Trek

I have to admit that Trek was the last thing on my mind.  I knew that I needed to prepare more than we did, and I felt guilty about that.  We just had so much going on.  We were either out of town, or up until 2 am working on the kitchen.  My house was in shambles. So when we were packing for Trek, I felt like I needed it like I needed a hole in my head.

In the end, though, I am glad we went.  We really did have a great time.  I was nervous because it can all come down to who is in your "family", but we had great teenagers.  They were truly awesome kids, who thanked us for every little thing we did, and did everything they could to pitch in and help.

We were assigned to be "Ma" and "Pa" on the handcart trip, and assigned 8 "children" to walk with.  As we were piling out of the buses, I thought we looked rather ridiculous, but three days later, it seemed perfectly natural to walk with hundreds of people in pioneer clothing.  Our family dynamic fell quickly to sarcasm, which suits my husband just fine.  (And me, too some days!)  But it was a good, fun sarcasm, and to be honest, I don't think I heard an actual complaint out of those kids the entire time.

On the first day, we went down a hill that many pioneers mentioned in their journals as being especially tough. Backing a handcart down a hill was more difficult than I thought, but we made it.  Only to be told that the Indian chief (one of our leaders in disguise) said we couldn't cross this spot and had to go back up the hill, or else face his warriors.  (Cue the sarcasm: "I think we should take them.  I've got my pocket knife.  You got your pocket knife?  Yeah, see, we got this.  No need to go back up the biggest hill ever.")  We made it up, only to be told that we could give them two cans of food in exchange for safe passage back down the hill.  That was a really tiring day.

They were all tiring days, actually.  But spending them with great people was worth it.  It ended up being a last hurrah for my husband, who has been working with the youth in the church for years and just switched to work with adults.  He's happy about some parts of the change, but seeing him with those boys gave me an appreciation of how much he enjoyed working with all of the boys over the years.

Sewing lessons

I've been thinking about running sewing lessons in my house for years.  I taught Kaitlyn when she was 6, and she has been begging for more lessons ever since.  We just never quite carved out enough time for it.  The appeal of teaching a sewing class was mainly because I had grand plans of what I wanted to teach her, and it seemed like a waste to create worksheets and lessons for just one girl.

So this year, I went for it, despite our kitchen and house being in shambles.  I had planned on having the class in the dining room, but I had to settle for the basement.  I'm glad I did.  Being right next to my sewing area really helped.

I didn't take a lot of pictures, because it kept me really busy to have 4 sewing students working at a time.  I learned a lot about what to change next time.  For example, I had one 6 year old in the beginning class, and she was probably a bit too young.  (Though her mom said that she loves it and talks about it constantly.  So at least she got an appreciation for it, and some basics!)  I will certainly change up my intermediate class to be longer next time, since we ran out of time every day.  But overall, it was a big success!

And most importantly, Kaitlyn had a wonderful time.  She filled her zipper pouch with sewing supplies and took it everywhere she went for weeks.  Having sewing class scheduled into my day really helped us both.

Happy students were an extra bonus!

San Diego

The reality of kitchen renovation is that the cabinets are the biggest step, but not even close to the last.  To get countertops, a person has to measure the installed cabinets, and then you have to wait at least two weeks for them to make the counters.  So we would basically be stuck.

Christopher had been traveling a bit for work, but right after the cabinets were put in he was scheduled to go to San Diego for an audit.  His company is very flexible on letting family come along.  They pay for the hotel room, and they "reimbursed" him for the money the flight would have cost.  So we could just put that toward gas money and drive the whole family down to join him.  It was odd to go on vacation after so much chaos at home, but I think it was wonderful!

We were going to do the trip as low key as possible.  We just spent thousands on cabinets, after all.  But the one item that was not negotiable was Legoland.  Our kids watch The Lego Movie in the car almost any time we go on a trip, and they have a three minute ad for Legoland in the trailers.  Our kids had decided that Legoland was like their Mecca.  The advertisement convinced them that it was the most amazing place ever.

Matching theme park shirts has become our thing, now. The kids really love the shirts, and they talk about the trip every time they pull out the shirts to wear.  I just love how easily I can spot my kids in a crowd. I made stencils out of freezer paper and let the kids paint their own shirts, which was a lot of fun.

Legoland is very different from Disneyland.  It wasn't as well maintained and immersive, for one thing.  But we all loved how interactive it is.  It is a theme park built around a toy, so the toy is EVERYWHERE.  There was a place to build your own car and race it down the track.

There was another spot to build boats and race those down the little river.

The kids loved all of the rides and places to explore.

The kids were especially excited to meet Unikitty and Emmet from the movie.

I loved how the bricks were just EVERYWHERE.  Big foam ones to stack, and even ones to float down the lazy river with.  Tyler and Kaitlyn wanted to stay on that lazy river all day just so they could try and build towers.

The kids liked the models, too.

I love this picture.  That's not how you pose with the evil Darth Vader, cutie pie.

We got a two day pass, so we went one with with Christopher, and then came back while he was working a couple of days later.

See?  I was even there!  Jasmine likes to take pictures, when I let her use the camera.

Tyler's favorite ride really surprised me.  We were about to leave the water park when he told me he wanted to try the pirate ride.  I had read about this ride online.  Many parks have a log flume ride where some people get wet, and others only get sprinkled on.  This ride, however, was a sold wall of water that fully drenches everyone on the entire boat.  Tyler insisted, so off he went.

He was all smiles as he came around afterward, and then I watched as everyone got off . . .except Tyler.  He just scooted over (there was no line for this crazy ride) so that he could go again.  There was a small line the next time, so he had to get off and come back around for his third trip.  Crazy kid!

Jasmine's favorite ride was these little cars.

She would have driven around that tiny track all day.  She would ride around, all smiles, as she dodged through the kids that were not steering as well as her.  And then when the ride stopped, she would unbuckle as fast as lightning, run to the exit to get her "driver's liscense" card, hand me the card, and run back into line as fast as she could.  Usually there wasn't a line and she could just get right back on.  I think I counted over a dozen turns on that ride.

On one turn, Daddy reached out to give her a high five . . .

. . . which was the only time she got stuck on the ride.  (That is Kaitlyn's arm trying to reach out and help.  Not the best plan.)

The bigger kid version looked pretty fun, too.

On the days we weren't in Legoland, we mostly relaxed.  I took the kids to Old Town and the Mormon Batallion museum.

We goofed around in the hotel pool.

And we took the kids to the beach one evening.

We debated on skipping Sea World, but they are changing the shows even more next year.  I'm not sure our kids would ever have a chance to see "Shamu" again.  So we went for it.

Every time we go to Disneyland, Kaitlyn asks to ride the teacups.  And I tell her no.  Mom and Dad don't like getting dizzy and sick to our stomachs, thank you, and the line is always long.  At Sea World, there was no line and she could go by herself.

We were going to drive until we got tired that night, but there were no rooms in Mesquite when I stopped to rest.  So Christopher just kept driving, and we ended up going straight from Sea World to our house.  We were back to exhausted renovations at home, but the break was really awesome.

Sliding into summer

May is always a lot of little events as summer comes into view.

Kaitlyn had her usual gymnastics show.

She was excited about getting a trophy instead of a medal this year.  

Jasmine went on a field trip with her preschool class to Red Lobster.  She wasn't sure about that creature, but I think she liked it.

We went on a hike with Tyler's friend Austin.

We went to a crawfish boil at a local restaurant.  

Don't let Kaitlyn's goofy face fool you.  She didn't eat a lot of them, but she took one home and kept in the fridge with grand plans to prank and scare all of her friends.

They even had fun games to play outside.

We had a yard sale.  We've never actually done that before.  Usually I just take things to the thrift store, a box at a time.  But it was time to do a really big purge.

Kaitlyn had an orchestra concert for the end of the year.

Jasmine "graduated" from  . . . the first year of preschool.  It was essentially just all of us getting together in the park and singing some songs.

Over Memorial Day, we spent a night at a campground with all of Christopher's family.  And . . . I forgot my camera.  Christopher took a picture of Tyler's new favorite moth friend on his phone, though.

And then, as the summer began, we started the most epic home improvement project ever.

My kitchen has always been very functional, but we knew early on that someday we were going to replace the whole thing.  We could have fixed things, but there were too many things we wanted to fix.  By the time we replaced the counters that were peeling on the sides and drawer slides that stick and everything else, we still wouldn't be happy because we wanted that drop ceiling out.

So we took it out.

 I started talking to cabinet makers over Spring Break.  We thought about doing an IKEA kitchen, and I even had it all laid out in their computer program.  But I just didn't like any of their door fronts.  We ended up using the same company for cabinets that many of Christopher's family has, and they were awesome.  They were 30% more than getting the IKEA kitchen I was trying to talk myself into liking, and it was fully custom to everything we wanted, and fully installed instead of spending weeks assembling cabinets.

The only problem was timing.  Our cabinet maker told us as we were making changes and perfecting the layout that he expected the build to take 4-6 weeks.  If we got closer to summer, it could run longer.  That was fine with us.  We hadn't demolished the old kitchen yet, and it would take a lot of work to get it ready for the new cabinets.  We needed that time.

When we put the money down, though, our cabinet salesman came back with a date 3 weeks and 2 days out.  And Christopher had a work trip scheduled for one whole week of that.  He ended up spending all of Memorial Day helping his mother move out of her house and into a condo.  So we had two weeks and one day, essentially.  Christopher took out the old cabinets, took down the old ceiling, rewired half the house (the wires ran diagonally across the drop ceiling and didn't have enough slack to get tucked up in the raised ceiling), moved the outlets for the fridge, microwave and oven, took out the flooring and leveled some parts of the floor,and probably a lot of other things I'm forgetting.  He hired someone to do the drywall work for us, but that was it.

In the meantime, the kids finished school for the year.  We tried to keep things working normally around here, which was a challenge sometimes.  I think Christopher was up until 2 am for a week or two straight.

Jasmine got to go to Itty Bitty Ball.

She loved it.  She especially loved that the other kids were jealous and didn't get to play.

Kaitlyn became obsessed with running lemonade stands.  We even added cotton candy one day.

 But mostly, we just kept plugging away on the kitchen until the cabinets came in on June 9.