April began with it getting warmer and warmer. We decided it was time to pick the rest of the Valencias. We got about 25 oranges from that tree, which is amazing considering we have had 0 from it before this year. We learned that citrus have on and off years, so unfortunately there are only a handful of baby green oranges on the Valencia this year. There aren't any from the other trees. We both juiced and ate some of these oranges. Wow they made so much juice! They weren't that sweet of oranges, but the whole experience was still fantastic. Valencias aren't supposed to ripen until the spring which is why we waited so long to pick them. When they are ripe they are supposed to come off the tree really easy (which never really happened except to just a few), but if you wait too long they get dry. So we picked them just before it was supposed to really warm up.
Easter was pretty low key this year, but still loads of fun. Honestly anything seems low key if you compare it to Christmas.
Okay, those cheeks are delicious.
Dyeing eggs. We used the little glass serving dish from Grandma.
They turned out really beautiful.
The loot from the egg hunt. Stuffed animals are always a hit. If you look in the middle there is the beautiful roses from our yard. We have all been enjoying them.
Stuffies + baskets = some happy girls
The results of Holland's peep experiment from school. The vinegar dissolved the peeps the quickest.
This was a fun Easter craft. I like to see everyone's creativity.
She still doesn't like baby oatmeal.
Pure heaven
Wait, Holland using the bumbo to be fed?? Seriously though, her poor knees.
Fun Dad Award
Darcy's favorite lego is the little fence piece. She digs through the bin until she finds it.
Miriam has loved having the fresh roses all the time and the little cheese dish. She says she always wants to have baked goods in there, like these biscuits.
Said goodbye the sweet cradle. So glad we kept it so we had it with Darcy. It kind of makes me sad to think my parents kept it from when I was a baby, but I just don't have the space to keep it if we aren't going to be using it again.
Oh, this was so funny. One night for a value night we wanted to prove to our brains that we could do hard things and not be scared. We all had to take a big bite of something we knew we didn't like. Miriam and Holland had a bite of raw onion. I had a piece of lettuce with a lot of blue cheese dressing on it. John had a pickle, and Ellie ate a chocolate egg. This was so funny. I don't think any of us hesitated, which is good, but boy it was gross! John shuddered with disgust. Ellie started crying sad tears. I actually started crying too, but it was involuntary. I was laughing but tears were coming out because it was so disgusting. Miriam gave a pretty good grossed out reaction and Holland hardly reacted at all. She has to eat raw onion regularly in salads so it was pretty normal for her.
Holland had a ton of fun crafts and projects near the end of the school year. She made this bird feeder and was so thrilled.
Together we made a recycling robot. We just happened to be recycling those metal plumbing pieces, which totally worked out for this project.
We also made a stained glass project.
Holland and Mommy make a great team!
Edible dirt cup with worms. That was a hit!
Oh this was too cute! Holland without prompting wrote down her testimony one Sunday: "My testamonye: Like an needle throo thred the needle is God's power slid'se right throo the thred Saitein's block get's broken by the needle and I like that." Pure gold right there!
We went to a podiatrist about Eliza's and Holland's toe walking. They now wear a nightly food brace to help elongate their overly strong muscle. We were told to expect them to wear them for a year or two, but it should be a permanent fix. They are such sweet kids and although the first night or two were annoying, they don't complain at all about them. Now the challenge is that they need to break the habit of toe walking since the physical impairment is being fixed.
Are we paranoid about bumps and moles on our bodies? Yes, that is an accurate statement.v
How many daughters can Daddy fit on his lap?
One of Holland's class units was Earth Day themed. She really latched onto that idea. Now when she grows up she wants to do something to help the environment and then become a stay at home mom.
Beautiful hibiscus!
How many Hallmark movies do we watch? A lot. It is our favorite when they are funny, sweet, and not too unbelievable. We also like the mysteries. This made us laugh a lot.
We squeezed in one more hike in the spring. We went back to one of our favorites of the year--Hieroglyphics Trail. Again it was a great hike!
The view is fantastic with a lot of variation on area you're hiking through.
The hieroglyphs are pretty amazing.
She sleeps in the carrier for about 5 minutes at a time.
Yep, already awake.
It is hard to get a feel for how massive these saguaros are through a picture. They really are humongous.
Maybe 40 feet tall?
It's getting hot enough that we could spot some saguaro blossoms. Unfortunately this is also indicative of the end of the hiking season. It is just getting too hot to hike, especially when the sun is out. And even more of a barrier to me is that the heat brings out the rattlesnakes, especially in the early evening when we love to hike. We could avoid both of these if we went at the crack of dawn, but we aren't really willing to do anything except sleep at the crack of dawn. It's too bad. We love hiking.
We love spying on Darcy while she sleeps
We also love it when she planks or pushes up into downward dog like this. She is adorable!
Mother's Day was so nice! My girls gave me these nice flowers and Daddy cooked me this yummy breakfast casserole out of the Magnolia Table cookbook. It had hollandaise sauce over it.
The mama on Mother's day.
The girls gave me the sweetest cards and of course filled out those questionnaire pages that I love. I also received another cutco knife, which is awesome! I also got some yummy chocolates.
Miriam made me this really unique card with "you are" flags. It was so sweet and creative.
We got some new plumerias. I specifically bought some with inflos already on them so they would bloom. They have the coloring of and smell just like a peach. :) I have slowly been learning about caring for plumeria. I love it.
Another pot in the front.
This one actually went to my mom. Despite the older set of leaves that fell off, it has been doing great.
I was hoping these vincas would make it through the summer, but they just haven't survived the heat spikes.
Another new fun plant: Canna Lillies! One in the back and two in the front. Pink canna in the back.
Along with the pink hibiscus, pink bouganvillia, pink rose, pink desert rose. We have a theme.
We have orange and red cannas in the front yard. They both look orange to me. :) I love the different colors of leaves though. Also they match the flowers next to it super well.
My parents came down for another visit for Holland's birthday. I will obviously do a whole other post about that sweetie's birthday. With my Grandma's death my mom inheirited some money from them. She decided that she wanted to go on a panama canal cruise with us. We booked one for next April. While they were visiting us, my mom told them about the trip which will be in almost exactly one year!
They were so excited!
While they were visiting we took a day to go up to Sedona. This is kind of a funny story because we had actually booked an airbnb for a weekend to spend some real time up there, but a week before we were to arrive, we got a message saying that they sold the place. They sold it in February and were just now telling us in April?! The guy suggested some other listing we could book and gave us a refund, but turns out the other listings were either too small or way too expensive! We decided to book a different weekend further out in May that had more availability. But then a week or two later, we got a message from them saying that there had been a bunch of water damage that would likely take months to fix. We decided that our Sedona weekend was not meant to be this Spring. But we did drive up for the day with my parents. We checked out several things that were more handicap accessible and had a really nice time.
We walked around Red Rock State Park.
We thoroughly enjoyed walking around Crescent Moon Ranch Park .
The kids even played in the river there. We should have brought swimsuits, but it was still fun.
Miriam fell in, which surprised no one.
Such giant trees compared to what you get in Phoenix.
Awesome view of Cathedral Rock.
We had dinner at Subway and then took a walk along the Bell Rock Trail to enjoy the sunset views.
Bell Rock
My hiking buddy.
With the start of summer, we revamped our summer bucks program again. Ellie saved up and bought make a treat and made this delicious cherry crisp. She's becoming quite the cook!
But first, they were quite a few fun end of year projects and crafts. Like this one of Holland making a tissue paper flower for Cinco de Mayo.
Her other Cinco de Mayo craft was a mini pinata that had a string attached to the bottom that you pulled to let the candy and confetti out.
Ellie made a spacelander for one of her classes. The goal was to create a soft enough landing for her astronaut egg to not break when dropped.
She did a great job!
For her stem class Ellie did a cool project where she used a box and a magnifying glass to make it projector for a phone screen. This is projected onto our laundry room wall. Pretty awesome!
It was interesting to see her use all of these household goods and recycle them into new projects for this stem class.
Holland is adorable. :)
Love Holland's concentrate face doing her Legos!
Another fun end of school activity was the district art show. Of course this year the show was all virtual, but it was cooler than I would have thought. It was formatted like a real gallery with the elementary schools being one wing and the middle schools being the other. Remarkably all three of our kids were chosen to be in the district art show. They each had a page with their project on it. The art teacher told me that she had to choose about 30 projects out of about 2,000 to be in the show, which is why it was surprising that all of three kids were chosen. They did make very cool projects though!
The plumeria inflow is really blooming now! And check out this giant fig I picked! It is about the size of my palm. Our fig tree has been so productive this year. I can't believe it.
Commemorative summer hat from kindergarten. :)
When we dropped off the school materials at the end of the year all Holland had to make a sign for her teacher. She's the cutest!
Last day of school pic. I can't believe these girls actually did a full year of online school at home.
It was a bit rough for Holland to start kindergarten online, but she really got in the swing of things. Especially when we stopped making her attend in the morning when they were just reviewing reading. It gave her more sleep and it didn't make her bored either. Win, win!
Miss Dunker was the kindest kindergarten teacher. I love how much she loved her class!
Finally popping those Cinco de Mayo pinatas in celebration of the end of school!
Occasionally we just have to take a photo like this when the numbers are particularly awesome.
"Stoopeneds Mom" :)
We made prayer reminder necklaces for devotional one week. It was pretty cute!
Pool party at Miss Dunker's house. She loved it!
Enjoying the warm swimming weather with my girls. Its the best.
What did they want to do on summer break? Finally all get some uninterrupted reading time!
Time to set up the pool in the backyard! We got some nice mats to cushion the bottom, but had to play with them before we set up the pool.
So many saguaro buds! We are hoping for a cooler summer the year! (Spoiler, we got it!)
"I love you with my hol hert" Honestly, she is a doll!
"I love you more than you amagin." These little notes and presents melt my heart.
We spent one weekend ensuring a lot of work for ourselves. We demoed our master bathroom. Of course I'll do a whole post on this, but whoa, what did we sign up for. This was for sure the project we knew we had to do in the house. The rail for the shower was pretty corroded. Little did we know that there was actually water seeping down under the curated marble, under the concrete base and all the way to the subfloor.
We were starting to get pretty nervous until we broke through the subfloor (it is a pretty thick piece of plywood) and found it was only wet about halfway through. We were relieved that there was not rotting joists or anything major like that. Bullet dodged! Good thing we didn't put off this remodel or we could have had some real trouble on our hands.
We finally got a real piano! It only took us 14.5 years. John loves, loves having the real piano. Eliza loves playing on it too. I have to admit as well that it is a lot more fun to play than the electric ones. We are still going to keep a keyboard though for some piano practice with a volume switch.
