Dancing with Daffodils

 The last two weeks have been a blur. I was so focused and busy and for days felt like I didn't sit down until it was bedtime, but everything has gone well. I painted and cut the grass and cleaned and organized and spruced up the house and planted flowers and my (small) garden and taught piano lessons along with all the regular life and kid stuff.     One day I went and picked 14 lbs of strawberries and then made a bunch of jam, froze some for smoothies and we ate a bunch. I went to book club one night and a baby shower another. I watched Joel one day while Leisa went on a field trip. We had baseball games and practices and dance and then my sister-in-law came last weekend. She was here Wednesday through Monday morning and it was a good visit. She and I talked and hung out some and she spent a lot of time with the kids. She came with us to baseball games and that was fun. Lily had her 8th grade dance and I was proud of her for being brave enough to go. She said the food w...

 Josh was asked to officiate a wedding on Saturday for a couple in our ward. The bride's family are not members of the church so they had a typical wedding last Saturday and then went to NYC and they were sealed this past Tuesday in the temple there. It was a big deal for Josh and he was so nervous. He practiced for weeks, we watched Disney Fairy Tale Wedding clips, he talked to a member of our church who is a former pastor and has done lots of weddings and he spent hours preparing what to say.  Last Friday night he went to the rehearsal and then I met him at the Front Porch for the rehearsal dinner. It was a nice date night and it was fun to be with Josh and be a part of the wedding excitement. The bride's parents then took us all out for ice cream, which was so nice. We were done by 8pm and really wanted to keep our date going but couldn't think of anywhere to go or anything fun to do (it was also raining).  Saturday I painted and cleaned and tried to get a lot done sin...

 It has been a busy few weeks with regular life stuff. Teaching piano lessons, driving boys to baseball games and practices. driving girls to dance, going to the gym, grocery shopping and cleaning and cooking and all that good stuff. Josh has had a lot of church responsibilities to catch up on too. Last Saturday Josh and Curtis went to do a service project at St. Clement's Island. Lily was supposed to go too but I found out two days beforehand that she had a rehearsal from 9:30-2 pm that day to get ready for her show coming up. It is that crazy time of year where everything is winding down so this upcoming week we have two middle school band concerts to attend as well as two baseball games, two baseball practices, the girls still have their regular dance classes and then Lily has rehearsal Saturday too. This is when I start to get tired of the stress but we just have to make a final push to June and then by June 15th, dance, piano lessons, baseball and school will all be over. We a...

We got up Monday morning and headed to the San Diego Zoo. It is such a beautiful zoo with tons of plants and even though it is built into a canyon, they have an elevator, hop on and off buses (known as kangaroo buses) and the sky ride. It is just an awesome zoo and I'm glad we got to go. We started right off with a bus tour just to get a feel for the zoo and it was cool. Then we just walked around all day seeing animals.      The koalas were awake and eating and were absolutely adorable. The polar bears were eating inches away from us and were so amazing to watch, plus there was a zoo person there talking all about the polar bears so we learned a lot too. The tiger was pacing right in front of us, the cheetahs were staring us down and walking around, the lions were sleeping but at least in a place where we could easily see them and the orangutans were right in front of us. The leopard growled at us and the sea eagle (with its 10-foot wingspan) was flying around and it was...