April Happenings

 We had the most wonderful Easter weekend. It was all the way at the beginning of the month, so it might be hard for me to even remember what we did.  I do remember it was wonderful though, as previously mentioned.  We were lucky enough to have house guests.  The girls played and played and played and played with their cousins from Utah, Lyla and Troy.
Friday night, Chloe had a swim meet, and she had quite the audience. Rey and Mary, Greg's family, Curtis, and Rey and Paloma, all came out to see Chloe swim.  She swam her fastest times yet and we had so much fun watching her race.  After that we went to Manuels for some Mexican food. The kids all sat at a table all by themselves and actually behaved  better than normal.  I think they felt like they were being treated like grown ups, and acted as such.

After dinner we came back to my house and the girls danced for all of us in my living room. Macie was a little upset at first that she didn't get to dance solo to "let It Go" but eventually she "let it go" and joined in the fun.

 We all hated Don in the morning when we woke up at 5 AM to go hiking (it was his idea, he even hired a babysitter for us).  We were glad we did it though. It was a nice brisk morning and we actually ended up enjoying ourselves.  Don and I are hiking the Grand Canyon in about a month, rim to rim, so we are in the process of training for it.  I am not sure why we are doing it.  Our friends invited us, and I think we were too prideful to admit that we were too out of shape to go.  we are trying to change that.

 After our hike, we came back and had breakfast and then watched conference, which took up most of the day.  Then the Mortensen men all met up at our church for Priesthood session and after, we had a chinese buffet over at my house.  Kirsten and I stayed up way too late preparing for the Easter bunny to come.  But it was worth it in the morning.  The kids were so excited to see their Easter baskets and see that the Easter bunny had left them an Egg hunt in our front yard.

 Later that afternoon, we went over to Julie's house for the family Easter dinner.

 The Easter bunny brought these pretty pastel Easter dresses, and I could not convince the girls to wear other shoes besides their red sandals.  Oh well.  They still looked adorable.
After the family party, we came back home and crashed.  Greg and Kirsten left the next day, and we were all sad to see them go.

 Luckily "Disney on Ice" was the day after their cousins left, so they still had something to look forward to.  The girls liked the show, although they kept asking when Elsa and Anna were going to come out. They never did.  I guess the "Frozen" show isn't until next year. The girls were highly disappointed. Awesome when you spend a ton of money on something for the kids, and they leave disappointed.

 This is a stupid picture that illustrates how much taller the Phoenix Suns are than us.

 Don and I are enjoying our preparations for the Grand Canyon, surprisingly.  We went on a fun hike a few weeks ago.  It is torture getting up so early, but once we are out hiking, we like being outside and having some time to talk.  This is the hike that I almost got hit on the head by a large falling rock.  Some rude lady who saw the whole thing happen, made sure to make me feel like an idiot that I didn't dodge fast enough from the falling rock. I have a problem. You know that whole fight or flight response? it never works for me. I just freeze. People will be yelling at me to do something, and I just stand there like a dummy.  I don't know why this happens to me.  But Don said he is going to start practicing with me by just yelling at me randomly to "move!!" or "duck!" or "save the drowning baby!"

 Later that day we attended the wedding of Don's cousin, Melissa Mortensen. Not me. The other one. Now I am the only Melissa Mortensen in the family.

 The girls loved dancing at the reception.

 This month was also the school talent show. This year Chloe and her friend Olivia, sang "Do,Re, Mi."  They were adorable. They picked the song and worked all the details out themselves.  I played the piano for them and they sang and did actions to the song.  Chloe was very particular in what she wore, of course, because that is my Chloe.  Her dress had to be pink.  Her teacher came and gave the girls flowers, which was so sweet.  After the talent show we tried to go out to dinner, which is a whole story in and of itself.

As we were walking back to our car, Macie fell and skinned her knee.  It was a bad one.  She immediately started screaming like her leg had been chopped off with a machete.
She continued screaming (and when I see screaming, that is no exaggeration.  It was like a mix between wailing and screaming. It was blood curdling.) while Don, my Dad, and I tried to think of a place to go get dinner.
We decided our best bet was to go to the IHOP by my Dad's house.  He said he would run home to get a bandaid for Macie and we were to meet him at IHOP.
We made the 15 minute drive to the IHOP parking lot.  During the drive, not only did I get to enjoy the melodious sounds of Macie's wailing, but Oscar decided to join in with sympathy crying, and Chloe took it upon herself to be Kid Mom and spent the whole drive yelling at Macie to stop yelling.  It was so pleasant.  I tried unsuccessfully to quiet Macie down, but she just kept yelling "I can't stop crying!! It hurts!!"
We make it to the IHOP parking lot and I don't see my Dad, and I figure it will take him more minutes than I was willing to wait, for him to get there.  But I saw a Dollar store in the same parking lot, so I drive over to the other side of the parking lot, thinking I will just go in and buy some bandaids.  I try to motion to Don to follow me as he is in another car, but he was on his phone and not paying attention.
So I drove over to the Dollar store anyway, hoping Don would figure out what I was doing and follow me over there.
I ran into the store and bought some bandaids and some neosporin.  In the meantime, I left the screaming kids in the car.  I deemed it an emergency, and I was not about to unpack 3 wailing children and take them into the dollar store.  Especially when their Father was somewhere in the parking lot.
I am thinking that now that I have the bandaids and the neosporin, that Macie is going to finally stop with the hysterics, but after I placed the ointment on her knee, her misery only intensified.  And the bandaids I had bought were of course too small so I didn't even bother putting it on.
I call my Dad and ask him how close he is to IHOP with that prized bandaid.
"Oh I am just trying to round up Chelsey."
I knew that meant I could still be waiting for another 20 minutes.
I tell my Dad, "Nevermind. we are just going to go home."
He says, "No, no. Just wait. I am bringing the bandaid."
So we wait.
He finally shows up.
He pulls out the bandaid.
It is too small.
But my Dad refused to admit that it was too small.
He told me, "Well if you hadn't put the neosporin on it, it would have been just the right size."
He put the bandaid on anyway.
By this time Macie had quit crying hysterically and had now switched to whimpering "I want to go home."
Don and I decided the most logical solution was for him to take Oscar and Macie home and I would take Chloe out because she still wanted to celebrate after her talent show.
As we were switching cars my Dad asked what we were doing.
We informed him of our plan to which he responded..."Well, you can't do that..." Meaning, it was a mean thing to leave out Macie.
So we pretended to all just go home.
But we didn't. We just switched cars at Dunkin Donuts.  And Chloe and I went to Panda Express.
It was the most ridiculous night ever.  Basically it took over and hour to find a bandaid.
The end.

I feel Old. So Old.

For some reason this birthday I officially feel old.  It might be because someone referred to me as "middle aged."  Which, um, hold the presses...34 is NOT middle aged, thank you very much.  Maybe it is because Macie told me today, "Mom I have bad news.  You are just gonna keep getting older and older and older and older...and then you are gonna die. And go to heaven. "  Thanks Macie for that cheery thought.  And now I would like to give a small diatribe by how frustrating I think it is that our society honors youth and beauty above all else in women.  And that people start talking to you like you should be lying about your age once you hit the age of 30, because I guess 30 is the official start of "you are old and decrepit" stage of life.  Well boo on that. Two thumbs down.  I think I am having a mid life crisis .  Maybe I need to go buy a sports car.  Nah, I don't really care about cars. Maybe a $300 purse.... Anyway if everyone (all none of you reading this), could put in the comment section the following: "You are________ (please fill in with one of the following adjectives: young, hot, super hip, the picture of perfection.)" I would really appreciate it. 

 I mean look at the "34" on this cake... I think it totally illustrates just how young, hot, super hip, and the picture of perfection, that I am. My children made me this cake.  I was gifted the cake box mix a few days ago by one of Don's realtor friends,(sidenote: where the heck does the apostrophe go in that sentence.  I think I must have had chicken pox the week in school where we talked about apostrophes) who brought over boxes of just slightly expired food from a hoarder's house. Yum.  I've seen "Hoarders." And the one thing I learned from that show is you don't eat food from a Hoarder's house.  I've actually learned a lot more things from that show.  Like some people can't throw away rotten pumpkins. And also, clothes saturated in cat urine, are not necessarily useless. I've also learned that you don't need less stuff, you just need more space for your stuff.  So if you run out of closet space, your bathtub, bed, and kitchen counters are perfectly acceptable places to store gasoline and 2002 Happy New Year hats.

 My kids also gave me about 20 bags filled with napkins, pennies, and small pieces of nonsensical shapes of paper.  I take that back. Macie said they were "mountains." The best part about it all was getting to clean it all up!  My best present though was  the guitar Chloe made me from a shoe box and rubber bands.

My kids are pretty amazing creatures.  I appreciated all their efforts to show me their love.  And even if everyone else thinks I am old and decrepit, my kids think I am pretty spectacular.

Pictures from Stacy's wedding

Easter

 Oscar is over 9 months now.  Bald as ever.  He is crawling and into everything.  He started out with his army crawl and he has moved into normal crawling. I miss his army crawl. It was amazing to see how fast he could slither around. He was super fast.  Now he has moved to standing up with support and climbing onto everything he can.  Walking is in his very near future.  He loves eating.  He is my best eater so far.  He will eat anything.  And he takes such joy in being fed.  He will go to anyone and just loves anyone who will pay attention to him.  He is taking swimming lessons too and enjoys it *most of the time.  we love him.

 I made this chocolate torte for Easter. It was a 2 day process.  It wasn't a perfect presentation, but not bad for my first time using a springform pan.  And I even tried to decorate the top. All in all, it wasn't a total flop.

 I was very proud of myself. So I took too many pictures.

 Here we are at Julie's house, Easter Sunday.

Chloe left this note for the Easter Bunny, she wanted the Easter Bunny to not forget about Troy and Lyla.

 This past month we have had a lot of fun.  For instance, last week I met up with my old High school chum (btw, gilbert blythe died last week, I just thought of that because of the word "chum," and I am seriously still depressed about it. And it makes me feel ancient. And my birthday is next week. which also makes me feel ancient. And our 10 year anniversary is tomorrow, which also makes me feel ancient. And Chloe is getting baptized next month. Which also makes me feel ancient. Bottom line. I feel ancient).  Anyway, it was so fun to catch up with Kristi. She is one of those friends where we can always just pick up where we left off from the last time we saw each other, which was like 2 years ago.

 Macie has been saying some hilarious things lately.  She has been begging me for a week to cut a slit in her Elsa costume so she can look more authentic. So I finally did because I was tired of the incessant begging.  I would like to thank Disney for making a Disney princess with some sex appeal, it really makes my life easier.  When she thought I wasn't watching, she would sing and act out the part in the song that goes, "Here I stand..."  (That would be the part in the song where Elsa stamps her foot and shows off the high slit in her dress).  I am pretty sure this was the main reason she needed the slit in her dress.  So now she can act out the song with more accuracy.  And I sewed the slit a little further down, because it was a little too high.

Also..last night Macie and I were having a little bedtime chat, and she got to talking about dying.  Yes, dying.  Let me tell you just how much I love these conversations.  I love talking about existential thoughts with children.  It is super easy.  I love being asked questions that are extremely depressing and difficult to answer.  Amidst the morbid conversation, she still managed to say something totally hilarious.  "I don't want to die! I don't want to dig a big hole. And put myself in a treasure chest! And then be put in the hole!"  Morbidly hilarious isn't it?  She thinks a casket looks like a treasure chest.  The whole thing is so creepy and funny and I just can't even talk about this anymore.
Later that night, we had moved on, and Chloe was telling us some story she made up about fairies and stuff,  and Chloe recently has been using this phrase "You see..."  I have noticed it for a few months. I have no idea where she got this phrase, but she uses it almost as frequently as she uses the word "and."  As Chloe is telling us this story, she throws in a "you see" and Macie whispers to me, "Mom? Why does Chloe always say 'you see'?"  It really made me laugh.  Only to myself of course. If Macie knew I thought she said something funny unintentionally, she would blow a gasket.

 Chloe had to write a paper on who she would pick for President of the United States. I was flattered that she chose me.  I wasn't her first choice, that would be her cousin Paloma, but I came in a close second.  She said she could only think of 1 reason Paloma would make a good President, but she could think of a few for me.
It reads:
"Would you like to have a really great president? If you do I think you will like my mom. I believe my mom would be the best president.  First she is smart. For example she knows 113+15! Another reason is that she is funny. In fact she sang the song wrong and it made me laugh so hard! Finally she is nice. An example is that she brought straws home for me and macie. All in all that is why I believe my Mom would be the best President."
That Chloe... she is mine.  All mine.  

 In other news, Macie passed a level in her swimming class which means she earned a medal. Awhile back,  Don told her she would earn medals for passing levels, in an effort to improve her attitude towards her swimming lessons.  She said, "shiny medals?"  So the encouragement worked.  Well she finally earned her first medal.  And her reaction was priceless.  She said to me, "Mom...this medal is not so shiny."