May Happenings

May is always a busy month for us.  Here are the highlights

May 3rd Payton chorus concert

I was so happy to find out they were performing in the high school gym.  It has twice as many seats as the middle school gym they played at for their Christmas concert.  They also had way more parking than the middle school since they have lots of high school drivers.  They performed with the 4th and 5th grade band and orchestra.  Of course, the chorus blew the band and orchestra away.  You really can't expect much from 1st and 2nd year band and orchestra (hot cross buns anyone??).  It brings me back to my clarinet playing days.  I love the squeaks from the clarinets and saxophones.  It always brings a smile to my face.  It is sad knowing that this is the last time the chorus, band, and orchestra will play.  One of the budget cuts were they took out 4th and 5th grade chorus, band and orchestra in all of our counties elementary schools.  Now if they want to play, they have to pay for the after school program.

Payton front middle

May 6th Kennedy's Let's Play Music concert

Kennedy finished her final year of the Let's Play Music program.  She loved it.  Last year, they had six in there group.  This year they were down to 2 Kennedy and her cousin Lorin.  They had a great time and I think the smaller class size was good for them.  She really loves to play the piano.  I think I will try and be her piano teacher for a while along with Payton since she wants to start piano too.  We will see how that goes.

Kennedy with her trophey

Kennedy getting ready to play the song she wrote

May 7 & 8 Garage Sale

My mom and sister Cheri had a garage sale at my mom's house.  I went through the garage and got rid the last of the baby things along with a few other toys and things.  I think I made like $60.  Not too bad since I didn't have to be there to sell it and I would have probably donated those things one of these days. 

May 8th Blood Drive

I signed up to donate blood at our church in the morning.  Everything was going like always until she stuck me with the needle.  The blood was barely trickling out.  She asked me if I had had anything to drink all morning.  It was only 9 am.  I did make sure I ate something on the way out the door since one time I didn't eat enough and was very light headed and almost passed out.  I learned my lesson on that and make sure I eat before going in, but didn't think about drinking.  If I would have eaten at home, I would have drunk something but I was running right to the minute and grabbed something as I was going out the door.  So all that time wasted.  Well now I know for next time. 

May 9th  Mother's Day

Mother's day was nice The Elder's and High Priest's made strawberry shortcake for the women (and the men but only after the women were served) to eat the last 15 minutes of church.  It was yummy.  The kids went to the Home Depot workshop the first Saturday in May and made me flower pot holders.  Jon took the 4 youngest kids.  Then they spray painted them and picked out a flower to put in a pot for me.  I loved them and they looked great out in the new garden area.  Usually, I don't want Jon to spend a lot of money on me for this day, but this year I asked for a new mailbox.  I have hated our mailbox since we have moved in and now I love the new one. I wish I would have taken a before and after picture.  I think Jon grilled steaks for dinner but don't really remember.  All I know is I didn't cook.

May 14  Connor & Payton end of the year parties

The special needs department had a breakfast for the parents.  Jon wasn't able to go so it was just Hayden and I.  The kids put on a performance to the High School Musical song.  Some did sign language, while some were keeping the beat with different instruments.  Then we ate some Breakfast and then they handed out some certificates of acheivment and advancement.   Connor had a great first year of middle school.  I was not very happy at first having him have to go to a school so far away, but after meeting and talking with the teacher I knew that was where he needed to be.  He loves it and is learning a lot about everyday living as well as his academic goals. 



Connor keeping the beat with some sticks



Connor with his teacher getting his award

Later that afternoon, I got to go to Payton's school for their classes writers' cafe.  There theme was Hawaii. 

The kids got to choose from performing a song, poem, short story, or play.  I think they had to do 2 things.  Payton was in 2 of the plays.  The kids made up everything.  To me it was about twice as long as it should have been.  They had I believe 3 of everything in each group.  Then halfway through they served pastries and coffee to go along with the cafe theme.  They all did a great job and I could tell they put a lot of time and practice into it.  They all seemed to be having a great time and were excited to finally perform in front of an audience 

Payton in her new glasses

Payton

May 14 & 15  Father Son Campout

The boys look forward to this every year.  So do I for that matter.  We made it a girls night out.  We went to the mall, ate at the food court, and did a lot of window shopping.  Later, we met my mom, Christa, and her 2 girls over at a frozen yogurt place Taylor works at.  It is a self serve place.  You fill your cup with whatever flovor frozen yogurt you want and add as much toppings as you want from candy to nuts to fresh fruit to chocolate sauce, whipping cream then it gets weighed and you pay per weight.  It was yummy.  My dad went up for the evening and took Connor back with him so he was able to get a good night sleep in his bed.  The boys had fun playing near the beach and with fire.  In the morning, they rode on someones jet ski.  They had fun. 

May 18th Jon's Birthday  Hayden's preschool graduation

Jon wanted Star Craft II for his birthday so when that comes out in a couple more months that is what he will get.  I think we went to Olive Garden for dinner.  Again it has been too long to remember. 

Hayden had his last day of preschool today.  We celebrated by taking the kids to the park.   One of the mom's made them little graduation hats.  Of course I forgot my camera and still haven't taken a picture of him in his cute hat. 

May 19 Talmage class party

Hayden and I got to attend Talmages end of the year party.  They made there own ice cream sundaes.  I personally think in this case less is better.  By less I mean less toppings.  I mean come one how many types of sprinkles does one kid need in a bowl of icecream?  Every kind!!  These kids put on chocolate sauce, caramel, every type of sprinkles, I think this one had gummy bears too, whipping cream, and about 5 cherries.  And guess how much they actually eat?  Most of them that put on everything only ended up eatting one bite and find out it didn't taste so good.  Whatever, at least they had fun.  Then once they were hyped up on all that sugar they went outside and blew bubbles and played with hula hoops. 

Talmage and Hayden

Talmage

Hayden

May 20th  Kennedy's class party

At Kennedy's class party they signed each other's class picture that was taken awhile back.  They also ate snacks.  Then they went outside and did beach relay race.  They had to put on flippers and a pool ring walk to a beach chair holding a beach bag then once they got to the chair take out the out the beach towl from the beach bag, place it on the chair, sit in the chair, put on sunglasses, and take out the magazine and open it up then they had to place all the stuff back in the bag and walk back to the next person in line.  It was real funny watching these kids try and go real fast with these huge flippers.



Kennedy

May 21 Last day of School
Let the craziness begin.

May 22 Hoglund Run
An old Stake President from our stake (He was actually the one that interviewed Jon and I before we got married.) started up an annual 5K and 10K stake run/walk.  I'm not sure how it all came to be but many many years later it is still going on.  I along with my mom and brother in law Aaron decided to run in this thing.  I really haven't run a 5K (3.1 miles) probably since Christmas break.  I had been running 2 1/2 miles.  So, I only had less than a  week from when we decided to run in this race to practice running the 5K.  Well, one of those days I couldn't run because Connor and Brenton had dentist appts. and another day it was pouring rain.  So I was only able to run it once.  The race was in the morning so I didn't eat or drink anything because I didn't want a side ache while running.  So by the time we started running I was starving.  I have never run this trail so I didn't know how much further I had to go so I didn't know if I should pick it up a bit or ease off a little.  My mind was only on one thing for most of the run, and that was how hungary I was.  That is all I could think about well that and not passing out from hunger and thirst.  Well my goal was to finish in less than 30 minutes and I did.  I ran it in 26 minutes 41 seconds.  I don't see myself really getting into racing.  Let's face it I really only do it because it is free exercise and walking wasn't cutting it anymore I needed a little more but not racing fast more. I can see myself doing this race again because it is free.  I can't picture myself paying money to race in a race I know I have no chance in heck winning.  And I don't really care about the t shirt that I would only wear running anyway and I have plenty of t shirts to run in.  I did have fun and learned to eat right when I wake up so my body wont be so starving. 

May 31 Memorial Day
I'm not sure what we did on this day.  I don't have anything written on my calendar.  I think we went to the swimming pool.  The pool opens every year on Memorial Day. 

Wow that was a busy month and that didn't even include everything like the ongoing church activities or my Census job.  My goal was to work between 35-40 hours a week on Census.  I was able to do that but I had to go out a few hours at a time a few times a day.  Luckily, they have the Census planned out so that I work close to home.  I don't think any houses were over 5 miles from my house.    

Happy B-Day to Me

Sunday, May 2nd was my birthday. We went to a restaurant the day before, but waited 4 1/2 months to post this so I don't even remember which restaurant I picked. Oh well, it was a great quiet birthday. Jon got me a GPS. Jon's GPS is an older model and is one of the fatty ones. We also never updated his maps so some newer homes and roads don't show up on it and we didn't want to pay the high price to update that fatty. I love my new slim skinny one. Here's to many trip with you.

U.S. Census

I started my Census job on April 27. I along with about 20 other people in my group met for 4 days for training. The training went through all the things we could and probably would come across while out in the field. It was very informative and I never thought there would be so many different circumstances that could arise filling out a census form. Luckily for me Jon spends a lot of his time working from home. He took over while I was in training from 8 am-5 pm. He made sure the last 2 kids got on the bus and took Hayden to preschool. He also made sure the kids did their homework and had dinner ready when I got home. It was really nice and I felt like I was on vacation.
My job consisted of going to peoples houses that were on my list and fill out a census form for them. I heard some horror stories and we also talked about difficult people, but luckily I didn't run into any mean people. I had a great experience. Yes, I did have a couple people say they wouldn't fill it out, but I was at least able to get how many people were living in that household on April 1, 2010 (census day). Sure the census would love names, ages, race, but there main goal is the number of people living in that house on Census day.

There was enough work for our area for 7 weeks. They figured between 6-9 weeks. Which worked out excellent for me because we were leaving for Disney just a few days later. I mainly worked while the kids were in school and maybe an hour in the evening and then about 8 hours on Saturday. A few days into working the kids started complaining about me working and wanted me to stay home with them. The funny thing is when I am home they mostly ignore me and don't even recognize me being home. Whatever!!

Too bad there isn't a job like this for me to do a few time a year for a little extra bonus money. If there was I would be all over it.

Over all I had a great experience and met a lot of great people in my Census group and would love to do this again in 10 years.

Gardening

On April 14th, we had a tree guy and his crew come out and cut down about 25 trees all around our house. About a month or so ago, we had a guy give us an estimate to cut down these trees and the price was just way more than we wanted to spend. So we were just gonna leave the trees. Well a tree company was doing work down the road and was going door to door to some houses and he happened to knock on our door and to make a long story short gave us a great offer way less than the other company so we chopped them all down. We also got 4 loads of free wood chips and a few days after the tree guys cut down the trees we hired a bobcat guy to move these wood chips and level out some areas of our yard.

Lots of fun to watch and listen to the cracking sound as it is about to fall

Then the following day we planted our vegetables. We planted three times as much as in years past. Since we removed a lot of trees and cleared the area of one side of our house we were able to add three planter boxes. We planted tomatoes, green beans, jalapenos, green peppers, corn, zucchini, yellow squash, cucumbers, and strawberries.

Some of our garden goodies

We also ordered some fruit trees and berry bushes. We planted an apple, peach, cherry, pear, and plum tree. All the trees except the peach need 2 types of that fruit to cross pollinate. Since space is limited in our yard, we bought the trees that they grafted two types of that fruit. So our apple tree will produce two different types of apples on one tree. Kind of cool if you ask me. We also planted green grapes, red grapes, 2 different types of blueberries, and boysenberries. The boysenberries are supposed to be thornless but they definitely have small thorns on them. Too bad the trees will take a few years to produce fruit and hopefully we will see some berries next year. Right now they are all in large pots because we don't know exactly where we want them to be planted. By Spring next year, we will find them a permanent home.