April 2022

 McKenna decided to try out soccer this year but I had no idea if she would like it or not. She has never had any interest in sports before this year and all of the sudden she is obsessed with playing any kind of sport every day. We lucked out and got an amazing coach and it has been a great experience for her. I noticed he didn't have an assistant coach so I offered to help out and it's been really fun for me too! I was also a little worried that she would be with a bunch of girls that had been playing since they were 3 but McKenna is a natural and did so great!

For Easter this year, we didn't really go to any city events for the first time. We dyed eggs on Easter and did our usual tradition of finding Resurrection Eggs and reading the corresponding scriptures that go through the events leading up to Christ's crucifixion.  The kids also get to find their Easter baskets that are hidden really well anywhere in the house.

Richard got to go paint-balling again with some guys from the ward. It's always a great experience for him and they get really into it! It's been extra good for him to hang out with some of the guys in our ward since he attends the Spanish branch now and never sees them at church.

Another fun thing that McKenna has been involved in this year is Momentum. All of the 4th graders in her school learn two dances and then McKenna was chosen to be on an advanced team that learned an additional dance after school. Only two kids from each class were chosen for this extra team so it made her feel so good that she was picked. They had their big performance at the end of April and McKenna did amazing! She was one of the few who was perfectly on beat and knew every single step. I loved watching her shine!

On the way back from watching Kenna's performance, we walked past the carousel that is in Columbus Commons. Even though it was cold, they had already opened it up for the season and there was nobody else there so Brooklyn asked if she could ride it. I also made Kaylee go and was cracking up at how huge she looked on the animals and how unenthusiastic she was about riding. I love that she will still humor me and do things with us even as she gets older.

I told McKenna and Brooklyn we would go grab ice cream while Richard and Kaylee were out one night because McKenna had gotten a coupon for free ice cream. I chose mint and brownie for my toppings, not realizing the mint was actually a sauce. And of course they put a TON on. It was one of the most disgusting treats I've ever tried and I couldn't even eat it. Lesson learned!

March 2022

 We started off the month by going to watch Kaylee as Mrs. Phelps in the musical, Matilda Jr. She did such a great job and her face was so animated. She is a great little actress!

We also finally got started on our floor! It took us so long to get it straight and do the first 5 or so rows, that's about all we could get done the first day. 

I was telling the kids about how we used to do theme nights and Brooklyn especially wanted to try doing it again. She chose to do a music night so we ate food that all correlated with a different type of music. 

Popcorn for Pop music

Cornbread for Country

Chicken fries and veggies sticks (drumsticks) for Rock and Roll

Teriyaki jerky for K-Pop (it was supposed to be Korean BBQ but they were out of it when we were buying supplies)

Fruit for Gospel music (fruits of the Spirit)

Chips and salsa for Salsa music

Fancy eclairs and a Kit-Kat piano for Classical

Then we a music guessing game, song trivia, musical chairs, and Karaoke. I'm not sure it was quite as successful as some of our other theme nights but it was fun to try doing it again and let Brooklyn experience it.

McKenna bought some fun clip-on earrings with her own money and for some reason I felt like it made her look so old! Do my kids have to keep getting bigger??

The flooring took us another couple of weeks to finish and we put the last piece in just a few hours before Kaylee's birthday party. It wasn't hard, just time consuming to cut all the pieces into the exact shape they needed to be, especially around the doors. We love the look of it and now all we have left is the toe kicks under the kitchen cabinets and to add quarter rounds around the baseboards!

Kaylee had a late-over night with her friends for her birthday and wow, those girls could party! I thought we would run out of things to do but they were still going hard close to midnight and were sad to say goodbye. It was really good to watch her let loose and have fun with her friends when we don't get to see that from Kaylee as much. And somehow I didn't take a single picture!

Her birthday was on Sunday so it was pretty low key. She chose to go walk through Batelle Darby Creek metro park and we enjoyed walking around in the sunshine. It blows my mind that we have a 12 year old! She has become such an amazing young woman and I love to watch her grow.

Brooklyn's friend invited her to go to the zoo so she spent the whole day there. She has been to the zoo the least of our kids so I was glad that she got to go and had a blast with her best friend. 

Sharon came to visit! Unfortunately we had beautiful weather the week before but all of that went away for her visit and it was cold and rainy the entire time. The kids had to take her to the pet store, of course, and we tried to find a few other things but mostly it was too muddy or cold or didn't open until March was over. We did take her to the Topiary Park, German Village, to the OSU library, and to get some delicious Ohio cuisine (Tai's and Jeni's). 

The kids also really wanted to show her their favorite metro park that has a zipline and rope swings. Unfortunately, it was extremely muddy and poor Sharon had to navigate through a bunch of mud to get around the log bridge the kids can scamper across. And then when we got to the top, we found out that they had taken the zipline down for the winter! So we didn't even get to show her that. The girls played on the rope swings for a little bit and Sharon even tried it out. 

Brooklyn also got to bring Grandma to her gymnastics class, although she seemed really tired and didn't have the same spunk to her gymnastics as she usually does. 

The best thing that we did was go to the circus! It was only in town for the weekend so it was perfect timing. I thought it was pretty good for how small of a circus it was and was very impressed with most of the acts.

Brooklyn got to have her birthday party while Grandma was here too. She wanted it to be Encanto themed so we got her a Dolores dress so she could be her favorite character. She only wanted to invited 3 girls and 1 of them couldn't come so it was a very small party but a lot of fun. We had them color a miracle candle and then did games for each of the Encanto characters. McKenna had set up an obstacle course for Luisa (which also incorporated a challenge for almost every character), we made coffee filter flowers for Isabella, played charades for Camillo, found hidden stuffed animals for Antonio, made weather foldouts for Pepa and played Red Light Green Light for Dolores. And we counted the treats as Julieta's activity; Brooklyn wanted Brookies to eat. We ran out of time so we didn't even get to do Bruno's activity! 

Brooklyn's birthday was also on Sunday but she was acting kind of weird about it and didn't really want to go anywhere or do anything with us. But we brought up our huge OSU chair to be the birthday chair and tried to make her day feel special. We had her sit in the chair and then we all attacked her with birthday balloons and she tried to whack them away. I think that ended up being her favorite moment of the day!