He did the whole thing in one weekend! I love the floors and he is amazing. We decided to go with the same floors as in the apartment and I am glad we did.
On Sunday we had some of the Hsiao family for dinner. The last session of Conference the boys were excited to "pitch their tents" and make a fort to listen to the prophets speak.
Mark continued with the floors while listening.
We were so excited when they were done enough to set up the ping pong table!
I can't remember if it was a special occasion or not for this picture, but I do remember walking into the kitchen on an April Saturday morning to Mark happily making breakfast for everyone! It definitely became a special occasion at that moment! No one makes Spam and Eggs like Mark Hsiao! Seriously, it tastes amazing!
I took the boys to see Treasure Island at the children's theater while Mark worked on the basement. We are excited to see it this summer at the Shakespeare Festival.
April had some finicky weather. There was some warm days, but mostly cold and wet. This was the last snow of the season.
The boys had their fun run fundraiser at the school. They both were super excited to race and are both great little runners. I love this picture of Timmy with some of his best buddies after the run. He has some great friends.
Mark was able to stop by and say hello before work. Brian and Timmy are always so happy when he can make it to something at school.
Brian is a machine when it comes to endurance. He is the smallest kid in his grade but also the fastest at running for a distance! He ran the most laps out of all the third graders! He gets determined and competitive and just keeps running! He was so cute. They gave everyone cups to hold so they only used one cup when stopping to get water. Brian didn't want to hold it because he said it would slow him down. He also insisted on tucking in his shirt so it didn't restrict his leg movement.
The Saturday before Easter we headed to the park bright and early to help hide the eggs for the neighborhood egg hunt. It was a beautiful morning.
Then Mark got back to work on the basement and I took the boys to the ranch for the egg hunt up there. My mom had everyone working on Ukrainian Egg decorating. My boys will never go back to regular egg dying again. They loved it so much my mom let us borrow her kit and they made many more eggs at home the next week.
Then it was time to find all the eggs at the ranch!
Easter Sunday was lovely with church and a visit to Mark's parent's house for dinner. Here's my version of the Easter Sunday dress up picture that everyone posts on social media. Mark is busy serving at church and the boys and I snapped a few selfies on our way out. It was quite a day for me. Last minute I had to take over singing time and leading the kids in sacrament meeting and I did sharing time too. I combined singing and sharing time and it actually ended up being the best Easter Sunday in primary! The spirit was strong and I know that many testimonies of Jesus Christ were strengthened that day. My testimony of prayer was also strengthened as my prayers were answered with help that day in knowing what to teacher, and to share and to do with those wonderful primary kids. I am grateful for the opportunity to teach my kiddos too!
The lilacs bloomed and filled our yard with their heavenly smell!
I painted and painted and Mark calked and installed baseboards and trim and the basement started to look finished!
Brian and Timmy took the free time throughout a week to create some beautiful Ukrainian eggs!
We bought a couch for the basement too!
I spent my Fridays and many other days at school teaching the songs and playing the piano for the first grade Hungary Caterpillar play. And because I was playing the piano I didn't get any pictures or video of the actual performances. I hopped off the piano to snap this quick picture during one of the practices, but that's all I got. I know those kids were absolutely adorable though and I am so glad that I didn't mess up my piano playing because there were hundreds of people there to watch! I wasn't expecting such an audience.
Timmy got to sing by one of his best friends.
I did get someone to get a picture of my cute Timmy with me at the piano afterwards. When it was all over I realized that I should have invited grandparents to come watch because Timmy and I didn't have anyone there to watch us perform! Oops! Mark had important meetings at work or he would have come. Oh well, it was fun to be a part of Timmy's play and all the first graders say hello to me now.
Back in March I attempted to have one and then two broody hens hatch fertilized eggs. I bought two nice little boxes for them to sit on their eggs. I thought everything was going to work and then none of the eggs hatched. Well, one kind of hatched but didn't survive. Those hens worked so hard sitting on their eggs for more than three weeks and I knew they really wanted to be mommies. So I went to IFA and bought eight chicks. During the night Mark quietly slipped those chicks under the moms and amazingly enough the hens thought their eggs hatched! They took care of the babies right away. They ended up sharing the babies and tried to fit everyone into one box, so Mark made a bigger box for me. Here they are the first day. The other hen named Taylor is behind Scales and you can see it would be difficult for her to get out. We definitely needed a bigger box since they decided to share babies and sleeping quarters. Can you see the baby peaking out? It was so cold the first week and I was so amazed how the moms kept the chicks nice and warm under their wings.
The chicks learned quickly from the moms and the moms have been so protective. It is absolutely a joy to watch those chicks with their mommies.
I had to decorate Brian's class door for teacher appreciation week. I am not crafty and creative, but it worked out very well using Mark's idea of using origami. The boys love origami and so they learned how to make paper cranes and they made all the cranes to hang on the door. It was the best door in the school and they were so proud to tell everyone they made those cranes! The students in the class signed the cloud at the bottom. I do appreciate my kid's teachers. I know how hard teaching is!
