monthly photo summary
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| 5/1: Ruby has been preparing for her upcoming recital. She has wanted her routine to be a surprise so I haven't been going in to watch at the end. Her teacher still sends me pictures occasionally and it's fun to see what kinds of things she's doing. |
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| 5/2: Ellie decided to run for Second Grade Mayor for the Second Grade City. Ellie made a campaign poster and wrote her speech all by herself. She actually wrote two speeches and decided to go with the one that ended, "Vote for me and you'll get a basket of treats instead of a basket of regrets." 😂 Ellie narrowly lost her class election, by only one vote. If only Stella had been at school that day! |
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| 5/4: The canal trail finally got paved! It's not completed yet but we had to celebrate by taking a ride on the new trail. |
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| 5/5: MAC Developmental meet at Murray Park Center This was the first meet that Jeff hasn't been working so the whole family came. Ellie had just gotten comfortable with meets at Cottonwood and then we come to Murray and it's craziness. We showed up and none of our coaches were there. It was super crowded and hectic - a lot like her first meet. Ellie swam the 100 freestyle [first time swimming this event], 50 backstroke, and 50 freestyle. Ellie was nervous and she clearly wasn't swimming her fastest, but as always I was proud of her for going down there and swimming her races. In-between events Jeff and Ruby went walking around, which seemed to help Ruby not get too bored. |
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| Anna Lisa Tulip After the meet we let Ellie pick where she wanted to eat for dinner and she chose Mo' Bettah's in Lehi. After dinner we decided to stop at Thanksgiving Point since it was the last day of the Tulip Festival. |
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| my favorite tulip of the day |
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| Ruby was not thrilled about being there. She brought her book to read while we walked around. And didn't want to wear her flip-flops. We knew that Vel was there for a symphony concert and Ellie wanted to find her so badly. The girls asked if they could stay by the waterfall while Jeff and I walked around. We gave them Jeff's phone and left them to keep an eye out for Grammie. |
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| The Italian Garden was almost fully bloomed on the last day of the festival. |
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| We got a call from the girls saying they'd found Grammie! We met them back at the waterfall where Vel and Deborah were seated for the concert. We hung out for a while and then made the girls leave even though they really wanted to stay. |
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| One of the festival vendors was selling shaped cotton candy - in shapes like pineapples and tulips. They were so cool! We stood in line to get one and just a few minutes before we got to the front of the line they announced that they couldn't make the shapes anymore because of the high humidity. We stayed and ordered one anyway. (Ruby earned a face painting kit from turning in her stretching calendar for aerial lessons. You can see she's had lots of fun with it - painting her face and anyone else's who would let her.) |
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| 5/7: I started CBM testing on 5/2. I worked this day at Oak Hollow but we got done early enough that I had time to go on a bike ride! There was a crew that was taking down all of the black chainlink fence along the PRT in the section between Bangerter and Highland. And then as I was riding back on the section between Bangerter and 13th there was a white truck driving on the trail! It was probably a work truck but it wasn't even close to where the work was happening. I was annoyed but at least he didn't get in my way. |
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| 5/8: Ruby and Ellie put all their money together to buy this tree swing for the backyard - after playing on the Brower's tree swing and decided they had to have one, too. (Okay, I chipped in, too.) We bought the swing and then I was worried that it wouldn't have enough clearance on the one branch that we could use. We tried it out anyway and it totally worked! Ruby and Ellie were playing on it any chance they could get and showing it off to friends for several days. Hours and hours of fun = money well-spent! |
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| 5/9: I did testing at Sprucewood! And, the funniest thing is that Ellie got sent to my table for testing. I took her over to test with Erica though since I'm not allowed to test my own kid. It sure was fun seeing her and all her cute classmates. Testing at Sprucewood is my favorite since I get to see so many primary kids. |
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| 5/13: Mother's Day! Ellie made me eight Mother's Day gifts and she was just dying to have me open all of them first thing in the morning. Some of the gifts she'd made at school, some of them she's been working on at home. They were all very sweet and straight from the heart. Ruby gave me a card she'd made at school...and it was blank inside. So there you go. |
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| "Today you get awarded World's Best Mom. Congratulations" |
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| 5/14: I tested at Lone Peak and we got finished early enough again for me to squeeze in a ride. I was really bummed to find that the PRT was now closed just past the bridge over Bangerter. That seriously messes up my biking route! |
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| 5/15: Jeff and I signed up to help clean the temple with our ward. We opted to put the girls to bed and leave them at home since we had to be there at 9:45pm. Ellie was a little nervous but Ruby was on big sister mode and said she'd take care of Ellie. They also knew they could call Grammie if they needed anything. I had planned on keeping my phone with me, too, but once we changed into our white cleaning scrubs I found that all the pockets were sewn shut. I had faith that nothing bad would happen while we were serving in the House of the Lord. It turned out to be a lot of fun cleaning with our ward group on the baptistry level. I got put on hard surface & wood cleaning duty with MaryJane Burton and Jeff got put on trash duty. It was super neat to see the inner workings of the temple, like the boiler room, the break room, and offices. I wanted to take pictures of everything! |
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| 5/16: I tested at Sunrise and Andersen, Amy's oldest boy, was sent to my table! I had been watching for him but didn't expect to be able to test him! I was all excited to see him and he was not so excited. It was fun to talk to him though and he let met take a picture so I could text it to Amy. |
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| 5/17: Ellie attended the Battle of the Fish Bowl meet at Cottonwood. From the communication I received, I understood that it was a relay-only, fun, team-building event. I never got an event schedule email like usual meets, so we showed up not knowing what she was going to swim. We eventually found out that she'd be swimming a relay race with a bunch of teenagers and then she was signed up for three regular races. It was so crazy and unorganized and super frustrating. Ellie swam backstroke in her relay and thought that was really fun. Then we only stayed for her to swim two of her three other events because we hadn't planned on being at the meet till past 8pm. It was the most frustrating meet experience yet. |
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| 5/19: Ruby got invited to two birthday parties on the same day and luckily she was able to go to both of them! Ruby went to Sophie Sue's party at All Star, then I just had to pick her up a half-hour early so that she could make it to Alta's party at the movie theater. |
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| After we dropped Ruby off at All Star Jeff, Ellie, and I went to check out the brand new Draper Cubby's! It's huge and so cute. The food was great and it wasn't crowded, so it was a positive first experience. So excited to have a Cubby's in the hood. |
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| We took Ellie to visit Sego Lily Gardens while Ruby was at the party, too. None of us had been to this free community garden before. It's not huge, but it has eleven themed gardens with thousands of varieties of plants, flowers, and trees - each marked with identification tags. We're going to have to go back with Ruby in the summer. |
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| Japanese Wisteria |
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| Ellie's favorite. She loves mini cacti. |
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| Ellie played with Sophie pretty much the whole time Ruby was at Alta's party. They wanted to make slime and we had the ingredients so that's what they did. They split the slime so that Sophie could take some home. |
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| After watching The Greatest Showman at the dollar theater Shalane drove the party girls back to their house for pizza, presents, and playing. Of course, Ruby didn't want to leave when I came to pick her up. Ruby and Alta got some extra minutes to play while Shalane and I talked. |
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| 5/20: Jordan River Temple Rededication All four of us got to attend the Jordan River Temple rededication! We didn't have regular church, Jeff was off work, and Ellie's old enough now. The temple was first built and dedicated in 1981 and it has been closed for two years for this major renovation. Jordan River is where Jeff did his endowment and when we were dating we did baptisms for the dead there once when I came to visit him in the summer. |
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| I went with Ellie up to the canal trail so she could test it out for roller skating. It's super straight and flat so it's an ideal place for skating outdoors. It happened to be a stormy and very windy afternoon. All Ellie had to do was stand there and the wind pushed her along! Until we turned around and she was going against the headwind! |
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| Grammie got a new trampoline jumping mat to replace the old one that had a big hole in it. Jeff helped install the new one and the girls helped test out the new bounce. |
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| 5/23: The Girl Squad got together for a belated birthday dessert night for Cheryl. We met at Last Course to catch up on all the latest. This was the night we learned it was official: Amy is moving to D.C. 😠It was an emotional evening. Knowing this was one of our last times hanging out together we had to get a group selfie to mark the occasion. |
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| 5/25: We picked up Alta and Ellie to come play at our house after school. I asked the girls if they wanted to get ice cream and the Brower girls voted for Arctic Circle because of their Flavor Burst ice cream cones. My girls had never had them before so they were pretty excited to try one. |
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| We even went inside to order and eat the ice cream. The girls were all hyper and silly and pretty much the life of the restaurant. |
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| Olive had to go to the ER that afternoon after splitting her lip open. Alta and Ruby drew this get well message for Olive on the patio. |
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| 5/26: Ellie got to go with Grammie to see Tuck Everlasting at Hale Centre Theatre. We got Grammie season tickets for Christmas and she invited each of the girls to a play. Ellie had a wonderful time and talked all about the amazing play when she got home. |
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| While Ellie was at the play I took Ruby for a mommy-daughter outing to get a mani/pedi. (I got my fingernails painted while she got her toes & fingers done.) We didn't really get to hang out but Ruby thought it was wonderful. |
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| Ruby has been asking to go shopping at Justice ever since she started hanging out with some girls at school who wear Justice clothes and were "shocked" that Ruby hadn't ever shopped there. I had pretty much planned on never stepping foot in that store but I knew it would mean a lot to her to go pick something out. For better or worse, that store is full of clothes Ruby loves. She was in heaven browsing all of the sequined, sparkly merchandise. I sneaked some live photos of her while she was dance-shopping. |
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| 5/28: Jeff got off work early for Memorial Day! We went to dinner and then to the TP gardens. They were open till 8 and it was practically empty! We played picture hide & seek again. (We give the girls one of our phones, they hide and then send us a picture clue of where they are hiding, then Jeff and I have to figure out where they are and find them.) It was a lot of fun, although I still get a little nervous when it takes them a long time to text us. |
