But now I am SIX!

When I was One, I had just begun.

When I was Two, I was nearly new.

When I was Three, I was hardly me.

When I was Four, I was not much more.

When I was Five, I was just alive.

 But now I am Six, I am clever as clever.
So I think I'll be Six now and forever.

-A.A. Milne



Six is our favorite! See HERE and HERE

Byron's Weekend....Plus

We finally got Byron to Topaz Mountain.  

It wasn't as desolate as I remember.  It was harder to pound the rock than I remember.  I think it was harder to find the Topaz than Byron expected, but it was a fun experience.  I am proud of all the kids for climbing the mountain and doing their best with the heavy tools!  They each found a topaz or two on the ground and helped us go through the rock we pounded. 

Along the way we saw antelope (good luck!) and wild Great Basin horses and of course lots and lots of rabbits.  

The weather was perfect...a comfortable 50 degree sunshiny day but 4:00 hit and my hands were getting too cold to pound the rock. The kids had scampered back down the hill earlier so Darin and I hauled the buckets of tools down ourselves. We headed out toward Delta and found a great place to get burgers. Ashton's Burger Barn.

We were hungry and the burgers were delicious!

We had loong night at the luxurious Budget Inn (that was sarcasm right there in case you didn't catch it).  The accommodations were rough but, the couple running the place were super duper sweet, and there was hot water. 

Darin and Byron set out for the U-Dig Fossil site "Best Trilobite collecting in the world". They were extremely successful.  Byron was over the moon excited about this experience.

S, M and I walked around Delta and found ourselves some fun at the city park.

The Great Basin Pioneer Museum

(I love how all the women embroidered their own flower motif and then their names...must have been a wedding gift)

Artwork made up entirely of butterfly and moth wings!

and finally, the Topaz Museum to learn about life at the Japanese internment camp.

This played right into my plans to teach the kids all about WWII this summer so we will be ready to visit Pearl Harbor when we go to Hawaii.

We met up with Darin and Bub at the Delta Dairy Freeze (fantastic malts...if you are in Delta drive right on past that nasty McD's and go to the Dairy Freeze down the street) and then drove happy and exhausted on to Huntington for the annual flashlight egg hunt.

Pre-dusk hot dogs cooked the best possible way.

I love that my kids get to explore Grandpa's farm in the funnest way possible!

Now both Byron and Miriam get to go to the big kid section of the farm.

Sunday was good/hard.  

Lots of fun cousin time, I got to see my sisters, but it was a long tiring drive home and no one wanted to see Monday come.  Well...that is not exactly true.  I quite enjoyed doing laundry all by myself on Monday.

Spring Breakin' 2016

Our official Spring Break start day was last Friday. 

We had a lazy dazy morning, the kind I LOVE.  Much to the kids disappointment, we still had piano lessons that afternoon so we made it fun by taking Darin out for lunch.  I called it Pho with the Pho-amily!  I love introducing the kids to new foods.  Of course the they would have preferred hamburgers and fries but they did think it was tasty. It's like chicken noodle soup only with brisket and or steak or meatballs...sounds strange but it's actually really good.

Post lunch and piano lessons we came home to dye eggs.

We did the rubber cement way which was really fun! (or possibly we were all high on fumes and that was fun...I kid I kid!! but I did get carded trying to buy that stuff.) 

Saturday Miriam had ski group at Deer Valley.  She is in love with that resort.  Even though the snow was kind of icy she still loved it. 

Darin and I lumberjacked in the yard some more.  They boys played. I forced the kids to watch The Journey of Natty Gann that evening because it was a favorite of mine growing up. I wanted to BE Natty Gann (not during the girls prison part, or the part when she gets yelled at, or beat up...but the part where John Kusack kisses her...that part, that was me). They were skeptical but they ended up enjoying it. I am re-reading Moon over Manifest, very similar heroine in that book, same time period.

Easter Sunday.

I was up and gone to choir practice by 8. Darin did a great job getting the kids fancied up in their Easter finery.  Choir is a huge pain, but man, I would be ungrateful if I didn't take the opportunity to go.  Our pianist and conductor are seriously talented musicians. Their sacrifice of time and energy are not unnoticed or unappreciated.  Now that Miriam is 12 I am trying to talk her into coming.

The Easter Bunny came while we were at church.

She ("Easter" is named for the goddess Eastre which is where the word estrogen comes from, can't get much more feminine than that!) again left a trail of ribbon to where baskets were hidden...and this year the room where the basket was found held all the treats for that child. We have a fairly simple Easter Bunny, new swimming suits and a few chocolate bunnies. 

She did bring these for us to get use to before our Hawaii trip.

Will we look crazy cruzin the lazy river with this gear on?

I checked the weather and saw that rain and snow were forecasted most of the days of Spring Break so we took advantage of the 60 degree weather! We went to Ogden to borrow cake pans from Alicia and then went to the Ogden Parkway with scooters.

It's just starting to do the spring transformation thing so it is not as beautiful as when it's in full bloom, but anytime by a bubbling river is a good time. Watching fish jump, skipping rocks, sitting on fallen tree stumps and just listening to the water rush.  The trail also has these exercise stations along the way we stopped to try out.  That would be such a fun way to exercise...lucky Ogdoneons.

Since our Spring Break was so long, and since I fully intended to make my kids do chores, practice the piano and keep up with reading and stuff, I wanted it somehow make it special too.  So each of the kids got to pick 1 must do activity they wanted to do over Spring Break.

Miriam (a huge How to Cake it fan) wanted to make a Yolanda's Mega Breakfast cake (with a few personal taste adjustments).
This cake is a case of "alls well that ends well" (because it turned out lovely) but day 1 of Spring Break did almost do me in!  This cake didn't have fancy decorations because we don't own any icing tools but I learned that we don't even own basic baking tools we need to make anything much fancier than whipped cream.  This cake called for Italian Meringue Buttercream...which is much much different than normal buttercream which Miriam had mastered by age 8.

Soooo, Miriam made the waffles, baked the crumble topping, and the blueberry lemon cake all by herself, and they all turned out delightful! She has proven herself to be a wonderful baker....messy but wonderful!

Then she moved on to the buttercream....luckily we had a candy thermometer (actually my mom's), we don't have the kitchen aid they said to use but we went with beaters...no dice....tears.  So M called a friend and they hauled her mom's Kitchen aid over to our house (in the rain/snow), but she didn't have the whip attachment they suggested. Another failed attempt...more tears.  We texted another friend, asked to use her mom's whisk attachment and invited her over.  Miriam came to my room (where I was folding laundry away from everything baking related) in tears a third time saying they must have added the butter too soon it didn't work a third time! I was so over Italian merinque buttercream by that time. So. Over. It.  So over Miriam's tears.  So over the sticky mess in the kitchen. and the running to the grocery store (again.... snowing so I didn't think I could send M on her bike). I just went in and turned the dang thing on high and with a cuss in my head (not a prayer in my heart) demanded it whip up.

Easter Miracle....it did.

The girls trimmed up the cakes, layered and iced, and decorated to their hearts content.

There were more tears as Miriam cleaned up the kitchen, where I did declare (loudly) that was the last cake she will make until she gets her own kitchen or gets a job at a bakery.  That was a sad conversation with the worst timing ever. To be fair Miriam did a fantastic job cleaning the kitchen after that, which did make me reconsider.

Friends came back for cake that night after dinner.

The cake was delicious.

The blasted Italian Merigue Buttercream is fantastic.

Miriam is a great baker.

She is becoming a great cleaner upper.

I am glad it worked out..........I am glad that it is over.

Tuesday was exercise class at the church with kids. The exercisers took up 1/2 of the gym while basketballs, and scooters took up the other half. Miriam worked out with us ladies.  Later that afternoon I shocked the kids by taking them to Zootopia with friends.  I was really surprised how much I liked it! The kids of course loved it.

Wednesday was Soren's  SB pick.  Swimming!  3 hours of it, with friends, for the boys and I.  Miriam went to a game day with a friend and came swimming later.

What did I say....snorkeling in the lazy river!!

Byron loves it, Soren says he can't breathe...but he will get the hang of it.

(and then in the bathtub later that evening)

Thursday was another easy morning.  We ran to Kaysville to play with friends for a few hours before heading down to Piano lessons (twice during spring break?! the kids were incensed!).  Then home to get ready for Byron's Spring Break pick, which will be a post all to itself.