Last Friday night my parents offered to take the kids overnight and bring them back Saturday morning. I was scheduled to work at 11pm Friday but Kevin and I had the evening off together. I love when we get childless evenings together and we hadn't been to the temple yet in March so we decided to go do a quick session and go out to dinner. Between my work schedule, Kevin's work plus his extra tax stuff, our three kids and the billion other things it seems we have going on right now, it was so nice to escape it all for an hour. I love this beautiful place and I love it even more when I get to go with Kevin. Such a peace that is found there and I know that it adds to a calmness to our lives when we leave. So grateful we have one that is close to us that we get to attend on a regular basis.

 Monday night we colored eggs with the kids. They were super excited, despite Isak's very solemn face.  I baked the eggs in the oven instead of boiling them and it worked pretty well. There were some brown spots but they were covered by the dye. The kids liked writing/drawing on the eggs with crayon then watching their  design show up through the dye. We also got some shiny paint stuff for the eggs that was also pretty messy but fun to use. And despite my hands being dyed green for the past week and some spillage of the dye all over the table, it went pretty well!

Kevin left town on Tuesday for a few days and should be back sometime late tonight.  He left me with two soccer games of the kids to coach and this poor little baby who keeps spiking fevers.  Kevin has coached soccer now for three seasons and I don't know how he did it. Your own kids never listen as well to you as they do to someone else telling them what to do.   It was fairly frustrating as both of them are on the team and Lucy never wants to go out when I want her too and Isak is crying the curses of the world every time the other team scores a goal.  Luckily my parents came to my rescue on Tuesday and helped with Edyn and tonight Kevin's grandma was awesome enough to drive down and help me. I am so lucky to have so much family nearby. 

Edyn started with a fever last night and was up several times last night fussy and super hot. Today she hasn't been much better and I'm hoping to take her to the doctor tomorrow.   She's usually so happy, its pretty pathetic to see her so sad. However, the kids and I were stuffing Easter eggs tonight and Edyn discovered the bag of M&M's. That sure made her happy in a hurry!

 We found these giant bouncy balls at Costco last weekend and got a couple for this summer. They remind me of the Zorbing balls we used in New Zealand a few years ago. They fill them with water then roll you down a track down a hill. These have a hole at the top and bottom and are about 4 feet by 4 feet. They are made of pretty thick vinyl and I am thinking they will be tons of fun with water in the summer in the backyard.       Meanwhile Kevin desperately wanted to inflate one and did so on Sunday and now Lucy thinks its her house. She also refers it as her "water" and has moved all her stuffed animals and blankets in there. I try to sit in it with her and lasted about 30 seconds before becoming claustrophobic.

 Lucy got a Fur Reals dog for her birthday last month and the kids like to think of it as their pet. Edyn especially loves it and makes the "woof! woof!" whenever she sees it. She loves to carry it around and talk to it as well.

 I found this dress for Edyn last weekend while thrift shopping with my Young Women for $1. Its pretty awesome. And I love her super blue eyes and very unicorn like ponytail.

Isak and Lucy started spring soccer this week and Kevin is their coach. So far they've had two games and both done well, Lucy is pretty interested in grass pulling/throwing but also loves running and chasing the soccer ball so it balances out. Isak is showing more focus on the game this season and scored his first real goal tonight! He was pretty cute doing his little "yes!" to himself.

 Lucy was very excited that we found pink socks. They are pretty cool. The season is only about 4 weeks long with 2 games a week. Hopefully it warms up soon, these games have been cold!

 My kids before church today in their "green" outfits".  They were all staring straight into the sun, if you can' tell. Lucy is holding her new best friend gingerbread girl named "princess" that she stole from her Nana's house along with her thermometer to take to church. Edyn is happily drinking her bottle while Isak was kind enough to help corral her.  I think I need some more practice before Easter pictures in a few weeks!

Lucy

 Oh Lucy Girl. What has she been up to..Well, she is still loving preschool and the plastic food carrot that is her very favorite thing there. She holds onto it through centers and playing in the gym and has a major freak out if another kid steals her carrot. Luckily her carrot obsession is pretty well known by now so most everyone is happy to let her be weird in peace :).

 Lucy got a princess crown in her Happy Meal the day I had my race and was super sick by the awful smell of Mcdonald's food.

 We've had some super warm weather lately (temps above 60's) so we have made several trips to the park and even fit in some runs in the jogging stroller. Although Lucy and Edyn together weigh 70lbs so its getting harder to push them. Lucy loves the park and really loves when we have friends meet us there. Her little friend lives down the street from us and also goes to her preschool. They are very cute together, even when Lucy says her name wrong for the 100th time in a row. They went to the Post Office for a field trip on Thursday and got to mail letters to themselves. They were both SUPER EXCITED and were greeting everyone that came in the post office that day with a cheer and lots of "YAY! You're here's!!". It really doesn't take much to get Lucy excited. She is so happy 90% of the time.  I love that she thanks everyone for everything and is constantly complementing others. If she keeps that up she will have a lot of friends growing up! On the other hand, Lucy is kind of quirky and I'm hoping she outgrows some of her quirks. Like eating the grass. Or my new favorite, chewing teeth marks into the side of her and Isak's brandnew bunk bed. I was trying to figure out what happened since they are BRAND NEW and was asking the kids and telling them how we need to take good care of our bed and on and on. And Lucy looked at me and said, "I bite it. I go AYE AYE AYE" (as she makes chomping noise with her mouth). Yea. I wasn't even sure what to say to that, the kid is four and apparently needs a teething rail. Even Edyn doesn't do that. So Lucy and I had a discussion about eating our furniture and she hasn't done it anymore.  That might impact her ability to have friends....hopefully at 13 she's not still chewing on her wood furniture.

Isak

I remember a year ago when Isak was in preschool and how I was so worried because he didn't write his name very well. Its crazy to think how far he has come in just a year. Kids are amazing! I've started helping out at Isak's school twice a week with the accelerated reader program.  There are a handful of Kindergarten kids in Isak's class that are reading books and can take tests on them on the computer to earn points. They accumulate points and earn buttons, prizes, etc. I just go in to help the kids with the computer and read them the questions if they need help.  I started doing this because Isak was one of the kids reading and needed a chance to be challenged and to earn points.  I know every mom thinks their kid is a genius but Isak really has caught onto reading really fast. He's now reading everything he can get his hands on and insists on reading his scripture stories to us at night. He read me the back of the Oxiclean container the other day and then was asking what we could stain a washcloth with to see if it really worked.  He's so funny. And because this is my blog I can brag about my own kids so last week when I went in to help with his class his teacher told me about a test she had just given to all the students. It essentially had regular words as well as nonsense words and the kids had to sound them out and read them at a decent pace. Most kids she told me got 50-60 right out of 128 and that tells her that they are ready to start reading sentences. Then she told me that Isak got the highest score she had every seen a Kindergartner get ever! He got all 128!  The downfall is that he's starting to forget some of his basic letter names because so much focus is on reading so we will work on that. I was pretty proud of him.

Isak wrote me this note one evening after I had gone out for a run and I found it when I got back.   It had been a rough day (worked till 3am and Kevin up till 3am doing taxes) with little sleep and I was pretty grumpy. Totally made my whole day turn around, grateful for this sweet boy we have in our house!

 Isak wrote this note to the leprechaun today after he found his shoes in the freezer this morning. It says, "Dear Leprechaun, please find our orange risk pieces! Love Isak + Dad". I'm pretty sure we don't have any orange risk pieces but apparently the leprechaun needs to find some?? He also set out a trap complete with my sewing thread as trip wire into a box and coins to lure him in. I'm going to have to figure out something to leave in there tonight like a doll shoe. Good thing St. Patricks day is almost over!

Monday night Isak got to go out with Kevin and I to a movie and pizza. He earned a pizza coupon at school for learning all his sight words and got a free mini pizza. We took him to "OZ" with some friends of ours and their kids thinking it would be a great kids movie..well, it was a great movie but it was scary! Isak never mentioned being scared and went to bed fine but I was positive one of us was going to have to sleep with him. 

Isak is in wrestling right now and really enjoys it, although I'm not sure how much he really "wrestles".  His cousin Grady is in there with him and they are pretty fun to watch.  They spend a lot of time mostly not listening and throwing each other on the ground. He starts soccer this week with Lucy on his team and Kevin as his coach and I'm very interested to see how that goes!

 Isak gets out early sometimes on Wednesdays and he loves it when the girls are both asleep when he gets home. We played Risk when he came home last week and he thought it was the greatest thing ever. He makes up all the rules and usually there are random stuffed animals or ZhuZhu pets involved.

Edyn Girl

 Edyn thinks it hilarious to put underwear on her head while I'm folding laundry.

The kids think its just as funny as well and will often help her put it on her head.

 She's so incredibly crazy. And she's also into everything in sight. She lost my keys this week which I searched for for 7 hours to find them in our FHE crate in my room at the bottom. Our TV remote is currently missing and has been for the past few days. She loves to unroll all the toilet paper and tear it up. And use the stool to climb onto the toilet onto the sink. She makes a beeline for the outside anytime the door is open and also loves to put sand/dirt/rocks in her mouth at the park. Super awesome. Good thing she's cute!

End of February/Beginning of March

 Kevin is in charge of the cubscouts in our ward at church and at the end of February there was the Pinewood Derby. Our ward purchased its own track this year which conveniently came to our house in giant long boxes and Kevin got to spend a couple Saturdays assembling it all. It did look pretty awesome though. Kevin got kids for both the kids to make cars and I helped them paint them. They also each took angry bird tattoos left over from their Valentines and added those to them as well.

 Lucy really wanted a pink car with lightning stripes and she was very excited to watch it race.

Isak's was red with blue stripes and he had a lot of fun as well. Its a great tradition and I'm glad our kids, even though they aren't really old enough yet, get to be a part of it through Kevin. We will have plenty of cars when Isak turns eight!

 March 1st was Cat in the Hat day at school and the kids could dress in their pajamas or like a Dr. Seuss character. We happened to have the hat and bow tie and Isak couldn't stop talking about his outfit all week. I went and found him some white gloves and a black sweatshirt and he was good to go. He even sang me a pretty awesome song the night before that he made up about Cat in the Hat. I'm pretty sure he wore the outfit the next day as well.

March 2nd was my Snake River Half Marathon that I've been training for for a while. It was freezing cold, I lost my knee brace in a porta potty prior to race start time, my energy gel fell out of my pocket and turns out I was at the beginnings of the stomach flu as well. And my parents, who had my kids, got super lost on the way to the race (which had no cell phone reception) and got there about 15 minutes after I finished. Pretty much not the race I was expecting but I still knocked a few minutes off of my previous best time. The way home was super miserable and I laid in the front seat with  my head down hoping I wouldn't die. I couldn't stand to get in the shower so I laid in the bathtub when I got home. It was pretty awesome. Then Kevin left for Vegas for five days for work the next night and my parents had to come help my pathetic self take care of my three kids.  I learned a couple lessons from this experience. One. Do not let Kevin leave town the day after a big race because if not sick I will probably be quite sore and tired. Two. Give whoever is driving to said race a map of the location because they are usually in the middle of nowhere. Three. Do not let kids eat at McDonalds after the race because the smell will make me vomit.  Four. I need pockets in my running shorts/capris somewhere or else I will lose my gel. Five. Training hard really does pay off. Even when you don't feel your best you can still improve. Six. I need a new fitness hobby for a little while. I'm exhausted.