I am going to start off this post with a whole bunch of random pictures. Every other Sunday we usually spend the day at grandma Verna's house eating a wonderful Sunday dinner and we took some pictures while we were over there a few weeks ago. They ended up at the top of this page and I didn't want to move them so you get to see them first.
If I had to pick a theme for the month of April it would be pink eye. I feel like our family was plagued with it and it took the whole month to get rid of it completely. Somehow Joel and Summer never got it and Brynlee and Kyla didn't get a bad case but it hit me and Annalyn hard. I never knew how much I hate pink eye until this month.
I think the whole pink eye thing started for our family from my brother Brian. He came over one day while we watched Elowyn for him and his eye was super red. He was also over later that week for family dinner and his other eye was super pink. He didn't think it was pink eye at first but later realized that it was. Two days later Annalyn's eye started to get red and goopy. The next morning she woke up and was miserable. I couldn't get her an appointment to see her doctor until 3:45 and she was begging me to take her all day. She was super excited to get some drops for her eyes. She kept asking why this had happened and I told her she must have gotten pink eye from Uncle Brian so she was cursing him all day and vowed to never let him come over to our house with pink eye ever again.
The day after we got eye drops for Annalyn, Brynlee woke up with pink eye. She had to miss a day of school but her eyes never got super red and they were never super goopy so I sent her to school the next day. She had to miss Art night at school which is where all the kids create art and the parents get to come and look at the art with their kids. Brynlee was really looking forward to going and insisted that I not miss it. She made me go without her.
My other brother Josh got pink eye and my Sister's little girl Remi got pink eye a week after we did. Kyla played with Remi right around the time we realized that she had pink eye and exactly one week later she got it. I think I must have got it from Kyla because it was just a few days later that I got it. I got it on a Friday evening. I was supposed to babysit the next day but had to cancel and I had to send the girls to Remi's birthday party without me. Sounds like they had a great time celebrating her birthday. I was thinking I would be fine to go to church on Sunday cause the doctor said we weren't contagious after 24 hours but my eye was so swollen and red, oozy, and puffy that I ended up desperately calling around to find someone to teach my primary class and I stayed home. It looked better that night so we went to visit Joel's parent's and realized that Joel's mom had pink eye. It had been three weeks since she had been around us but during that time Anna's eyes were still a tiny bit red. She had to go in and get medicine for her eyes later that week. My eyes were all better by day five of the drops but on day six I woke up with my other eye super red and goopy. I had been putting medicine in them but I guess the infection was viral so the drops did nothing. My eyes were still red on Sunday but I couldn't find anyone to teach my class. My eyes didn't look too bad so I just went. A few people commented about them and I felt a little awkward about being there but what do you do? Luckily the pink eye hasn't hit anyone else so I am hoping we are done with that.
Despite all of the trouble with pink eye, there were lots of fun things this month. We started out the month with General Conference. Madison spent the night that night so she was there for the Saturday session of conference. The girls did lots of crafts together, played at the park, and had a lot of fun playing together. Conference was good but I feel like I missed a lot of it cause I was taking care of kids.
Joel made a new swing set for the kids and they have had a blast playing on them. They love swinging. Joel also helped my sister Heather to put a salon room up in her garage. We spent lots of time playing outside. We got some rainy days, a few windy days, and several days that were really nice. We tried to take full advantage of those days.
We got to celebrate Summer's first birthday, Easter, and Joel and I celebrated nine years of marriage. We hired a babysitter and went out to dinner at Joel favorite restaurant and then we went and walked along the river and played a few games of ultimate croquet. It was fun just to have some alone time with him and we had a fun night. Joel bought a new truck from someone at work and called it his anniversary present. I told him he better get me something really good. He got me some earrings.
Kyla played hard this month. Most of the time she doesn't need a nap but every once in a while she gets tired and will just crash on wherever she is. Sometimes she tells me she wants a nap and will crawl in her bed. She falls asleep on the way to grandma Hirtle's house almost every Sunday when we drive over there.
Brynlee filled up her shell jar and chose to take me on a date night this time. We went to see the new Beauty and the Beast movie and then we went to Panda Express and to the dollar store. At the dollar store she picked out some bubble blowing things that she took home and shared with the rest of the family. I love that she thought of them. It was lots of fun to spend some fun alone time just with her. We both enjoyed the movie and had fun together.
Annalyn, Kyla, and Summer have been so busy playing together lately. Kyla is constantly trying to feed her baby dolls random concoctions of food. They all try to dress their dolls up in Summer's clothes or sometimes plastic bags or whatever they can find. I am glad they play together and have great imaginations but they sure do make a lot of messes.
Joel went on a campout with the teachers from our ward and it sounds like he had a good time. We can't find the title to our Suburban Joel was going to register so he had to take the mini van. Brynlee ended up running and fever and threw up only hours after Joel left so we wouldn't have been able to go anywhere anyways. Luckily that didn't pass to anyone else.
Joel and I also got to go to this thing called the Escape quest with my sister Alesha and her boyfriend and my brother Brian and his wife. We were supposed to figure out all of these puzzles and escape out of this room they locked us in. We were close but we didn't make it out in the hour time frame. It was still fun.
Now that Brynlee can read I let her make muffins all by herself one day. I just had to help her with the oven, she did the rest and ever since then she has been making cupcakes and muffins all the time. She is turning into quite the little cook. So far she has only done ones from a box but I bet by this summer she will be making all kinds of things from scratch.
I babysat a few times and we went to the library, went to the park, and played outside. Brynlee ended up cutting her own hair again. She tried to play it off like I was just now noticing that she had layers but it was pretty noticeable that she cut it. Heather cut it pretty short and did her best to fix it for us. You would think now that she is almost seven she is old enough not to do that but she wanted her hair to be like her friend Tatum's so she just cut it herself.
I spent the month doing a lot of spring cleaning. I finally deep cleaned the fridge, organized the books in the office, and cleaned several more hard to reach places. It has been a slow process so the job is not done yet but we are on our way to a cleaner house. Life can sure be crazy and chaotic but it is full of lots of fun moments that just seem to make it all worth it.
