Update

Sunstone came to Boise for the weekend. Scott and I were able to meet some of our favorite progressive Mormons. Friday night Scott and I attended a marriage workshop about faith transitions. I feel like we've made it through that but we really wanted to meet Natasha Helfer-Parker who was huge in helping us navigate things over the last few years. We also recorded a long podcast with her and were so excited to meet her in person. The workshop was really good. There were only 4 couples so it was really intimate. It was great. On Saturday Scott and I ping ponged and he went to some of Sunstone and I went to some of Noah Rashada's secular Buddhism workshop and Scott went back to Sunstone. That night we went downtown at had pizza with the Sunstone group. I was also able to meet Lindsay Hansen Park and I'm a huge fan of hers. It was a busy, 2 babysitters in a row kind of weekend. Downtown was crazy busy because it was prom and we were eating outside and watching people walk by and I saw my nephew Braden on his group date and then Hart and Jory who were walking behind with cameras. Ha. It was funny.

It was also my busiest week so far in teaching. All of my time slots filled and I decided to get in a few extra classes and get up 30 minutes earlier Wed-Friday. That extra 30 minutes made me extra tired. It was pretty surprising the difference 30 minutes can make.

Kids are doing good. Ryan kept wrapping up one of his cars in his blanket and giving it Scott and saying, "I wrapped a present for your birthday." The girls were crafting some things as well. Corbin is getting ready for summer I think although he did say the other day he actually did say he liked school but then he recanted pretty quickly, Hard to know. Ha.

Scott's amazon business is going well. Every time he gets a sell he gets an email notification. That's exciting. Every morning he wakes up and sees how much money he made the day before. Passive income is the best! Ha.

Just me with one of my personal heroes. NO BIG. Ha. 

Lisa Butterworth in the middle and Natasha on the right.

Saw these baby geese on my walk this morning. We have a little marshland reserve or something about a mile from our house. Pretty cool.

Fun filled Weekend.

There were lots of happenings over the weekend. During the week I had some of my friends over from my ward and we had lunch together. I don't see them much these days with not going to church anymore and I get up way too early to go to girls nights. It was fun to catch up with all of them. I also made some strawberry jam. Yum. We have been out of homemade jam for a few months now so my kids have been eating the jam like candy (which it basically is). On Friday night I took Corbin to a cousin birthday. Christy goes all out. She fed everyone dinner, yum. The kids had a nerf gun fight and pinata. Trisha, Keaton, and Amanda were there from out of town so it was fun to chat with them there. That night I went to friend's birthday party. She was turning 30 so my friend Krista went all out. We had a sleep over with a pinata, and cake. We stayed up until 3:00 eating and talking. It was very fun. The next morning we had some macadamia nut waffles and then I had to head home to go to Amanda's baby shower. 

Rachel and Christy threw the shower for Amanda and it was really cute and fun. Trisha spent the rest of her time with me. We went shopping and then watched a movie/took a nap. We had dinner and then we went to the movie The United Kingdom which is based on a true story and was interesting. It was a really fun filled weekend.

Today was a beautiful day and we went to camel's back park and hiked around and then got some pizza and had a picnic. It was some good family time. Scott held down the fort while I was gone for most of the weekend, so shout out to him.

My job is going well. I don't like getting up early but it's not THAT bad, maybe? I actually really like it so that's great. Scott's ice trays are selling. He sold 21 in one day I think. Slowly but surely. 

Amanda is the cute prego lady in the middle (not that you can really tell, I think my food baby is bigger than her real baby).

Cute and yummy food.

Sleepover friends. Lindsay (birthday girl) is obsessed with Parks in Rec (who's not) and Krista (the host) made shirts for all of us, "treat yo self." If you watch the show than you know and if not well, you are missing out.

Treat yo Self!

Yummy!

Piper's chick form story time.

Spencer's b-day party.

Scott and Gabby performing their puppet show.

Pinata (it was a bit of a disaster as it took forever to break and Lindsay smashed most of the contents to smithereens, I still got some good stuff though.

Camel's back park.

Happy Easter and Half Marathon

Happy Easter everyone. I hope you have all enjoyed your Easter. We are just getting ready to eat dinner over here. Just the usual happenings over here last week. The big event was me running the Robie Creek Half Marathon yesterday with my brother Gabe. He runs it every year. He has tried to get me to run it several times and I never have but this year I did. He texted me about it a few months ago and I went to look into it and realized that this race fills up within 10 minutes. It's a very popular race and it is BRUTAL. I'd heard it was hard but IT. WAS. HARD! I only half hardheadedly trained. I started running about three miles at a time a few times a week about a month ago. I wasn't part of the race but I heard you could buy someone else's spot right before the race when people have to drop out for whatever reason. I sort of did a little training just in case I got in but not really wanting to get in. Ha. Last Saturday I ran 6 miles just in case I ended up running it. I was hoping that Gabe would just buy a spot for me when he went to pick up his race packet but that didn't work out. If I was going to do the race I had to drive down there and buy the spot myself. I went back and forth all day trying to decide if I would go down there and buy a spot or not. Ha. I finally sucked it up and went down there and bought a spot from someone. Now I was in it! I was dreading it because I knew it was hard and I knew I hadn't trained well enough but I figured oh well! Saturday morning I drove to Gabe's house and we showed up at 10:00, (2 hours early). Ha. He really wanted to get a parking spot I guess. We just hung out until the race started and then we ran the first mile or two together before he moved ahead of me.

Normally when I run these races I try not to stop running no matter what. Not this time! If I was hurting too bad I just walked, It was great! About 8 miles of it is a straight up hill climb through the mountains and I speed walked the entire time. I walked really fast and I used less energy and went faster than people that were doing that really slow painful jog. I ran most of the way down the mountain and ended up with a time of 2 hours and 45 minutes. Not bad! My half marathon pace in the past has been between 2 hours and 2 hours and 10 minutes but those times were when I actually trained for months ahead of time AND they weren't mostly uphill the entire time. I was pretty happy with my time considering I speed walked a lot of it. I am sore today but not as bad as I thought I would be. I didn't get the sunscreen on my neck and shoulders very well so I'm a little burned but not too bad.

Getting back to our car was a bit of a marathon. You have to take two separate buses to get back to Boise and then they don't even drop you off at the starting line so you have to get a ride to your parked car. Annoying. I didn't get back to my house until 6pm. So between Gabe being crazy about being 2 hours early and it taking 2 hours to get back to the car it was quite the long day. It was fun though and it was cool to hang out with my brother. Plus it's a break from being at home all the time. The weather was PERFECT! Not too cold, not too hot. Running in the heat makes me want to DIE.

Ryan asked Scott for some mandarin oranges and specifically told him NOT to eat any. Scott told him he'd only eat a few and Ryan called out, "Dad, how dare you eat my mandarin oranges!" Haha.

Gabby painting

Popcorn, movie night.

Pre-race pic.

Easter baskets.

Dying Easter eggs

Egg hunt

Deviled eggs from the decorated Easter eggs

Scott thought it might be fun to eat our Easter dinner outside. Piper said, "I din't not know we were eating outside, that was unexpected." Ha. Our ghetto dinner out there, but hey maybe memorable? My foot that close to the table does not help the situation. 

Update

My parents came into town for a couple of days last week. My dad had some meetings. We met with all of the Boise Beal crew for dinner at Pizza Hut on Tuesday night. I feel badly for anyone else in the restaurant. that night. We were noisy! The cousins hadn't seen each other in awhile and it was PARTY time. The next day I met my mom for lunch the next day. Ryan had an epic tantrum. He's been "potty trained" for awhile now but it is still a struggle! He freaks out in particular peeing other places. I forced a diaper on him before we went in the mall because I knew it would be a problem but he wouldn't pee in the toilet or in the diaper and he was screaming bloody murder. It was amazing. He finally peed in the dang toilet. This kid, I'm telling you. 

Last night we had a BBQ with a bunch of our friends. It was fun. The weather was not good but luckily the hosts have a large house that is kid friendly. 

My work schedule was starting to fill up before Spring Break but I took several days off and it hasn't picked back up since. I worked this weekend to try to make up some hours. I'm hoping that my schedule will pick back up. It's way more annoying to get up at 5:00 in the morning to only teach 2 classes and earn half the money. It makes the early mornings less worth it for sure. Fingers crossed my schedule fills up better this week. 

Pizza Hut. This half of the restaurant was all Beals.

Gabby busted out this book one night. Love it!

Facebook upadate: Gabby's creative brain is so fun to see. She saw that I had bought some Popsicle sticks and asked if she could have some. 20 minutes later...

DeMeyer Park

Enough said.

I went with Gabby's class on a field trip to the foothills. Jayden, left of Gabby looks like her long lost twin brother to me. Fair skin, lots of freckles. So cute.

Piper's bunny mask from the library story time.

Spring Break

I didn't blog last week because we were in Utah for Spring Break. There will be LOTS of pictures. Before spring break I hosted a lunch for bunch of my friends. It was fun. I made taco soup and creamy chicken noodle soup and homemade rolls and gourmet chocolate chip cookies. I was just happy some people showed up! We left for Spring Break on Saturday. That night we were able to meet up with some friends at the Cheesecake Factory so that was fun. On Sunday we were able to go meet some friends at Brunch as well. It was really good to visit with them. That day was Greta's birthday. It was perfect that it landed during Spring Break so we could come down for it. My girls were especially excited because they love Greta. Carole made a yummy dinner for us and we later played a game that I am TERRIBLE at. It was still fun though. I'm always up for a game. On Monday it rained cats and dogs. Mandy and I were able to sneak a trip to IKEA. I love visiting that store. Later on we met at Jump to play for Greta's birthday. The kids LOVED that.

On Tuesday we went to the natural history museum in the morning and the movie Beauty and the Beast in the afternoon. The theater in Holladay was just re-modeled and it has some pretty fancy dan seating. It was sweet! I liked the movie, I didn't love it. I thought it had beautiful cinematography.  I really like the cartoon and I prefer a movie rendition to have it's own take like the movie Ever After. That night we were able to go over and visit my old roommate and her husband. It was fun to catch up with them, we haven't seen them in years.

Wednesday was chilly but sunny so Nana was able to be the Easter bunny and the kids had an Easter egg hunt before we headed back home. That was really fun. We went to Hires on the way home. Ryan keeps begging to go back. Last night he said, "I want to cuddle with Papa." He LOVES Papa. So cute. Thanks Nana and Papa!

The rest of Spring Break we have been hanging out and it's been nice. We have all enjoyed kicking back and relaxing.

We hung out with our friends Jake and Lisa this weekend. We went to dinner and then they came over and watched a movie with us Friday night and then they came over and watched another movie with us on Saturday night. Love them! It was fun. They have older kids so it's easier if they come to us.

Scott's amazon shipment is finally up and for sale if anyone wants to buy some of his stuff and leave a good review (if you please). E-mail or text Scott for a promo code. https://www.amazon.com/2-Pack-Silicone-Trays-Perfect-Sized-Cubes/dp/B01N5FLN9O/ref=sr_1_174?ie=UTF8&qid=1491166096&sr=8-174&keywords=silicone+ice+trays

I finished up my calligraphy class. It's a little bitter sweet. It as fun but kind of annoying as well. I might take another class this Fall. We will see. Here is a copy of my Facebook status about it: I just finished up my 8 week calligraphy class. This was my final project. The teacher asked us to pick a saying and I already knew I would do this one. This statement rang true to me when I first heard it in the movie Cinderella. It's kind of been my mantra these last couple of years as I've had to deal with hard circumstances and make even harder decisions. May we all have courage and be kind.

Gabby made a hand puppet theater stage.

Corbin's Leprachaun trap for school. Haha. It was pretty lame compared to some of the other traps in his class. Oh well. Dare to be average!

Easter egg hunt!

Getting lined up to start.

After the loot had been collected.

Greta's 4th birthday!

Gabby's note to Greta.

Natural History Museum

Rustin babysat while we went to Sunday brunch. Thanks Rustin!

The girls cuddling with cousin Attie.

Strike a pose.

Dance, dance.

Kelsey asked me to make her 10 baby bibs. Phew! I finished.