Hiking!

On Friday we got to go on a hike in the Superstition Mountains with Chelsea, Darin, and Shea and Brooke and Reagan. We took a trail that led to some hieroglyphs and a small water fall. It was such a cool hike. I always love the ones that have a rewarding end and this one certainly delivered. The whole way was beautiful since the weather was perfect and the desert is so green right now. It was a little stressful going with the kids. There were 4 families with lots of little children and three non-walking infants. It wasn't too bad, but it is the Sonoran Desert for heaven sake! Everywhere you looked there was a cactus and for some reason the kids don't seem to notice when they are starting to lean into one.  In addition, the trail did have some areas where the rocks were steep and slippery. Braden enjoyed running everywhere he went and unfortunately wasn't being very careful. Luckily everyone was watching out for each others children and nobody was injured more than a few scraped up knees. It was a good thing there were so many people since the hike perfectly illustrated the difference in pace between my two children. Braden wanted to be one step ahead of the group at all times. He flew up the trail. Jade wanted to be with him, but is so careful on each and every rock that she ended up being toward the end most of the time. She was so cute to hike with. Instead of going around a small boulder, she would climb over it.  And she didn't want to hold my hand even though the terrain was difficult for her little legs. It was no wonder she was exhausted before we made it back to the car. Uncle Darin was nice enough to carry her down the rest of the way. All in all it was a really great time and I'm grateful for the beauty all around us. Before it gets too hot, I really need to get out and do more hiking!

Lately

What we've been up to lately: Well, we had a dog for a week. He was a really good dog, but we didn't enjoying having canine companionship as I hoped we would. We were able to find him a family that does love dogs and I'm sure he is much happier. Other than that, I've just been trying to be a good housekeeper (ha ha) and planning and preparing for camp. I have about 2-4 meetings a week most of the time. Luckily many of these I can take the kids to and they get to play with friends. I really love the camp meetings. They are effective, efficient, and most of all very spiritual. Camp is taken so seriously and every detail is planned to help the girls feel the love of the Savior and understand their divine nature as daughters of a loving God. It's an awesome thing to be a part of. Another awesome thing to be finished being a part of is school. I graduated from University of Phoenix in February. I earned my Associate of Art in Business and I'm glad to be done with that for a season. I'm sure I'll go back to pursue further degrees, but for now I'm focusing on other things. Currently our Saturdays are being spent prepping our yard for the amazing landscaping we will be putting in. Ok, it may not be amazing to many peoples standards, but we've spent the last year with dirt and weeds, so when it's done, it will amaze me every time I look outside. The plan is mostly grass with a shade tree and some other simple features. We will also be adding concrete to extend our patio a bit. I wish we could afford to cover it, but we are being very careful with saving most of our tax return this year. We recently heard that the helicopter loan from way back when will be out of litigation and that we might be receiving bill of payment soon. Although we haven't heard anything from the company yet, we believe the wisest thing to do is to only carry out some of our home improvement plans and basically save every other penny we may get back. At least it comes at a time when we do have some flexibility. I feel very blessed. Other things we've been doing lately include getting Braden ready for Kindergarten. We went to his schools open house and had a lot of fun. He'll be going in for placement tests in April and we'll see how he does. Ever since I told him about the tests, he's wanted to practice reading with me more. He's getting pretty good at the simple short-vowel words such as: "cat", "log", "ham", "sat", etc. The ones that are hard are the sight words. So far he gets "the" and "a" most of the time, but has trouble with things that seem simple like "I". He tries to connect it to the word that follows to make sense of it. For instance, "I sat' he would read as isat. I have to remind him that when it's alone it says it's own name. The other struggle is books with pictures. He tries to guess what the words are saying to get through the book quicker. I no longer read with him without a handy sheet of paper to cover the illustrations. Once he reads a page, I uncover the picture. I'll be happy when he can get education from a real teacher. Teaching someone to read is tricky.  I know I will miss him being at home, though. Jade is growing up really fast. Her little personality is really blossoming. She's like a little lady.  I love my kiddos and I've been feeling much happier being a mom lately. And that is a short summary of what we've been doing lately.