April Fools, Conference, Flowers, Autism Awareness, Smoking

It has been a busy, but fun week.  Here's the latest and greatest. 

You know it is spring when the kids start bringing me home flowers they pick on their way home from school.  Noah's favorites are the dandelions:

 Sarah actually picked some flowers for me and they started growing in the cup of water.  I have some pretty small purple flowers that keep blooming and I love it!

I am getting ready to start work again as the Clinical Instructor.  As I got the calendar down to schedule out my shifts I saw one of the kids had decorated my birthday square on the calendar.  It was a sweet surprise:

 It was a Court of Honor for scouts this past week.  Daniel earned his Tenderfoot in addition to his Lifesaving, Public Health, Medicine and swimming merit badges.  He got to pin the Mother's pin on to my shirt.

 Josh earned his Klondike badge:

 He also earned his Chess and his Star rank.  Here his is getting his Chess merit badge:

Here he is pinning the Mother's pin on me:

 Daniel got to help out with the flag ceremony:

 Sarah had a talent show at school this week.  I must admit I didn't read the permission form very closely because she gave it to me to sign right in the middle of a very busy time.  I just asked Sarah if families were invited.  She said they were invited so I made a note of it.  Well Aaron, Josh (who had a doctor's appointment right after), and I showed up to watch.  We were the only family there.  I don't think families were supposed to come, but they let us stay to watch anyway.  I really need to read those permission forms a bit closer next time and not sign it in a rush.  Anyway, Sarah played the piano and did great.  She played the Star Wars Imperial March on the piano.  She has it memorized since she has a recital later this month.  She did great!

 Right after Sarah played I had to take Josh to his doctor's appointment.  He had to get a track physical and his scout physical.  Good thing he knows what to expect during the physical--as in the turn the head and cough part--haha!  Other than that Josh is super healthy and in great condition for track and scout camp in the summer.

Friday morning I got to watch Emma and her cute younger brother Drew.  Unfortunately, Drew had a stinky diaper and I was surprised to find that I am not as good and fast at changing diapers as I used to be--haha!  It has been about 4 years since I changed my last poopy diaper and I am getting rusty at it.  Something I never thought would happen.  Anyway, I had fun watching this hunky guy and his sister.  Aaron should be jealous of me spending time with another cute guy--haha!  Love me some baby Drew snuggles!

 Earlier in the week the company Vivent was was honoring Autism Awareness Day by giving out free Jazz basketball tickets to autistic individuals and their families.  It ended up being random who got chosen for the tickets and our family was lucky enough to be picked.  I went down to Lehi to pick up our tickets and Autism Awareness T-shirts.  I made a day of it and went to Ikea, and a few other places down around there.  It was a fun day.

Anyway, Friday afternoon we went down to Salt Lake City a bit early so we could walk around Temple Square and look at all the beautiful flowers and trees in bloom.  Not all of the tulips had bloomed yet so we might have to go back down again in a few weeks to see them.

 The rest of the flowers were beautiful, though!  It was a bit busy since the next day would be General Conference, but we still were able to look at all the beautiful flowers.

 We even got to check out the stairs on the temple where Aaron and I got our wedding pictures done quite a few years ago--haha!

 The kids liked smelling the flowers as we walked by them:

 There were flowers everywhere.

 We walked all over Temple Square and the Main Street Plaza.  The kids liked watching the fountains:

 More flowers:

 The kids liked walking on the ledges, too:

 Amazingly enough we were able to get a picture of the Reflection Pond with no one else around.

 We parked by the Tabernacle and walked around that as well.  The inside was closed since they were getting ready for General Conference, but it was still pretty to walk around.

 Then we made it to the Vivent Smart Home Arena (it will always be the Delta Center to me!).  We got inside and wandered around to see everything before we sat down.  We got a picture of all our matching Autism Awareness shirts, too:

 Aaron wanted to stop and watch Alema Herrington talking for a minute:

 From our seats we could read the huge jumbo tron TV.  There were a ton of autism shirts around the arena which was pretty awesome to see.  To let everyone know what was going on with the blue shirts they announced it was Autism Awareness Night:

 They also gave a few statistics.  One was that 1 in 47 kids in Utah will be diagnosed with autism which is a crazy statistic!

 They gave us flashing wands as we walked in.  They also known as hit your sibling sticks, too.  Ugh!!  While we were walking around we got to play a few games where you could spin the wheel.  Noah didn't get a chance to spin the wheel and was pretty upset for a while afterward.  That is why he is being crusty in the picture:

 When we got to the game Aaron Tweeted about being there and they posted his tweet and accompanying picture of the kids with their 'hit their sibling sticks' on the big screen which was pretty awesome!  It said, "Happy to be here at the #WaSatUTA game celebrating #AutismAwareness.  Thanks #UtahJazz for the tickets. #GoJazz"

 It was pretty cool to see all the flashing sticks when they lowered the lights, though:

 World Autism Awareness Day is really April 2 so we were ready for that day!

 We had a lot of fun watching the Jazz game.  It was a good game, too.  It was a close game the whole night, but the Jazz ended up winning in the end which was awesome!  We were grateful to be able to go!

Saturday was pretty busy.  Daniel had a swimming birthday party to go to and right after Noah had a trampoline park birthday party to go to.  Right after those were done it was the Priesthood Session of Conference.  Daniel got to go to his first one even though he wasn't quite 12 yet.  Here's the handsome bunch that went:

 While they were at Priesthood Session I took Sarah and Noah to the park to play.

 It was the perfect temperature and not too many people were there, either.

 However, when the sun went down it got a bit chilly.  We came home and had some chocolate milk.  We had a good time.  It was weird to only have two kids with me!

Saturday was April 1st and the kids couldn't let April Fools pass by without some trick.  Thanks to Josh we had colored ice cubes colored with food coloring.  It ended up staining my ice tray, but I am not upset.  However, I didn't discover the colored ice cubes until I went to drink some ice water.  Icky!

 It looked even worse when it melted to a puke shade of green.  I couldn't bring myself to drink it. Ick!

Josh also colored our milk pink, too.

 I think next year I may have to hide the food coloring for April Fool's Day!!

Every Conference Aaron makes a ginormous breakfast.  Josh helped him out this year.  They made home fries (chunky hash browns), scrambled eggs, pancakes, sausage, and bacon.  It was pretty yummy.

That evening for dinner Aaron tried his hand at smoking a beef brisket.  He started it the night before and it smoked all night and all day until dinner.  Here's what it looked like before he put it in the smoker:

 Here's what it looked like after smoking for 14-16 hours:

 I must say it was pretty delicious!

I am liking the smoker!  I don't have to cook dinner as often since Aaron is willing to cook if he can make it in the smoker.  He is getting better at making things, too.  For my birthday dinner he smoked some ribs and made potato salad to go with them.  After he put the potato salad together he even cut up some hard boiled eggs to decorate the top of it and sprinkled paprika on it to make it look good.  I was quite impressed!  We should have invested in the smoker a long time ago--haha!  Aaron is becoming quite the chef!!