On the advent of spring

I love where I live.  I think I’ve said that many times.  Spokane has so many things going for it (no traffic, good schools, beauty, low cost of living, neat communities), that we all just overlook the weather.  And when I say overlook it I mean we deal with it, but feel very free to complain about it…mostly in March, April and May.

Because in Spokane, spring sucks.  It’s gray and cold and rainy and while every holiday, every news report, every clothing advertisement tells you it’s warmish and pinkish and sunny…in Spokane, it’s not.

Except for a few days here and there.  And when those days happen…it’s like you live in Disneyland or something.  Because everyone is so happy and everyone is outside and the grills are going and the parks are full and the shorts come out and you feel like you just got a free vacation or something plopped in your lap.

It happened here last week.  We had a week of sun and temperatures in the high 70s and low 80s. So the Romneys…

1. Got out their new summer clothes.  My kids are so much cuter in their new, non-ripped, non-stained clothes.

2.  Had 5 meals outside (in the backyard, at the park, at the soccer field).

3.  Ran and biked like crazy in SHORTS!

4.  Walked to church and back.

5.  Hiked Tubbs Hill and ate on the deck of the Coeur d’alene resort.

6.  Pointed out every blossom and tulip and daffodil that came across our path (life again! instead of bare limbs and yellow grass!)

7.  Grew a whole bunch of cute freckles.

8.  Had a hard time getting much done because when it’s that nice, you really just think you need to play.

We are back to the 50s (but still sunny! yay!) and back in our long-sleeves, but that week was the shot in the arm we needed to get us all the way to late June…which is when real summer starts around here. 

Quick Quote

 

Seth: P_________ is kind of the class clown.  But I don’t really like his jokes.  Because they are mostly about caffeine….and your tush.

 

NOT CAFFEINE!  NOT YOUR TUSH!!

March!

So in March we had St. Patrick’s Day:

And went to Utah for vacation.  Here’s us at the zoo:

Seth was in love with my cousin Rachel (who is 4):

I took the big kids to a live session of General Conference, which was a neat experience:

We got to hang out with baby Molly (Sam and Stephanie’s first baby).  Gabe was very feisty about getting his turns…it was pretty cute.

We stayed with Aunt Betsy for a night and had fun at Hunger Games and at this play place with this crazy ropes course.

We ate tons of food (here at Sweet Tooth Fairy)

and got to tour the church I went to when I was 4-5 (built 114 years ago!) and saw my old house.

And apparently that’s all we did, because I have pictures of nothing else.

 

How about a little review of each kid, for journaling’s sake?

Emma is doing well.  She had a little bump in the Doing All My Assignments road (exactly like last year) but she got back on track quicker than last year, so that’s progress, right?  She is in the Spokane Area Children’s Chorus and they had their first concert last month (right while we were in Hawaii, so no pictures!).  She’s also started track, which we are pleased about.  She is a girl with lots of athletic ability and little interest.  But she’s realized she’s fast and has decided to try to be a sprinter.  Fun!  She’s pretty even-keel, even as a teenager, but there are still friend dramas that come up.  After reviewing this paragraph, she seems like a pretty normal girl!

Gabe is at a good stage as well.  It’s fun to see him pick things on his own (trombone, swimming) and excel at them.  His grades were good…truly would have had straight As if he’d only had me sign his Language Arts planner and his Band practice sheets.  He’s realizing that it’s pretty silly to miss a 4.0 for lack of a few signatures. His favorite thing in the world is to be out on the culdesac playing the big crowd of boys who live here.

Jane continues to be funny and so serious about doing what’s right.  Mention something that she could improve on, and she gets right to work on it.  She’s a good girl.  She plays piano and soccer right now and loves when it’s the weekly 8-9 year old church activity day.  She’s also hilarious…constantly making up dumb songs (it’s like we have our own soundtrack, sometimes) and she’s got this new chest-thumping pose that she says is her new “thing”.  Silly.

Seth is doing great in school, working about a grade level ahead of 1st grade.  He’s still a little spacy, but he’s aware of that issue and I feel like he works on it….when he remembers.  He’s always everyone’s friend and his motto is “Why Use 8 Words, when 58 words will do?”  He enjoys playing soccer, but we have to be careful about complimenting him on something as he dribbles by, because he will seriously STOP in the middle and chat with us about why he did what and what the coach said, while we urge “SETH!  Talk to us later!  Keep moving!”

Faith is SUPER fun to be around all day long.  She’s still the queen of routine (hey that rhymes!  Something she can also do.), and if you do something, ANYTHING two days in a row, she will seriously think that’s the way it should always be.  She loves going cross-eyed, because I make a big deal about how it’s disturbing.  She also CAN TOTALLY WHISTLE!  What 3 year old can actually whistle?!  She memorized her first Scripture for primary and I have it on video, but I’m way past the point of including video in posts.

We are boring…I’m marathon training and Ryan is running a weight loss contest at work.  Our spring has been decent, which is HUGE around here.  I’m realizing I’m in a new Older Kid Phase of parenting which requires 1) Lots of Driving and 2) just being around a lot so you catch them when they want to share.  I love being a mom.  I’m reading actual books more, which means blog reading and facebook reading is suffering (but I’m pretty sure that’s a good thing).  Ryan does homework (5 classes away from his MBA degree) and church stuff and handyman stuff around our house and our rental place.

Sorry that you just had to read a Romney Christmas Card in April!  I just thought I should record some every day things.  On this sunny, quiet Spring day…the every day seems pretty great.

What Jesus Christ means to the Romneys—An Easter Post

 

Yesterday was Easter.  At church, someone commented that she felt bad that she hadn’t shared with a non-Mormon friend what Jesus means to her—specifically as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.  It really struck me…I wanted to express for my blog readers, for my kids, and for the blog book what Jesus Christ means to our family.  For our Easter Sunday family lesson time, we watched the video at the end of this post and then shared with each other our beliefs about our Savior.

Ryan:

Because we know Jesus, we know that we will be together with our loved ones.  It takes away fear, because we know that he died and was resurrected.

The other thing that I think when I think about Jesus is something that Jessica said in class one day in regards to repentance.  The thing that is a blessing is that after we make a mistake we can get rid of that awful feeling that results by repenting.  We can repent and change and be forgiven and start again.

I know Jesus is real and as we follow him, we have good things come into our lives.  I’m grateful I know about him and I’m grateful I can follow him.

 

Jessica: 

I know as well as I know anything that Jesus Christ is real.  I know that he lived, that he was the literal Son of God, that he died for our sins and that we can be completely clean and free from sin as we practice repentance and following him.  I believe that as the son of the God of the Universe he was able to work miracles when he walked the earth and that he continues to work miracles in our lives now.  I am confident enough to promise that following his teachings of love, obedience, service, moral purity and honesty is the best way to find a true and lasting happiness.  I know that because he actually rose from the dead, we will all live again and with our families after we leave this earth.

Gabe:

I think of Jesus as an example and as an amazing person who suffered for our sins, then died on the cross for us, so that we can get back to heaven and live with Heavenly Father forever.  I think that is amazing because it shows how much he loves each and every one of us, that he would die for us.  I think it’s amazing we can all be resurrected again because of the Plan of Salvation.

Emma:

Jesus Christ is my Savior and Redeemer.  I know that he loves me and that he lives.  He is my big brother and my comforter.  He is perfect and he is my example.  I know he suffered for our sins and that he loves everybody.

Jane:

When I think of Jesus, I think of love because he’s been always loving to us.  He prayed for us to go back to heaven.  He was nice to everyone and set a perfect example for us.  I think it was great that the last words he said was “Forgive them”.  It just means that even though they killed him, he’s not mad at them.

Seth:

I know that he died for us so that we could go back to heaven.  And that we could repent of what we have done, like hitting brothers or doing mean stuff. 

Faith:

Please bless that Jesus was resurrected so that we could know him. 

 

The following video is a link to a YouTube video of the last days of Christ’s life and his resurrection.  It only contains the words of the King James New Testament and is beautiful.  Please take a minute to watch the story of the true reason for Easter.

You win some, you lose some

good idea:
Telling the kids they'd get their German pancakes after they finished their spinach smoothies.




bad idea:
Checking the long range (April/May) forecast on this snowy "spring" day--colder and wetter than normal. Kill me now.

Good idea:
Bagging my weight-lifting plan in order to spin and chat with Laura for an hour.

Bad idea:
Waiting for 60 minutes to run dry boots to Seth at school. They kind of forgot about him and by the time I got there, he'd been hanging out in the nurse's room OUT OF CLASS for almost 2 hours. I can just picture him, oblivious and chatting, as each new person came in. Why would it not have occurred to him to wonder why he was not in class all morning??

Good idea:
--learning time with Faith. Best 20 minutes of my day. Especially when she points at a hexagon and says "hey! That's a hexagon...I leawned it from Abbyth Flying Faiwy Thchool."




Bad idea:
--deciding to pay my kids' allowances/babysitting money. Without going into detail it revealed one child's ridiculous over-spending habits, another's losing $ habits, and one's tendency to borrow without asking and not pay back. Disturbing 30 minutes at the Romney house. Someone tell me they won't be homeless and broke someday?

Good idea:
-/making this dish for dinner: http://www.marthastewart.com/354733/spaghetti-savoy-cabbage-and-breadcrumbs



seems like a bad idea but was actually a good one:
--middle school band concert. Those kids are GOOD.



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

The Hawaii Recap! Yay us!

 

It’s probably obnoxious to have any negatives when you are discussing your trip to Hawaii, so let’s just do those first:

LOWLIGHTS:

1.  Rain.  It was the worst weather in a decade.  Isn’t that sad for us?  You probably heard about it on the news.  Because I come from a rainy area, it really bummed me out that my Hawaii trip was rainy. (Here’s us, in the rain, at Pearl Harbor, where we couldn’t go out to the USS Arizona Memorial, due to rain.)

 

2.  How dang expensive everything in Hawaii is.  $15 for a bowl of oatmeal at my hotel?  Seriously?!

3.  How far our (awesome) resort was from anything.  It just meant we had to pay a bunch of extra taxi money to get to the bus/tram to sight see.

4.  Our airplane’s windshield cracking, the resulting delay, missed flight and overnight stay in Seattle.  It was kind of excruciating to be in the Hawaii airport for 6 hours without getting to enjoy the long-awaited sunshine.

 

HIGHLIGHTS:

(There are much more of these)

1.  Spending 5 straight days with Ryan.  I love that guy and don’t get enough time with him and I LOVED not having to share him with anything else.

2.  The GORGEOUS resort we stayed in.  Ryan was awarded this trip at work (because he’s awesome) and his company treated us SO well.  The pool, beach, restaurants, dolphins, room were all just amazing.

 

3.  The Polynesian Cultural Center.  I loved every minute we were there (okay, except for the dinner…not so good).  There was such a neat feeling there and I loved the grounds and the shows and all the stuff we learned.

 

4. Eating sushi 4 times.  I feel like I know it now and I am officially a fan.

5.  The weather perking up the last 2 days.  I got to run my long run for the week (15 miles) and it was while I was running that the sun came out and stayed out.  We vegged on the beach the whole day.

6.  Meeting up with our friends from home.  It was fun to hang out with them 5000 miles from our little Washington town.

7. The tour we took of the LDS temple in Laie.  I was overcome with the beauty of the building and the truth that families really can be together forever.

8.  The pineapple.

Writing about it makes me sad it’s over, especially on this dreary day in Eastern Washington.  It was so dreamlike and we were so lucky to get to have those days together.

Fun February

No wonder February seemed nuts. Look at all the stuff we did:

14 days of valentines 2012:

Lunch dates

Strawberry crepes for breakfast

Treats and Valentines shopping at Target

Making Candy pops

Valentine shirts (self-timered this one, can you tell?)

Family Ice skating (MUCH more fun now that Seth can kind of skate solo)

The famous Parfaits

Cookie decorating with the neighbors

Gabe was busy too. He was skiing with the neighbors:

competing in his 3rd Math is Cool competition (they took 2nd place):

and doing his China Fair project:

We had playgroup at our house. The theme was art, so here they are scultping masterpieces from edible playdough (thank you Pinterest):

We had birthdays:

Emma’s was a little low key, but considering we’ve spent every Saturday for two months building, painting, sanding, hanging, shopping and sewing for her new teenage room…I’m not feeling too bad.

She had coffee cake for breakfast, Papa Murphy’s pizza for lunch and the big old Costco chocolate cake to share with the Daines during present opening:

We are getting SO close on that room. I can’t wait to show it on the blog, soon!

Ryan had his usual super low-key birthday. He asked for a lunchdate with me and Faith:

and breakfast for dinner

and NO presents because…

We bought a Honda Pilot. It looks like this,

but this isn’t ours because I’m too lazy to go downstairs, and take a picture.

It was a little crazy because it all came about in less than 36 hours. I really had planned on doing a humerous post on our 9 year old, cracked windshielded, duct taped sided, broken seat-belted, broken dashboarded, horrible smelling, 185,000 milesed van, just so I could document the trash can I drove around in. It had started worrying us and we didn’t want to pay to fix it when we planned on purchasing one in the fall and within a day Ryan found this screaming deal on this 2 year old decked-out Pilot. Errands are fun again. The whole family pinches ourselves when we get to load up in that glorious thing.

We also did one-on-one dates with Jane and Seth:

Jane wanted to go skating again and some nice lady walked up and gave us two free tickets. Nice!

Plus also, it was super sunny and basically having along time with each kid is, like, the most genius parenting trick ever.

Seth did breakfast and then did the Home Depot workshop with Ryan:

And, finally, this totally random shot of Seth’s Valentine’s box, because I REALLY had to improve on the embarrassment that was Jane’s box last year (see this post, if you’re interested). Again, thank you, Pinterest.

So that was February. I think every single picture on this page had red, pink or something sugary to eat in it. The next post will have something blue (sky, water), tan (skin, sand) and more treats to eat because….we leave for Hawaii in less than 48 hours. Yay for alone, warm, couple time!