April 2018

I know these pictures are March 31st but it was the evening before Easter and April Fool's so the boys left a prank for the Easter Bunny. There was a trail to some Easter eggs and inside they were filled with gross things.

March 31, 2018

Olivia wanted to write a letter to the Easter Bunny and so on the back of a bunny craft she made in preschool she told me exactly what to write to him.

Kaleb and Ashton love April Fool's Day. They could have cared less about what the Easter bunny left them because they were too busy doing pranks on everyone. They taped a box over our light switch and left Olivia's singing small world dolls all playing at the same time outside our door. There was also "poop" chocolate on the floor among other things.

April 1, 2018

Easter not only fell on April Fool's Day but it was also general conference so we didn't have church either.

April 1, 2018

After many recounts we finally found all of the eggs.

Crazy boy!

I let Olivia pick her own outfit. There are always hundreds of eggs to find at my aunt and uncles house and my grandpa still has a money egg for each great grandchild with a $2 bill inside. Eventually it went from all of us grandkids growing up to the great grandkids and I remember how cool it was to have a $2 bill every Easter.

Victoria had fun shaking the eggs, she knew there was something inside.

I could tell Ashton wanted to be pranked along with being the prankster and so that night (it was still April Fool's) so I set up hundreds of cups in his room. They covered everything but his bed. I would have loved to fill them with water but it wasn't practical at all nor did I want the mess. It was funny to lay in bed and hear him wake up. You heard a crash of cups falling over and him wonder what it was. I had a good laugh and so did he.

Olivia painted our neighbor's dog Gus and gave it to him to keep.

April 4, 2018

She also painted Elsa and even made sure she had a braid in her hair.

Sometimes she suckers me into taking selfies with her. (That's her toothbrush on her face, anything to try to stall bedtime!)

April 11, 2018

Another awesome wood project Kaleb made. I loved the wood he used to make this bowl.

April 13, 2018 

The elementary school has a daddy daughter dance and for the mom's and son's they had a nerf and game night. A company came that supplied all the darts and you just brought a nerf gun. They had ice cream sundaes and games going in some of the classrooms.

April 13, 2018

Ashton wanted to make breakfast burritos with homemade tortillas for dinner one night. He looked up a recipe online, wrote it down and made them with very little help. He was pretty proud of how well he did. They tasted yummy!

April 14, 2018

I love the random notes Olivia writes. It's always fun to see how they spell when they're just learning to sound words out. Loves = Levs 

April 14, 2018

One of the breakers at the cabin tripped and Matt couldn't figure out why. He went up one Saturday to work and found this random wire we apparently never noticed or never knew was live sticking out of the of the cabin. We're lucky it didn't cause a fire. They must have had an outlet outside when the deck was there is what we figure. This is one of the small areas left that we haven't completely redone the wiring. Matt rewired the whole circuit it was on and removed the wire. Now all that's left are a couple of outside lights to rewire but we don't use them since we don't have a deck so that's why we haven't done it yet.

April 14, 2018

A really big wind storm blew down this tree at the end of our street. I saw a news crew there on my way home from work and then noticed the tree resting on the roof.

April 16, 2018

For over a year now we have had rabbits at my work. Like rabbits do they keep multiplying and we're trying to figure out a way to catch them to take them to animal services. The tenants like having them around and feed them but they make holes everywhere and pretty soon it will be a really big problem. Olivia sure thinks they're cute though, especially anytime there are new babies.

April 18, 2018

Another season of soccer! With 3 kids and most of the time they always play at the same time, or at least 2 out of the 3 it makes it hard to see all their games. I love watching Kaleb's age group because they all have fun playing and all know what they're doing.

April 19, 2018

I wasn't sure how Olivia would do but this time she loved it and actually played really good. She scored at least one goal every game. I was really sad to only make it to 1 of her games because of how the schedule worked out, plus she missed a couple games with our Disney trip and then the last game I was going to go to of hers was rained out and rescheduled for when Matt and I were in Hawaii.

The school had their Fun Run which is always a big hit with the kids. They have snack stations set up along the way and creamies after. And I love that they usually have someone taking pictures at school events so that even if I can't be there I get to see pictures of the activity.

April 20, 2018

Years ago I found a dead black widow spider in our basement. This day I looked by the hose box and there was another one except this one was alive. I showed the kids and then told Matt to kill it before it went anywhere. Yuck!

April 21, 2018

My mom had tickets for all of us to go to the Jordan River Temple open house. It was really pretty inside and I loved all of the different paintings.

April 21, 2018

It was sunny and hot but we wanted to get a group picture together.

A couple months prior I was going to do a Disney trip with some other girls from my neighborhood. It didn't end up working out for a couple of them and we weren't going to go but threw out the idea of a mother-daughter trip. The beginning of April I found really cheap airfare so we bought tickets and planned a quick 2 days in the park trip.

One of the girls had a birthday shortly before so it was her birthday present but she didn't know she would be going with friends. I decided I would surprise Olivia with the trip and not tell her anything until we showed up at the airport. It was hard keeping a secret especially when I was so excited but all she knew is she was doing something with me on my birthday.

My mom picked up Olivia and I and took us to the airport. The boys were in the car too and didn't know where we were going. Olivia was playing on one of their phones but the boys soon realized we were at the airport and started asking questions. I took a video and also had Matt on FaceTime to see her reaction.

She was excited to learn we were going to Disneyland! I did feel bad leaving the boys in the car to go back home when Olivia and I were leaving for Disneyland. I told Matt he better do something fun with them. :)

April 24, 2018

She didn't know we were going with anyone else until we found them in the airport and they were all excited to see each other. The girl on the right (Lily) and her mom (Jessica) we didn't know until this trip but we all quickly became friends.

Zara, Olivia and Lily

After dinner our flight was delayed again so the girls had plenty of time to color and play together until we left.

Katie has relatives that lives really close to Disneyland and they were nice enough to let us stay at their house for the 3 nights. He even dropped us off and picked us up from the park each day which was a huge help. She even made us carrot cake with cream cheese frosting when we arrived and they sang to me since it was my birthday that day. They were the sweetest couple.

We decided to pay the $10 for the max pass and it was the best decision we ever made. We arrived early to the park the first day to make sure we could get in as many rides as we could before it was too busy.

April 25, 2018

The first ride we went on was the Jungle Cruise then to the Haunted Mansion.

Olivia surprised me by saying she wanted to sit in the very front on Splash Mountain so I let her hoping it wouldn't make her not want to ever ride it again.

As you can see from her face she was terrified but she actually did love it and wanted to go again right away. Her ears starting falling down off her face so I was trying to pull them back up.

Olivia and I were drenched. I don't think there was a dry spot on my pants at all.

Next we went on Winnie the Pooh and then we went over to Big Thunder Mountain. She loves all the "mountain" rides the best!

We all said how nice it was to not have other siblings around to fight with. Waiting in the few small lines we did was actually pleasant because they were just having fun together and no one was bugging each other like it would have been if their siblings were around.

I sure wish I didn't get as motion sick as I do now that I'm older. Star Tours wasn't so fun. I left my 3D glasses off during the ride to help but it still made me sick. :(

She was concentrating so hard on steering. She was frustrated that she kept hitting into the track while she was steering. I had to tell her even I hit the track and that she was doing great.

Cute girls! With the max pass you also get your photo's that they take so we took advantage of a couple photo opportunities.

During the day we were able to see most of the new Pixar parade from the Storybook Boat line. We had just gotten off of the storybook ride when the parade started and the line is the perfect viewing area being up higher so we got back in line and watched the parade as we waited and then when we got to the front of the line we just went straight to the exit.

We went on Snow White, Pinocchio and Mr. Toad's before doing the carrousel.

We had fast passes for Space Mountain and everyone did their own thing for a couple of hours that way the girls could do what things they wanted and eat wherever they wanted.

Space Mountain ended up being her favorite ride.

With bringing snacks we only had 1 meal (if you can even call it that) in the park this day. Olivia wanted a pretzel and corn on the cob and I wanted to try their new Cocoa Churro with a spiced Mexican chocolate dipping sauce. A weird meal but it was good! Olivia wasn't a fan of the chocolate sauce and it did have a kick so I don't blame her.

I was excited Olivia was able to ride Indiana Jone's for the first time. She was a little nervous but thought it was fun.

Olivia really wanted to do Splash Mountain again but the other girls didn't want to so I took her and with fast passes we were able to hit all the "mountain" rides for the second time that day, Splash, Space, Big Thunder and Matterhorn all in under 2 hours. Again, it was so worth the extra money!

She wanted to sit in the front again but there was a good size line of people waiting for the front so I told her we weren't going to wait longer just for the front.

Pure excitement!

On Space Mountain we waited for the front since she really wanted to and being so short I'm sure it makes a big difference to her.

We met back up with the group and went to Big Thunder Mountain to go one last time since that was the girls favorite ride. Lily was asleep so we took turns going on it and were able to watch the Fireworks while we were on the ride which was pretty cool. At this point Olivia was the only girl still awake and I think she would have gone on Big Thunder a 5th time but it was time to go. We stopped at the front of main street to see the new window displays and then Olivia and I grabbed some ice cream from main street and met the others at the pick up area.

It was a packed but fun day! In just over 12 hours from 9am-9:30pm which is a short Disney day for us we went on 24 rides and used 12 fast passes!

Meanwhile back home Matt took the boys out and they had fun miniature golfing. They tried going to Top Golf but the lines were really long.

 April 25, 2018

The next morning we had reservations at the Storytellers Cafe at the Grand Californian Hotel. The girls loved seeing the characters and it was nice to not have to stand in any lines and spend time during our time in the park to do it. The buffet had a lot of good options and we were stuffed after.

April 26, 2018

The other nice perk about eating here was that we were able to enter the park through the hotel entrance which meant no lines for security or at the ticket gate! We were in the park 15 minutes before it "opened" and so we quickly snatched up our fast passes for the Cars ride.

These cars we too cute not to get a picture with and so even though there was a line we waited.

The girls all loved the Car's ride. I love Carsland and it's the best part of California Adventure.

This was the first time riding the new ride at Luigi's since they switched it. The cars all dance synchronized and it was a fun ride. It's not the best ride but definitely an improvement from the tire ride.

The other ride we needed a fast pass for was Guardian's of the Galaxy. The girls had fun dancing in a show they did in front of the ride.

Poor Zara who had been on this before didn't want to go on it. We were sitting on the ride and she wanted to get off. So Katie and Zara waited just outside where we were and after we got off Jessica took the kids so Katie could ride it and they let me go with her. So I was lucky and went on it twice in a row. Not the best for my stomach but it was worth it. And they did a great job on the ride switching it from the Tower of Terror, I noticed everyone riding it was having fun and screaming and dancing more than ever before. I think before it was more of a scary, haunted ride where it was meant to be fun and exciting and you could feel the difference.

The girls loved the Monster's Inc. and Little Mermaid ride and we even saw the new Frozen show at the Theater. It was also my first time since they changed Soarin' Over California to Soarin' over the World and so that was fun to see the changes. We made sure to do that ride twice! I wasn't as good at taking pictures this day, oops but after bugs land we went to get dinner at the Pier. They have the best bread bowls.

There aren't as many rides with fast passes in California Adventure which means they fill up faster. The girls really wanted to ride the Cars ride again but they filled up before we were able to get our next fast pass. I was thinking it probably wasn't as beneficial to spend the extra on the max pass for this park (which you add it day by day so you can do some days and not others) but then we got lucky and it was worth it at least this time. I kept checking fast passes just in case any opened up because all the big rides (Cars, Guardians and Toy Story) were filled for the day early on and someone must have cancelled some and I quickly snatched 6 fast passes for the Cars ride. We were all so excited because waiting 2 hours in line wasn't an option and they're too little to do the single rider line and ride alone.

This time we put all the girls in front thinking you would be able to see them better but nope, you can't see any of their faces. :)

Believe it or not the same thing happened with getting a fast pass to Toy Story. I just kept checking and eventually was able to get some. They weren't until later but it was better than standing in a long line so we were okay with it.

Yes, my accuracy was about the same as Olivia's but that's because I shoot like crazy trying to rack up as many points as I can. It's always a big competition in my family to get the highest score which is usually not me since they're usually over 300,000.

We really wanted to see the Paint the Night parade so we put our stuff out and a sweet girl next to us said she would claim our stuff so it wasn't moved if an employee asked. It never makes sense to me to have all of these people sitting for hours to wait for a parade when if they would just talk to each other around them they could take turns waiting and still go have fun on rides. We also had our Toy Story fast pass right before the parade so we knew we would have to get our spot before that. Olivia wanted a churro so we grabbed a churro before going to our spot to wait for the parade.

Olivia and Zara loved the parade. They loved waving at everyone especially the princesses!

It was definitely a more easy going day than our day in Disneyland but we still managed 18 rides, a show and a parade and used 6 fast passes and that was just from 10am-9pm.

It's always crazy to me how much walking you can do during a day at Disneyland.

The whole time whenever Olivia wanted to shop I told her the last night I would take her to the big store at downtown Disney that has everything and she could get something then. I didn't want to worry about it during the day and also kids change their minds so often I wanted to her be sure of what she wanted. Well, what I didn't expect was that the store was under a major renovation and only a small part of it was open with not the best selection. We had already exited the park and the park was closed so we couldn't go back in. Olivia loves the little blanket babies they sell and so I figured that's what she would want and thankfully they had those at the store.

Katie's uncle was nice enough to pick us up again that night. The next morning we woke up and had breakfast and then he dropped us off at the airport to head home. We flew in and out of Long Beach since it's right by their house and it's a really small airport which meant a smaller staff. The security line was moving really slow so by the time we made it through security we were the last people on the plane. They were running ahead of schedule and had starting boarding early but we made it.

This is how she sat the whole flight home watching a movie. Matt picked us up from the airport and we were sad the trip was over.

April 27, 2018

Matt took some pictures at one of Olivia's soccer games. I promise she's not pushing him but they did trip over each other going for the ball.

April 28, 2018