Six Weeks in One Post

I'm dreadfully behind because we've been dreadfully busy and I've been dreadfully tired!  But today I'm getting back on track, although I make no promises of staying on track!  I haven't been very good at taking pictures, but I have a few.

Cousin Bailey had a Narnia birthday party.  How her mother Emily managed to pull off such a creative and fun birthday party with four-month-old twins is beyond me.  Her house is tidy, her babies are on a predictable schedule, and she runs a mini hotel with people constantly coming and going from her home.  I'm full of admiration for her hussle, organization, patience, devotion to making her older child feel special, generosity, and ability to take things as they come and move forward in faith that all will work out in the end.  Okay, back to the Narnia party...

The invitation said to dress in Narnia attire and you better believe that my girls jumped all over that.  They went horseback riding in costume and wanted to ride bare back and don swords, but the non-imaginative and safety-seeking horse place wouldn't go for it.

The cousins were in town and we took them to a park on a rare warm and sunny day.  Our girls had thought they had died and gone back to Auburn heaven with such large, open spaces.  We're adjusting to the confines and boundaries of apartment living.

Our stake conference is held in the old tabernacle so Tennie, Adele and I decided to join the stake choir so we could sing in the tabernacle!  Pretty cool, although we didn't get to wear any matching gowns...

My cousin Shane called me one day and said he thought he saw one of our girls on the front of a magazine - one of our cousin A.J.'s iStock photos.  Sure enough, there were the three of them with Ceci front and center.  It was just a local magazine but still super fun.

March 22nd Tennie turned 13!!!  This is no small birthday but she didn't get too much hoopla because the girls were in a play that day and others around it.  Two weeks straight we got to bed at 11:00PM.  That wasn't fun.  But Tennie is fun, and she is most definitely a teen, in the best sense of the word...

The play was Wizard of Oz and while they had relatively small parts they loved it.  Tennie was a Jitterbug, an Ozian and part of a small singing group called The Optimistic Voices.  Adele was a Munchkin (Lullabye League) and Jitterbug, and Ceci was a Munchkin (Baby) and Jitterbug.  (There are more pictures somewhere but I'll never get around to catching up if I look on every devise so this will have to do...)

Ceci is the middle flower

We tried really hard to do our full Easter week of traditions with reenactments of the final days of the Savior's life, a passover, and other activities.  We had to simplify out of sheer necessity but it still worked, mostly.  It was a very nice Easter.  Painting Easter eggs was a full-day affair sticking some in dyes whenever we were home.  Adele had a few eggs with her artistic style on them.

We spent a week in St. George enjoying warmer weather.  The girls had a tennis lesson every day and we hung out with my brother Mitch, his wife, Joann, and their amazingly adorable sons Tag and Pack.

The girls and Tag had endless fun exploring the red cliffs above St. George

Our friends, the Florences, from California were in Salt Lake and we took Addy to The Leonardo Museum's Lab, a place where they have all sorts of create art projects one can play around with.  I love this place.

We have some new friends, the Whitings.  They homeschool and have been a great resource and great friends.  Ceci does an American Girl class with one of their daughters, the girls are doing a Play Theory class with their girls (games that teach leadership and life skills, created by LaRee Florence), Tennie just did a Constitution Bowl (a team of four memorizes questions regarding the constitution and has a competition with other teams to see who knows the most) with their oldest daughter, and we get together to play often.  We went to the Great Salt Lake Nature Center where thousands of migrating birds nest, and again the girls loved the wide open spaces.

We've been to several plays around town.  We love the Utah Children's Theater where the girls may get some theater action next fall, and we saw a friend's amazing junior high play as well as The Magic Flute at the Utah Opera.

The girls don't seem as creative yet here in the apartment.  I think they feel a little bound.  I'll write about that in another post.  But last week while munching on pretzels Adele thought it would be super fun to make a log cabin out of stick pretzels.  The other two joined the project and they were building for hours.  We study history through literature, and this came about while reading about the Oregon Trail and what it took to clear land and build a cabin.  Way to go Adele for coming up with a nice, complementary-themed art project.

Geoff is traveling quite a bit.  He's in Guatamala now, and returned from Ghana a few weeks ago.  I'm adjusting to not having him around as much.  It seems like we're always missing someone (which we are) whenever we're out.  I notice I sometimes feel a little put out when he gets home at six every night - like I'm annoyed he has a job.  But his work at the LDS church is challenging and rewarding and going well.  

We are still adjusting to many things with this move.  It has been a difficult move and transition for us for many reasons.  But life is good and we're moving forward.  The weather is occasionally spring-like and we're looking forward to more outdoor and city explorations soon.  I'll try to be better about posting them!