Sunday adventures in LA

Since we don't get to go to our parents' or grandma's house on Sunday afternoon/evenings anymore or have any family to get together with on Sundays, we sometimes get bored and lonely. I am trying to get over this and improve our Sundays. So a couple weeks ago I suggested we drive to the LA temple grounds and visitors center.

It was beautiful! The grounds were amazing and the kids loved it. The temple is huge! I want to go inside sometime while we are here.

Emmy LOVED all the flowers and tried to smell them all.

Zach of course tried to open all the doors.

Emmy thought rolling down the hill was great.

Zach also loved jumping off all the benches.

Seriously it was gorgeous and we had a great time. It was worth the 3 hours we spent in the car driving there and back.

Love my little family!

Randomness from April (and part of March)

We have been doing so much yard/house work it's ridiculous!If I would have known how much stuff needed to be fixed on this house and yard, I would have bought a different house. Seriously, we spend so much time and money on trying to fix things up and it's so discouraging because it still doesn't look nice. It's like that Money Pit movie.

But anyway, one day Matt came in holding this power tool triumphantly in the air saying, "Holy cow! I love this saw!" I laughed so hard, it was funny!

Emmy completed the spring reading program at the library and earned herself 3 In-N-Out certificates. She is turning into such a good little reader. And she'll do anything for a prize. She is currently on reading level 9. I don't really know what that means except that she's supposed to be at level 5 when she's done with kindergarten, so she's ahead of where she needs to be to pass kindergarten. Phew! :)

I though I was hilarious by having this written on Matt's birthday Costco cake. He is obsessed with Costco cake and so I surprised him with one. We have half of it in the freezer. Ha!

The kids were more excited about his cake than he was.

I help in Emmy's class once a month. Here they are making tulip crowns for their spring party. I have really loved Emmy's school and her teacher.

The palm trees at In-N-Out kill me.

We may or may not have gone to In-N-Out to drown our sorrows because we were sad about not being able to be with family for our General Conference traditions.

I forgot it was spring picture day and sent Emmy to school in a stained Tshirt and messy bun pigtails. She is still adorable.

The Redlands Classic bike race was fun to watch. Some of the racers even came to Emmy's school to talk to them.

Zach loves to take pictures with my phone.

Emmy says every day how she doesn't want to go to school. She's fine once she gets there, but she flops around every morning saying she's not going.

Emmy was trying to teach Zach how to play Go Fish. In a blanket fort. Haha!

Easter

Our stake had an Easter egg hunt the Saturday before Easter. It was pretty fun, but we missed the big Riverton egg hunt. The stake provided lunch and some activities along with the egg hunt. I forgot the Easter baskets so they had to use grocery bags. Whoops!

We did baskets and stuff on Saturday. The kids got a little candy, new outfits, books, and Emmy got a kite and Zach got bubbles. I didn't do new church clothes this year because they didn't really need any. They needed new regular clothes.

Sunday we tried to focus on the Savior, but I got really homesick and I was sad. I tried to make a nice Easter dinner, but the ham was gross and no one ate it. Oh well, at least the kids looked cute.

Later that week we went to the park to fly Emmy's new kite. She loved it!

And now she asks every day if it's windy enough to fly her kite. Haha!

Spring break

For the second week of spring break, I decided to potty train Zach. It was an epic failure. We went hard core for 2 days and he did not go once in the toilet. So I gave up and we did other fun stuff.

Bring your own cup day at 7-11.

We went for a hike. Emmy loved it.

Zach pouted and whined the whole way.

It was a fun spring break!

Disneyland Easter egg hunt

Springtime in California is gorgeous. The blooms, the smells, the warm weather, the blue sky....it's just beautiful. And of course, springtime at Disneyland is amazing. These trees are just gorgeous.

Matt and I got to go on a Disneyland date while my parents were here. It was so fun to go by ourselves without the kids.

This churro funnel cake was amazing.

Over spring break, I took the kids to ride the new Luigis ride in Cars Land. It was pretty fun.

And we did the Easter egg hunt. The kids had a blast finding the eggs. You get a map that tells you where to look for the eggs and then you put a sticker on the map when you find one. Then you get a prize.

The eggs were probably about a foot or two tall and put in places where you can see them but can't really get to them.

Then you got to pick a small character egg after the map was full. We did one in Disneyland and one in California Adventure. They also have one in Downtown Disney, but we didn't do that one.

It was really fun!