Springtime

In March we went to Dairy Queen for free cone day. The girls LOVE ice cream cones. Who doesn't.

We went to Jump Creek with the girls. We started on a weird upper trail and it was kind of scary and Raelan hated it. Then we went to the normal trail below and had a great time exploring and enjoying the nice weather. The girls handled the hike very well.

Matching Pigtails and Hugs

I left the girls downstairs for a few minutes and since they usually fight a ton I was thinking I'd come down to them causing problems. But instead I found them sitting as close to each other as possible and just enjoying a show.

Brynlee enjoyed her first ever Easter egg hunt at my parent's neighborhood hunt. The girls had so much fun! 

Raelan also enjoyed coloring eggs. We didn't include Brynlee on that because we avoid undue stress and disaster.

They looked so adorable on Easter Sunday in their matching dresses.

We told the girls they could watch a movie one night and they got everyone ready for the big event.

We went hiking out by Fort Boise and Raelan declared that she wants to go hiking all the time now.

On May 2nd, Brynlee had sneezed and I noticed something come out of her nose that looked weird. It was stuffing from one of her stuffed animals. Shoot! So I proceeded to pull a bunch out of her nose and checked the other side and it had some up much higher. I tried to no avail to get it out and eventually decided I needed to take her to the Dr. We had the help of a couple doctors and a few nurses. They were able to get a piece out that was about the size of my fingernail (gross!) and unfortunately found that there was another piece even further up. Yikes. Brynlee did SO well though. She had a sucker and would sit up and suck on it for a minute, then we'd say it was time for her to lay back down so she'd set her sucker on the wrapper and lay back down and close her eyes as I held her arms and the Dr tried to remove the stuffing. It took a lot of time and a lot of tries but Brynlee was so calm and sweet. The staff were all enamored by her sweet personality and by how calm she was being. They ended up having to do a sinus rinse to get the stuffing pushed forward enough to get it out. It was quite an ordeal and I'm so glad we ended up going in. Raelan learned to never put things up her nose. Somehow Brynlee didn't learn the same lesson. I've since had to sinus rinse a macaroni noodle out of her nose. Naughty kid. Haha

A couple days after the nose ordeal, the girls were outside blowing dandelions and suddenly Raelan was screaming that something was in her eye. I ran her inside, tried rinsing her eyes, and she continued to scream and cry and scream. After about 15 minutes of her screaming in pain I decided to take her to the eye dr. Thankfully there was a place that could get her in right away and we rushed there. It was rough getting Raelan to cooperate but she did so well considering the Dr wanted to look into her eye that she could barely open. He found that she had an abrasion on her cornea and that the seed was still stuck under her eyelid and was scratching every time she blinked. He had to flip her eyelid inside out and swipe the seed out, then put antibiotic drops in her eye. He said that there was no way the seed would've come out on its own. Thank goodness for drs and for the girls having great insurance.

And then boom, a few days later Brynlee came down with a fever. Hand, foot, mouth disease had been spreading at our gym and in our ward and sure enough, she woke up the next day with sores on her arms and toes and in her mouth. It ended up being fairly mild and her eating was never affected so we were thankful. Raelan did get a fever and sore throat one day but never showed any other symptoms so we don't know if she caught a mild case or avoided it completely.

Pretty pretty curls and blue eyes. Sigh...

I finished my semester of school with straight A's. Yay! It was hard work but so fun. I look forward to next fall. I was able to tour the cadaver lab at Idaho State's Meridian campus and had an awesome experience. So many cool things! And I got to hold a human brain!

On the Saturday before mother's day we celebrated Emily's birthday by going to Jump Creek again. It was super fun. Once we got to the falls, a hail storm rolled in suddenly and everyone took cover under rock ledges and in the caves. Exciting stuff. It cleared out and left a beautiful blue sky and got rid of all the annoying people who had been smoking and playing loud music. So it was a lovely storm, I'd say. I got Emily a hammock for her birthday so we found a place at jump creek to set it up and test it out.

Mother's day was special this year. Raelan was so sweet. She woke me up and said Happy Mother's day then ran downstairs to get the gift she had made at preschool for me. (Side note: her teacher came by to drop the gift off, and she handed it to Raelan and Raelan immediately ran off to hide it behind the couch so I wouldn't see it before Mother's day. It was so sweet.) She decorated a candle for me and had made a cute little card. She was so proud of her gift. In Sacrament meeting she went up on the stand for the primary musical number and she even stood in the front (though she didn't sing). I was so happy. Then after church we made chocolate covered strawberries and she dipped them all herself. It was awesome and she did so well. She was super proud. We spend the evening at my parents house having yummy dinner and also celebrating Emily's birthday.

Ammon and I worked hard on putting up some shelves in this weird nook in our master bathroom and also painting the whole bathroom our grey color with white trim. I am SO happy with the finished product.