April Fun/mostly Work

On March 31, 2016 my sweet new niece, Dresden Alice Crittenden was born.  She is such a joy to have around.  I love to hold her every chance I get.  I forced the boys to hold her for about 2 minutes each.  They did not want to but liked it when they finally gave in.

We began what I will call The Great Sprinkler Project.  Wow it has been a pain, but good for us. We had a mix up on the irrigation when the new subdivision went in above us on the irrigation line, and all last year we could hardly water.  Long story short, the developer paid for us to hook up to secondary water system and put in sprinklers.  This was for our property and my dads and the one my dad owns next door to him.  It has been quite a huge undertaking to say the least, and its still not done.  Almost there.

 Our boys have worked so hard and I believe that is exactly what a boy needs in his life is a large amount of work to complete.  Braxton has learned all the ins and outs of how to do a sprinkler system, I even told him to use it for his Duty to God.  I have also learned a lot, mostly my job was to fill in all the holes after the work was completed and it was a hard job that got old very fast.  The actual process is not hard, just time consuming.  Shane pretty much can figure out how to do anything and this is just one more thing he knows how to do.

I have been in the Young Women's for about 8 months now and it has been a great learning experience for me.  We were doing skits one night and I got a huge kick out of Rennan McConkie's portrayal of the "Dad", where she gave herself a mustache and beard with her hair.  The girls are so amazing and creative and fun, it has been so good for me to be around them every week.

I guess one sport that has practice 3 times a week was not enough for Braxton so he decided to join the track team.  He did such an amazing job running the 800 and the 1600.  He did not make the team that competes (mostly made up of 9th graders), but he raced hard every week and beat his time every race.  I loved watching, it reminded me of my good old days watching all my friends run track.  I was a great spectator back then.

My mothers day flower from 2 years ago bloomed again and I had to have a picture.  So beautiful.

My Dakota had his 11th birthday.  I will soon put my 11 things I love about Dakota on the blog, but until then I will say that Shane and I got to take him out of school for his special Bella's birthday and it was a ton of fun grilling him on the cute girls at school.  Fun day.

Breakfast in Bed on his birthday.  We gave him a new bike for his birhday and had our Grandparents over for cake and Ice cream.  At our house it is always a birthday week, it drags out all week.

Sweet baby girl.  I love her so much.

A creation the boys made with the dominoes.

I went to Women's conference with Mom and Tara again this year.  I love this tradition it is so rejuvenating and refreshing. I feel the spirit so strong every class I am in and learn a lot of new things.  This year the theme was charity and I came home feeling like being a better, kinder person.  Cameron had his last field trip while I was gone (below) and gave me a piece of his mind about the fact that I could not go.  Direct quote "there are 28 kids in my class and there were 21 parents there--I was one of 7 without a mom or dad."  He is slightly spoiled I tell you.  He lived through such a horrible thing in his 8 year old life and also managed to have a great time with his friends mom who sent me this picture.

My mom gave us Lagoon passes this year for Christmas.  This was our first time of many to come.

We got to take a break from our labors and go to Moab from April 1-4 with our friends/cousins Jake and Alayna Weston and their kiddos.  We had the best campsite I have ever camped in.  It was back in our own little nook, down a long dirt road that people hardly traveled down, and was so amazingly beautiful it was breathtaking.The kids ran around and climbed on everything and chased hundreds of lizards and even an occasional rabbit.  It was heaven I tell you.  The weather was heavenly also not to hot and not to cold.  We took our bicycles this year and that was my favorite part as well as the boys.  They rode their bikes for most of the day everyday.  One day we took a "Jeep Safari" and did a 20 mile loop through some really cool terrain, some of it scary, some of it wet, but all of it really beautiful.

We went out to Dead Horse Point and looked over the edg.......finish here