Puffy Sidewalk chalk paint

 Someone in our neighborhood was selling this puffy sidewalk chalk paint to earn some money.  So I bought one of every color!  It was a fun activity.  When you spray it with vinegar, it fizzes.  We had fun for an afternoon in the shade making pictures. 

 I made this rainbow.  Finley liked it.

 Sadie was good at the abstract art. 

 I made these tulips.

 Zac and Emery worked on this one together.  

 It was a fun afternoon activity.  Doing something different is always fun.

Then the kids hung out in the pool while waiting for their Orbeez to grow.  :)

Zac's 10th birthday!

 About a month ago, Zac turned 10 years old!!  He only has one more year that he can show his age on his fingers.  He was pretty bummed that we couldn't invite friends over because of Covid-19 and social distancing.  But we made the most out of it. 

Zac is such a great brother.  Of course, he likes to tease and bug his sisters (like all siblings do!) but he also is so great with them.  He loves when Finley will play with him.  He loves to make up games to play with his sisters.  In fact, he is working on creating a board game right now.  He does great in school and catches on to new things quickly.  He claims his weakness is "work".  ha ha.  But he can do some types of work for hours at a time.  The other day he hand stitched a sequin cactus.  It took him most of the day, but he did it!

 Here is Zac after he found his treasure hunt gift.  

 It was air soft guns.  

 Here he is trying to figure out how to put this big one together.  He stuck with it and I had to tell him multiple times to follow the silver rule.  :)

 Then we took them out to the back deck and he spent the rest of the day shooting at targets.  All the girls tried them out too.  We had the safety talk with all of them before we let them shoot.  

 We are already out of ammo.  Zac will need to save up his money to buy some more.  But he loved it!

 And of course.  Cake and ice cream.  

He was using paper plates as his targets and one of the bullets got stuck halfway through!  cool!

Happy birthday Zac!

Around the house

Riley isn't one that loves to cuddle a lot anymore :( so when she wants to sit with me, I try to take a break from what I'm doing and soak in the cuddles.  

 Finley figured out how to make us look funny by smashing our faces with her hands.  

 Rob had a zoom meeting with Elder Uchdorf.  It was pretty neat to peak in the room and see him on the screen!

 Smores out of peeps are a must after Easter.

 The girls were so nice letting Finley tag along with them for their game.  Emery at one point ran in to tell me to bring my phone out so I could make a video of them making her laugh.  It was cute.

The kids have discovered foot massages.  They love them, I love them, so we take turns giving them to each other.  Even Finley gets in on the action.  This day, I told the kids I would give them each a foot massage.  But even more recently, I've made it an incentive for getting their school work done in the morning.  :)  

 I hope this will become a tradition that lives on forever.  Foot massage swap.  You should try it.

 All of these Ty beanie babies were given to us from my grandma.  Finley had a fun time playing with them one morning.

Riley made this sun on our fridge one day out of our Magformers.  I loved it so much I left it up all day!

Quarantine with a 2 year old.

Up until a few months ago, I was thinking Finley was such a breeze to parent.  I mean she definitely has her days that she throws fits and tantrums, but that just comes with growing up.  I can handle that.  Until a few months ago, she never really got into things that she wasn't supposed to.  I thought (hoped) we had skipped that stage.  Well, I was wrong.  I think before it was easier for me to keep her out of things because in the mornings, it was just her and me hanging out and if it got quiet, I noticed really quickly and found her before she could get into anything.  Well, now that all the kids are home, whenever I realize I've been helping a child for a while and haven't heard Finley, I panic a little bit. 

She's such a cutie it's hard to get upset with her.  Here are just a few things she's been up to lately:

She knows how to open the back door.  Most of the time she just goes out there when there is another kid out there to play with.   But it's harder to open the door to come inside.  So sometimes she gets shut out in the backyard.  I will come and find her quietly knocking on the back door, who knows how long she's been standing there waiting for someone to let her back in.  This time she was squishing her face against the glass.  

 We got some puffy sidewalk paint and she loved it.  I made the rainbow.  But she was really good at tipping those bottles upside down and emptying them all in one big blob on the ground.  ha ha.

 When she plays with our bean bucket, she always is very careful when I'm in the room.  Then if I leave for a minute or two, I come back to this.  She has mastered the art of timing.  

This one is recent.  I've had to warn Rob about her tactics because she does this while he is working in the same room as him!!  She will sneak into my bathroom and get into my makeup drawer and put as much on as she can before I realize she is being too quiet and come find her.  She always puts it on her forehead.  The other day, I caught her wiping my pink lip gloss on her forehead.  And when I find her, she sprints away giggling.  Silly Goose.  I just need to find a new spot for my makeup.  It has happened a couple times a day the past few days.  I told Rob that if she is back there behind him being quiet...assume she is up to no good!  

 When we went to go look at the flags at the park, she walked up to each one for a long stretch and hugged each flag and quietly said "I love you flag".  It was so cute.

 She was my helper when I was making my new chair.  I looked back and saw her doing this.  I had just been doing the same thing.  I thought it was so cute!

 With all the older kids home, the markers and crayons get left out a lot.  Finley takes full advantage and gets as much coloring done before I catch her.  This time she "painted her toes." 

This was her giving her baby a bath.  The green blanket was the water.  Then she decided to join her so she took all her clothes off and jumped in.  ha ha!

Meteor shower tender mercy

I am going to write about an experience Rob and I had last night so I never forget.  I think sometimes we easily forget these small tender mercies from our Heavenly Father because there is so much other stuff going on in our lives that we forget to remember them. 

On Monday night around 11 pm, Rob and I bundled up in blankets and headed outside to lay on the tramp and look at the sky.  I had heard there was a meteor shower that promised as many as 30-40 meteors per hour that night, so we decided to try to see some.  I remember my mom would tell us about these when I was young and she would even wake us up sometimes to see meteor showers or lunar eclipses, so I guess I get my excitement about these types of things from her.  Normally I would be fast asleep by 11. 

We looked up in the sky but our view was blocked by our trampoline net.  We only had a small circle where we could see the sky clearly.  Even so, we saw quite a few shooting stars that night.  It really is amazing to see.  We saw 2 that were pretty good, the others we saw we just quick flashes of light, but still fun to see.  We also saw 2 satellites, which I always think is amazing.  I mean, we have huge hunks of metal in orbiting the earth.  Pretty neat.  We called it a night after seeing maybe 5 or 6 and headed back in and went to sleep.  I thought it was a great success. 

The next night (last night) I asked Rob if he wanted to go out again and look for meteors because the shower was supposedly still going to be happening.  The moon was really bright on Monday and was even bright last night so I wasn't expecting to see as many as the night before.  We were laying on the tramp again with our blankets.  Same small viewing window as before because of the trampoline net.  The meteors were supposed to be mostly coming from a different part of the sky, but we just looked straight up because we had had success the night before doing that.  I spotted another satellite in the sky and we saw a few brief flashes but nothing as cool as the night before.  We had been out there about 30 minutes when we were discussing going back inside in a bit. We had also reminisced about the few times when we were dating that we went out to a park in Spanish Fork and would see satellites and once we saw an amazing shooting star.  It was so beautiful.  The biggest one we had seen in our lives.

Rob suggested that we say our nightly prayer while we were out there.  It was my turn, but I felt weird praying with my eyes opened (because I didn't want to miss anything while we were praying) so Rob said it.  As he was praying, I had the thought, "It would be really cool if we saw a huge shooting start right when Rob finishes the prayer."  In my mind I was thinking if that happened, that would be a sign from Heavenly Father.  But also in my mind, I thought "but even if that doesn't happen...I still know He is there and loves me."  All of this of course went through my mind in just a split second or two. I didn't really think we were going to see anything amazing when Rob said Amen.  I just thought it would be really cool if that happened. 

Rob was starting to wind his prayer down and before he ended his prayer he said "Oh yeah, and thank you for this wonderful meteor shower..." and as those words came out of his mouth, a huge shooting star started flying across the sky.  It started right where the trampoline net stopped blocking our view and it flew all the way across to where the net started to block our view again.  We both just started hooting and hollering things like "Oh my gosh! DO you see that?!  It's STILL going!!"  It lasted probably 3 seconds.  It was so long.  And beautiful.  There was an orange tail behind it that sort of broke into pieces.   It was amazing.  Then when it was over, Rob was like "I guess we should finish our prayer!" and he thanked Heavenly Father for that wonderful gift he had just given us. 

It's really interesting because I went right in and wrote about it in my journal and I knew it was a simple sign from Heavenly Father that he loved Rob and I individually, even though we aren't really anyone special.  Today as I was thinking about it I kept letting my mind wander over to thinking that some people would just think that was a coincidence.  But as I thought about it more and more, there is really no way that could have been a coincidence and here are some of the reasons:

-The fact that I had the thought that it would be cool if that happened and then it actually happening.  Heavenly Father speaks to people in ways that they will hear and understand.  I know that this was a sign to me letting me know that even through this weird time we are having with so many new and strange things in the world, He knows me and loves me and my family.  He speaks to others in ways that they will understand and hear too.  Whether it be through music, nature, books, words, or other people.  It's pretty amazing. 
-The shooting star started literally right after Rob thanked Heavenly Father for this beautiful meteor shower.  I mean...come on. 
-There was a whole sky above us and all around us.  Most of it was blocked by our trampoline net.  We mostly just saw the big dipper in our view.  The star started right at one end of the net and slowly made it's way to the other end of the net before it fizzled out.  I mean, right in the middle of our view.  It was amazing.  When the entire night sky is out there, and it happens at that time right in the view where we don't even need to turn our heads or eyes, that's amazing. 

Anyway, I just wanted to write all of these thoughts down before I forgot any of them.  Heavenly Father knows us an loves us individually.  And he wants us to be happy and have joy.  And we can have joy even when we are going through scary things like Covid-19 or earthquakes or unknown futures and anything else we might be facing.  I'm grateful for that knowledge and hope that I can always see the little tender mercies that are being shown to me.