, but we are going to try our best to make it happen this year.  Wade tilled, tilled and tilled some more one afternoon.  Then he threw some fertilizer on and tilled some more.

We bought our plants, then it got cold, so we kept them inside and then the weather cleared up so we finally got our plants in last weekend.

two rows of tomatoes

a row and half of peppers

squash, zucchini

corn,

beans

strawberries

and 

sunflowers

Then of course, after we planted the weather took another turn for the worse and we had to try to save all our plants.  Good thing we happen to have 5 Halloween buckets and 5 Easter buckets.  That at least saved 10 plants.  Hopefully our garden will make it through.

Wade went on a field trip with Gage and the 4th grade to the state capital.  He had a good time keeping up with the boys in his group.  Gage's favorite part was seeing the two headed sheep in the state history museum.

I went to Loved Ones and Literature with the first grade this month and read with Noah. (and his friend).  We had a good time and they ate some good cookies.

And of course, Noah turned in interesting homework.

"I like sleep happy save money!!"

???

Lucy enjoyed herself at a birthday party we attended.  

She loves a good cupcake!

And then last, but not least, my job ended today.  I was so sad about it.

I've spent this school year working as a teacher's aide at the school and have been surprised at how much I have loved this job.  I've been reading with 3rd-6th graders and it's been rewarding to see the kids improve in their reading.  This job was one of those secret blessings this past year, one that I would have never expected, but has blessed our life.  Today some of the kids gave me little thank you cards or drew pictures for me.  I wanted to give them great big hugs.  Hopefully they all keep reading this summer!

We've had a busy month, full of activities and blessings.  

We are looking forward to May and summer.  

Good things are coming!  

The week of Easter we did a couple activities that kept our mind on the true meaning of the holiday.  We have a special family home evening lesson each year and a couple songs that we like to sing.  But we also like to mix it up and do a couple fun things too.  Saturday we started by dying our Easter eggs.  We used kool-aid again this year.  I love it and think it works great - smells good too!

Eli put his egg in every color for so long that it turned black.  He was so proud of his black egg!

We made our special resurrection cookies.  They were empty in the morning.

Saturday before the big Easter egg hunt we drove around and tried to find a hill to roll our eggs on.  In Washington we had a great hill right behind my parents house and we would roll our eggs every year.  It look a little bit of searching but we finally found a great hill.

If you roll hard boiled eggs just right, they will crack, the white will eventually fall off and then you will have just a yolk rolling down the hill.  Noah won the yolk award.  His came out first.

And then the big event!  Saturday evening we had a BBQ dinner at Pam's house and an Easter egg hunt.

Gage looks like this hunt is serious business!  I love this picture of him.

The kids had a great time and got so much candy..we still have it sitting around.  It's so nice to be around family and spend time with them during the holidays.  

I was so blessed the last couple days of spring break to spend it in Albuquerque with my mom and two of my sisters.  

We had a great time laughing and drinking lots of diet coke.  I thought I would maybe catch up on sleep...haha!  I didn't really, but either way, it's always fun when we get together.  

Thursday when we got there we headed out shopping.  

We couldn't decide...matching sparkle sequin skirts 

or

these fancy cat shirts. 

Seriously, You've got to be kitten me...such tough choices! We really should have bought the shirts and the skirts and worn them TOGETHER! 

We took a lot of selfies. 

Well, I made them take a lot of selfies.

Friday night we ate at Standard Diner.  IT's located on Route 66, and it's been on the Food Network before and it did not disappoint.

The waiter talked me into trying the chicken and waffles.  I was a little skeptical but they were great!

Then on to the big show:

Time Out For Women!

The real reason we got together was to go to Time Out.  My mom and I always attended these conferences when I lived in Washington, but we've missed the last couple years.  I've also moved and had a baby.  Friday night and Saturday we listened to some great musical talent and speakers.  It really uplifted and inspired me.

more selfies:

The theme for the weekend.  

"Neglect not the gift that is in thee, mediate upon these things, give thyself wholly to them."

Seriously, a great program.  It left me with so much to think about and so much I want to work on in my life.  I am so thankful for my mom who made this fun weekend possible.  I hope that next time the rest of the sisters can make it!

Spring break came and went at the beginning of the month and it was too short!  We started out the week by making our "bucket list" of things we all wanted to do.  Then we posted it on the fridge and got to work!  We did pretty good and accomplished everything on the list but going to the Lego Store.  We even got a couple extra things done too!

There is a fun wood park in Pleasant Grove that we really loved when we lived in Utah and Gage was itty bitty.  We hadn't been back since then, so we decided to go check it out.  Of course, it was a big hit.

We headed to Cabela's one morning.  The kids love Cabela's...and the pet store.  There's almost as good as the zoo.  HA!

Avery got to spend some time with me doing some retail therapy.  We don't even have to buy anything, but we can spend hours in the make-up sections looking at all the colors.

Thrusday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday of spring break I went to Albuqurque and Wade had all the kids to himself.  He got so many comments on how amazing that was.  But he really said it was fun and didn't seem to stress him out too much.  They worked on the spring break list.  They played a lot of legos, built forts and played.

One day they went with their cousins to a park with a pond.  It was super windy, but they all had fun.

~~

I didn't end up getting a lot of  pictures of spring break, and we didn't go anywhere fancy, but we did have fun and managed to stay busy without getting bored. The kids love being at home and playing around.  I think their absolute favorite part was just being able to stay up a little bit later and switch beds.