March 2020

Celebrating 14 years of marriage!  We had planned on going out of town for a weekend get-a-way but cancelled those plans when the pandemic was announced on our anniversary.  Instead, we baked our favorite chocolate cake and celebrated the day with our family.  After all, it is our family's birthday!

Since we had to cancel our Anniversary plans, we made the best of it with a hike to the Hot Springs (see named post) and the kids decided to camp out in the Backyard.  

Since we were stuck at home for St. Patrick's Day, Gwen decided to make a Leprechaun trap.  

West snatched my phone for this selfie

West turned 5!  While he was a little bummed that he couldn't celebrate the day with his preschool class and teachers, we made the most of it.  He got his favorite breakfast: crepe's and cinnamon rolls for his birthday cake.  We also had fun going on lots of hikes right around his birthday.  Because we had received a little more rain than usual, the desert was in full bloom.  So many beautiful and natural flowers.  

What we love about 5 year old West: 

• West is Best!  His preschool teachers gave him this nickname and it is very appropriate.  He loves school!  He works hard, knows all his letters and sounds and most importantly--is a very fast runner.  But what they said they love most of all is that he is very capable in school, but also very humble.  They told me a story about how most recesses all the other kids would want to race him and he would always win the races, but one day, right after he had just run a race and won, another kid asked him to race.  He was a bit tired, having just finished racing, but he said yes.  The other boy beat him.  When the teachers tried to make him feel better about not winning this race, telling him that it was just because he was tired from just having previously run, he said, "no it's ok, the other boy is faster than me."
• West is a good boy.  He's very obedient and seriously never gives me any trouble.  He's very disciplined and diligent with his school work and behaves so well with his siblings.  Everyone loves West!
• West is sensitive.  If he thinks someone in our family is laughing at him, he'll quietly walk away and hide out in his bedroom.  I'll often have to go get him, give him extra loves and invite him to come down with a lot of gentle persuasion and then we all try to be more considerate to our sweet West. 
• West is strong!  All year long, he has been riding his bike to preschool with me.  His teachers were initially amazed to see him as a 4-year-old riding onto school grounds on his bike.  Sometimes I'll give him a little push as we climb the hills, but only if we're in a hurry, never because he really needs the help.  He loves to ride his bike to and from school.  He has also been doing push-ups with Ned.  

One day sometime after the Pandemic began and life shut-down, my kids decided to create and host a carnival.  This may have been due to the fact that we could no longer attend our County's fair thanks to Covid. 

Another project to keep us entertained was making clay out of baking soda.  We then tried to make items that reminded us of Easter.  There's an egg, a sacrament plate for the Last Supper and the Tomb.  

 

Lincoln began a new hobby of restoring different types of motor vehicles.  He started with an old 4-wheeler that had been sitting in my parent's garage for years.  He was able to get it fixed up and working.  After testing it out and having a little fun, he was able to sell it and make enough money to purchase another project.  

West had a distance-learning assignment of learning what would sink or float so we pulled out his water table. 

On another beautiful March day Zach, I and the boys rode our bikes for a ways along the River Mountain Loop trail.  You can just glimpse Lake Mead behind us.  

March was a month of a lot of hiking.  There were so many beautiful flowers!  With Covid shutting down school, sending Zach home to work and cancelling all of my piano lessons, we found ourselves with a lot more time.  We filled it by enjoying nature!  Here we hiked to the top of Red Mountain.  It gave us a great view of Boulder City, Lake Mead and Las Vegas all in one sweeping panorama.  

One day at the park, the kids spotted this adorable and very scared baby bunny in the grass.  They enjoyed admiring it.  Nyle suggested we take it to the pet store--he was worried about it's well-being.  No worries, we left it there and helped it find a safe bush to jump into.  

With distance learning being the new mode of education, we had lots of schooling going on in our house. Here, Nyle's teacher sent a Flat Stanley page to print out, color and take with him on his adventures.  He had Stanley help him do his math work, practice the piano and go on a 4-wheeler ride with him.  

West is so carefully writing in his journal 

I love the look on these cute boys' faces.  I don't know what Ned was doing, but he's always making his little brothers laugh!  These boys are so good to each other!  When I found out I was have boy after boy after boy...I was nervous about whether they would drive me and each other crazy.  I was SO wrong.  It is so wonderful to have them.. they are each other's best friends!