April 2021

 Rich and I finally were able to use our 2019 Christmas gift from Scott and Rachelle--we went rock climbing!  It was really fun! (But it would've been nicer without a mask!)

We had lots of fun for Easter!  We dyed eggs, visited the Easter bunny, and went on a neighborhood egg hunt!  Easter dinner was delicious!  The Easter/Conference weekend was wonderful.

Lydia and I spent some time on the hammock in the beautiful weather.

James and William got to back to school in person!  Hooray!!!

Our friend's, the Mathewson's, moved to Texas!  We got to spend a few last times with them.  We will miss them!

For Rich's birthday I got him tickets for a helicopter tour of Las Vegas.  It was a really fun experience!

Lydia wanted to learn to cross stitch.  She helped me a little and did a great job!

Rich took the boys camping so Lydia and I had a girls night.  We went to Target, grabbed dinner at Cafe Rio, and then watched Frozen and built her new Lego set.  Afterward we cuddled up for a story.  Lydia *loves* girls nights!

Random photo: Lydia as a "business woman."

March 2021

 Lydia started to write little love notes to everyone.  She is so sweet!

Henry, Lydia and I celebrated Dr. Seuss's birthday.  Henry dressed as a Star-bellied Sneetch and Lydia as Cindy Lou Who.  They built a Seussville, ate Hop on Pop(corn), played with edible oobleck, searched for Whos in the backyard, created their own Seuss-like creatures, and read lots of fun books!  

 

I love taking our school over to the park!

We cuddled up in my bed to read in the morning.

The kids won the prizes for the winter reading challenge at the library.  Alex won a movie ticket.  Henry and Lydia won tickets to the Children's museum.

We celebrated Pi Day with Black bottomed coconut banana cream pie.

We took another field trip--this time to the Springs Preserve.  We even got a free train ride which told the history of Nevada (it was our history lesson for the day).

The Stake Primary put on a super fun Mother-Son Carnival night!  (It was so funny to watch Henry walk around with soda cans in his back pockets).

After the Mother-Son night we came home to watch a movie and eat Cafe Rio with William and Lydia.  (Rich was on a campout with James and Alex).

William woke up early one Saturday morning to sit in line at the DMV with Kate while she got her permit.

Alex was the first one of the kids who got to go back to school in over a year.  James was so nice to ride his bike with him in the morning and show him the ropes.

And of course we got to celebrate Rich's birthday!  He's the best!

School days

School is starting out virtual this year.  We are hoping that we can get in person at some point.  I decided to pull Henry and Lydia out and just homeschool them instead of dealing with trying to do online elementary school.

I decided I needed a special t-shirt to commemorate this year.

We played hopscotch to learn our numbers for math (Henry can't help but join in on the kindergarten fun).

The first few weeks we hopped on once a day to online learning so that they were still enrolled in the school.  This way the school still got the money for our 2 students in case school opens up second semester.

Lydia had Mrs. Cochran and loved doing the morning routine with her class.

Even James joins in with Lydia's learning when he isn't "in class".

Alex enjoys attending class in the fort outside.

Lydia loves doing Henry's history lessons with him.  We learned about the early Native American Tribes in Nevada and made a decoy duck out of paper.

Henry enjoys using our old school desk (from Grandpa Allred's house) but I'm not sure he knows how to sit in it properly!

Another day for history we painted rocks like petroglyphs.

School is so much better when you can lounge on the couch.

We read Charlotte's Web (Lydia cried at the end) and so we made some watercolor magic webs and they each wrote a word that they'd spin in their web.

When the weather is nice sometimes we pack up our school stuff and do school at the neighborhood park.

We learned about apples so we did a taste test and took a field trip to the orchard for apple picking and apple cider donuts!

Henry did a study of Italy so we learned to make gnocchi.  It was delicious!