John and Kylee: February 2024

A couple of things that I love--my mom's blooming Thanksgiving Cactus and Darcy's cute face. She things I am cute too because pigs are her favorite animal, and one day she went through each of my facial features and told me how they are like a pig's. I am sure she meant it as a complement.

Holland started taking violin lessons from John's cousin, Heather Toone. She is giving us a steal of a deal at only $10 per lesson. Holland has been enjoying it so much, and it has been astounding to see how much she has improved in such a short time.

Another thing I have been loving it playing the board game "Obsession" with John online. It is a fun way to connect throughout the day.

We did an impulsive house project that made me very happy. We purchased cute pots and repotted our ugliest (referring to the pot) potted plants. We also got an assortment of beautiful mugs and a new candle. It was a squealy day for us girls.

Darcy gave her first talk in Primary. She did great. She spoke clearly but a little quieter than I would have guessed. She doesn't tend to be shy.

She has been loving games recently--specifically Five Crowns and Deer in the Headlights.

We have been having a recurring interaction with Darcy that makes us all chuckle. We like to tease her a little and say "Oh good" about exasperating things. She tells us "It's not oh good." So then we say, "Oh bad." To which she replies, "Don't say 'Oh bad.'" It is so predictable and funny.

One morning it was brought to my attention how often I say yes to things when I am not listening very well. Darcy asked me, "Mommy can we catch the sun if it dies on the ground?" I replied yes, and then caught myself, "Wait, no, that's not a thing." I need to pay better attention!

Darcy is already learning to compare, unfortunately. She complained to me one day, "Daddy always says it is Holland's turn for nighttime prayer." It kind of made me chuckle though. We can always have two prayers, but apparently that isn't adequate. I guess our complements before bed are working better than we thought it would to encouraging her to want to be the one to say a prayer. Another one day Darcy prayed, " Please bless that I love everyone except my family." I am hoping she meant, "especially" not "except" but maybe that is wishful thinking. :)

One day Darcy was trying to convince me to get her a pet pig, when she made up, "When I was a baby, I had a pet piggy. We will take it to the potty to poop." Liar, liar pants on fire!

Another Darcy lie, "I actually know that Moroni is a bad guy."

"When you put your hand like this the middle finger touching the counter is the legs, the fingers on either side is the arms, and the thumb is the gun so you ca shoot people in the back." Preschoolers are scary.

"We didn't lose Grandma, she's only in a box." This was after I had told someone that we lost my mom in August.

"Mommy you r face is turning really red! Maybe it is because you keep complaining about my silly sounds? Even your eyes are turning red." Oh boy.

"It actually freaks me out when you say crazy things." Me too a little bit. :)

First Primary talk!

I had to climb into her bed to cuddle her one day after her nap.

Writing letters during preschool time. She wrote all the letters for her sisters' names and a couple of friends and even their mom. Not actually her mom though. :)

Eliza and I had a great date this month. We went to Mozz Pizza, which felt overpriced but yummy. We loved how cute the restaurant was. Then we went to Ross and browsed clothes. There were so many funny items to looks at--sweater tank top body suit, leather body suit, fish net shirts, etc. She found a nice birthday dress there. I loved the moment when we were walking to Mozz Pizza. We were walking with arms linked, and I looked down at our matching shoes and our steps were in sync. What a fun date!

We took Holland in for her Parent Teacher conference. Mrs. Clifford is so nice and called Holland a "Breath of fresh air." Holland is doing amazing at school. We're so lucky to have her. I love the bonuses they do at school. She has loved learning about the violin at school. She and the other 3rd graders at her school were invited to perform at the district's "Day of Dance" performance. They did a Samoan arm sitting dance, and I don't think that Holland could have been more excited. I took Darcy with me to watch her (everyone else was at MCO rehearsal). We stayed to watch the other dance companies from the district perform (the middle and high schools, theirs was the only elementary school invited).

This is super random but I saw in the news that my namesake, Dwan J. Young, is in the Guinness Book of Records for being the oldest female water-skier at age 92.

Another letter written for Miriam's name.

My favorite recipe blogger posted a recipe for sugar cookies right before Valentine's Day and before I knew it we were inviting friends over to decorate sugar cookies with us (turns out I still don't love sugar cookies). It was fun to roll them out and cut them out with Darcy. The decorating was really cute too. I loved hanging out with Sarah.

We saved a couple of cookies for our other girls to decorate.

I love Valentine's with my family. It really is the best. John wrote me the sweetest note. I loved the Valentines from my kids. I love making them punny Valentines every year. The delicious steak dinner is always the best, and it is always fun and fancy to pull out the china. Such a fun day!

We are making good use of our Thanksgiving Point Pass and are going to with Jenessa Bond and her little boy pretty regularly. Samuel and Darcy are definitely frenemies. They argued *so much.* Samuel insisted he was Mary and 7 years old. Darcy would let that slide, shouting he was not married and only two years old. They argued the entire drive to Lehi about it. Despite the ridiculous and hilarious arguing, we had a great time checking out the butterfly museum for the first time. It was so fun that apparently I talked about it so much that we went as a family the next day for Eliza's birthday. I think my favorite thing about the butterfly biosphere was the huge, lovely plants everywhere.

Climbing on the large bugs were the little kids favorite thing for sure.

Check out the size of the fiddle leaf fig tree and the monstera.

Back to climbing the big bugs!

On the way out to the car afterwards, Darcy found a stick. She lamented, "This was such a good day finding my stick, I hope I always remember it." This was a mild burn considering the fun museum we had been to, but also hilarious so I had to take a picture of the stick that she had to leave in the parking lot.

John and I went to Olive Garden to celebrate Valentine's day. I love, love their shrimp scampi. I love being his forever date whether it is nice fancy meals or playing pickleball. He's the best.

We had such a nice President's Day. We played Deer in the Headlights, made earrings, the Davises visited and we went to the Bean Museum. It was a fun day!

We all did our nails!

Sometimes reading lesson isn't real productive.

Pretty regularly Darcy decides to sleep on her pile of stuffed animals rather than in her bed. It is funny to find her behind her chairs on a lumpy array of stuffies.

I went to Ogden one day to take my dad to dinner with my siblings. It was in commemoration of my dad passing along the inheritance money from my grandparents. We helped him clean out part of the utility room too. It was good to spend time with my family.

Spring flowers in February.

One night, John took Eliza and Holland roller skating (it was a school sponsored event). It was a lot harder than they anticipated because they had had so much practice ice skating. Apparently it is not the same at all. Miriam was babysitting, and she came home after they left. She and I watched Tiny House Hunters while they were gone. When they got back everyone watched for a little while. It made me grin to see how invested the kids got over which house should be chosen.

The next day our bishopric changed. It was touching to hear the bishopric's testimonies of Christ. I particularly appreciated hearing Randalynn testify of waiting on the Lord.

John had to go to Arizona for a conference. He saw our old house and almost all of our plants are still alive from what he could see! there were a lot of weeds too. It was sad to see the weeds making it look so trashy. There were a couple nice things about going to AZ this time, John met up with some old coworkers and had dinner with them and their wives. They had a great time catching up. Of course he also had to go get Andy's frozen custard. He even brought me home some in his water bottle.

While he was gone I got a bit of the crafty bug. We made a bunch of earrings (Miriam actually designed them). And we made some hair bows too.

One interesting story from his trip was that one of his coworkers really wanted to take a self driving car to lunch one day. It was just like a normal car, but there was no one in the driver's seat and the wheel turned itself. The irony is that they ended up eating at a food truck that only took cash, so opposite ends of the spectrum.