Spring Orchestra Concert

On Tuesday May 9, Cayden got to participate in his second orchestra concert.  He has been in orchestra class all year and plays the violin.  Don was out of town and the boys were working so I got to take Kyle.  That was not a fun thing to do.  The orchestra music was fine and the kids worked really hard.  There were just so many songs!  And there were some songs sung by the chorus class in between sets and they were awful.  It was a horribly long night.  Cayden's class was almost toward the end but after he was finished I went and grabbed him and we went home.  Cayden did a very good job and has improved so much this year. 

I had to take Kyle outside several times to keep him entertained.  I had snacks and my phone for him to play with but the concert was so long that he just couldn't make it through.  My friend Serena came outside with him so I could go in and watch Cayden's performance and then we got the heck out of there!  

Mother's Day

Mother's Day was almost a weekend event. I went to Mesquite on Friday for a pedicure. 

Don brought me home some beautiful flowers. 

Sunday morning I got breakfast in bed. It was pancakes and bacon and my sweet husband even measured out the peanut butter and syrup since I am counting my calories. 

Cayden sang me a lovely song that I was pretty as pie and cake. 

Caleb shaved his face. This was a huge gift since hates to shave. 

Kyle made me a necklace in Primary but he decided that he wasn't going to give it to me. 

All the sisters in the ward got a big cupcake and Chris Zundle saw us walking into church and gave me 2 Sweet Tooth Fairy sugar cookies. 

I took a lovely nap after church but woke up with a serious sugar hangover headache because I ate all that sugar.  Connor sent me a sweet text and gave me a hug at church. Don had Caleb order me a FitBit on Amazon but it didn't get here before Mother's Day.  That's ok though because I didn't exercise one bit today!  It was a good day! 

In My Pretty Garden

When we came home from Provo I went out to check my garden and found that a little rodent had decided to make my garden it's new home.  We have had gophers in the past in the front yard but I have never had one in the back especially in the garden.  He had already killed one of my squash plants and I was not going to let him have another!  I flooded him out Sunday night and then watched to see if he would come back.  On Tuesday there were more tunnels so I called Connor to bring me a gopher trap from Grandpa's.  While I was waiting I tried to drown him out again.  Grandpa came right over and while we looking at the trap the little sucker  stuck his head up out of his tunnels because they were filling with water.  I sprayed him and he ran out of the garden toward the back wall and then grandpa stomped him.  That was the end of the gopher.  The next day I went out to check the garden to make sure he was really gone and didn't have any relatives helping him and I was happy to see he had not come back nor any of his friends and family and even his little corpse was gone thanks to a neighborhood cat I would guess!  Hooray!

These are the first 3 pickings from our garden this year.  The dark one was really tough but it was all going into minestrone anyway so it softened up some in the soup.  The squash are doing awesome but the zucchini are not doing to well.  I even went and bought two more plants because of the 5 I planted only one was doing really well.  The two new ones are still not doing that great either.  The tomato plants are getting big and we are starting to see some little tomatoes on them. Yay for gardens!

Payson Temple

We took a quick trip to Provo the first weekend of May so we could go to the Payson Temple open house.  We went the Pitt's family and my mom.  It was a breezy spring day and it was lovely.  The temple is absolutely beautiful inside and out.  There is so much detail and artistry all through out the building.  After the temple we went to Los Hermanos-my favorite Mexican place ever.  The Pitts family didn't go eat with us but they were going to come back to Grandma's and visit for a while until Ella bella got sick as soon as they got home.  She had been sick for a few days but they thought she was over it until they got back home and she barfed in the garage. We were very fortunate that none of us got it especially because Kyle and Ella were holding hands and Don and I carried her some.  I'm so glad that the church is building so many temples and we can take our children to the open houses.  Cayden has been to 4 now and Kyle has been to two.  Caleb and Connor did not go with us on the trip because they had to work.  The Provo temple should be done here in the next year and we will get to go to that open house.  The church announced it was breaking ground in Cedar City for that temple so we can go to that in a few years as well.  Kyle especially asks about the temple because I try to go as often as I can.  He asks if he can go all the time and so we were finally able to take him to the temple open house in Ogden last summer and then to St. George when Ashley and Brad Farmer had their twins sealed to them in February.  Kyle got to go then but only to the waiting room. And now he has gotten to go again.    Cayden has been able to do baptisms for the dead 2 or three times since he turned 12 in February of last year.  

Father and Sons Campout

The boys all went on the Father and Sons campout on Friday April 25-26.  This was Kyle's first campout and the sweet baby has been asking to go on a campout for a long long time.  I was a little nervous about him going because he is so so busy and just runs and runs.  The last several years the campout has been out above Mesquite at a place called Whitney Pocket.  It was a place with lots of rocks and other dangerous places that I was concerned about for Kyle.  Luckily this time the campout was held down past Overton at the Wildlife Refuge.  It took several hours of packing and loading to get ready for the one night campout but they boys had a great time.  The High Priests group provided and cooked up a bunch of fish and chips and the Elder's Quorum (Don) was in charge of breakfast and they had breakfast burritos.  The weather was windy but not too cold so that was good.  

Park Squirt Gun Party

On Saturday April 18, Kyle got invited to a birthday at the park. It was for a little boy in his primary class named Chuck. They had a great time with squirt guns and water balloons. 

He was quite a sad boy when it was time to go home. 

Piano Man

Cayden had his second piano recital on Monday, April 20. He has been taking piano from Sister Cooper for about 3 years. Last year at his first recital he was very very nervous and asked Sister Cooper to sit by him while he played his song. This year he had no problems at all. He didn't fuss or complain about going and he didn't ask for any help. When it was his turn he marched right up to the stage and played his song with out a hitch. His song was Puff the Magic Dragon. All the songs the kids played were from movies so that made it really fun. After his song he was all grins. He was sitting on the opposite side of the auditorium from us so we weren't able to see him after he came down until the end of the recital but we could see him trying to look for us. This was quite a big step for him and we are very proud of him. If I can figure out how to upload the video of him playing I will.