Easter, Birthdays, Jobs, Soccer, Special Olympics, Pedicures, Party, Family History

I am behind again.  Here’s what our family has been up to for the last two and a half weeks.  Sarah’s Solo Ensemble group qualified to move on to the district level.  They played and did great.  Too bad at the Junior high age group this is where the competition ends.  Oh well it was great they were able to make it there.

Anytime Sophie hears the garage door open she runs to the back door and waits for us to come inside.  When you do finally make it inside she gets the zoomies--running around you until you pet her.  She loves her people.

Noah FINALLY started soccer two weeks ago.  The season was actually supposed to start three weeks ago, but kept getting canceled because it kept snowing.  It cleared enough for his team to get one practice in until it snowed again and spring break hit.  Hopefully, they will be able to have their second practice today.  The weather lately has been CRAZY!!  His practice was freezing.  I was sick so Aaron went with Noah to his first practice.  Noah is the one wearing the neon green shoes:

Matthew had his state Special Olympics tournament in basketball two weeks ago.  He has been so excited for it.  Here’s a short video clip of him playing:

He really loves participating in Special Olympics.  He is sad that basketball is over, but is looking forward to track and field coming up next.

In his last game he got elbowed in the eyebrow and got cut.  As with any head wound it bled A LOT.  They pulled him out of the game to clean him up.  He wasn’t happy about missing most of that game, but what can you do?!  Luckily, the cut wasn’t big and some gauze and tape did the trick.

His team got second place and the silver medal:

He loves his medals!

Matthew has always had endless energy.  I had to fill out a packet about Matthew for a getting to know you something or other.  They had this question and I believe I gave an honest answer--haha!

It was my birthday a week and a half ago.  Aaron surprised me and Sarah with a pedicure appointment.  It was fun to get pedicures together.  Here’s our pretty toes afterward:

We went and tried some Twisted Sugar cookies afterward.  We had a fun girl’s day.

Our youth had a Family History activity in our ward.  They got to trace their family lines.  Sarah found two of our lines that go all the way back to Adam and Eve and Heaven. That was pretty cool:

Matthew is very thoughtful.  He remembers everyone’s birthdays and make sure he gets them their favorite candy to surprise them with on their birthday.  He will also call to talk to them.  I love it!!  He got me a Snickers and Twix candy bar.  

The day before my birthday Josh had dinner with a family in his mission and had them sing me ‘Happy Birthday’.  He recorded it and sent it to me the morning of my birthday.  It was pretty sweet.

Aaron got me a cheesecake and cooked Philly Cheesesteak sandwiches for dinner.  It was pretty tasty!

That is a lot of candles!

Two Sundays ago we celebrated the Terry March birthdays.  In my family my birthday, my Dad’s birthday and my sister’s birthday are all within four days of each other.  We try to celebrate as an extended family every year.  We celebrated at G&G T’s house with dinner and ice cream.  While visiting we discovered that Daniel has finally hit a small growth spurt, but so has his cousin Miles.  Miles hasn’t passed Daniel up in height, yet, but it is close--haha!

Since the weather has been so crummy G&G T decided to do an indoor Easter egg hunt this year since there was a lot of snow on the ground still.  Instead of individual eggs she just did individual baskets for each grandchild.  They all had fun looking around the house and finding their own baskets:

Matthew ran into the front room before I could get a picture of him with his basket.

Grandpa T got a punching bag for his birthday.  He has started a boxing program that is just for people with Parkinson’s Disease and has been enjoying it.  He wanted to practice at home and now he can.

Giving Grandpa T loves before we left to come home:

Before we did leave Daniel started talking about the JFK assassination and Grandma T brought out her old 1960’s TIME magazines with all the articles about JFK for him to see.  They were pretty cool!

Speaking of Daniel, he has had an ingrown toenail for months.  He is terrified of anything medical and has been refusing any treatment.  Well, I guess it finally got painful enough (aka infected enough) that he finally asked me to make an appointment to get it treated.  I had to work when the appointment was scheduled so Aaron had to take him.  Daniel ended up needing to get part of the toenail cut out and the nail bed burned on the corner so it won’t happen again.

The first few days he said it was painful, but now is doing great.  His other toe isn’t looking great, but he is not at that stage where it is painful enough he wants anything done about it.  Hopefully, it will just fix itself--keeping my fingers crossed.

It was Josh’s birthday this past week.  He got to celebrate early.  He had a Zone Conference and while he was there they sang Happy birthday to those having a birthday in the upcoming month.  They also get some homemade cake pops.  Here’s Josh with his cake pops:

Here’s a few pictures of Josh at his Zone Conference.  He’s the one being dorky behind the Mission President:

One kid stood on an extra chair on the back row to be the tallest so Josh is only the second tallest in this picture--haha!

Here’s where they sang Happy Birthday to all the April birthdays:

We sent Josh a birthday/Easter package.  It got delivered from the mission home earlier than we had planned so Josh got it the end of March.  His companion asked him if his parents told him to wait to open it on his birthday or not.  I thought that was just implied, but I guess I was wrong.  Josh decided to open his package as soon as he got it--a week and half before his actual birthday--and enjoyed the enclosed Chick-Fil-A gift cards the next day. Poor guy didn’t have anything to open for his actual 20th birthday, but what can you do?!

Sarah had a Jazz Band festival last week.  She is the only flute in Jazz Band so it isn’t hard to spot her.

It wasn’t a formal concert so only Aaron and I went to see it.  I sat in the audience, but Aaron moved to a better spot on the side to take this picture.  She is trying not to notice Aaron:

They played three songs.  Sarah got an entire song solo in one of their jazz songs which was pretty cool.  Here she is getting introduced by the teacher as the soloist for that song:

Here’s a small clip of her jazz song flute solo.  She did amazing!:

I bought some strawberries last week.  Our kids LOVE strawberries so they only lasted two days.  However, they were HUGE.  Here Noah has three of them and you can see how big they were:

It was Spring Break last week.  The kids were coming and going so we didn’t have too many times that we were all together.  When we were together I tried to do something fun.  Monday we had another Macaroni and Cheese taste test challenge.  This time we tried Kroger thick and creamy Mac and cheese, Kroger regular and Kraft Macaroni and Cheese in a blind taste test.  Kraft Macaroni won, Kroger thick and creamy came in second and Kroger regular came in last.  Kroger brand does not taste good so we now know we can skip buying that brand.  Here’s the kids writing down their thoughts as they tasted each one:

Sarah is trying to get a job and ultimately did get the job at the community pool in Layton.  In order to get the job she had to get her Food Handler’s Permit.  They now have the class online which is awesome!!  She got to complete that during Spring Break as you can see:

Aaron had to work all of Spring Break, but in the evenings he has been scanning in our old physical pictures to digitize them.  It has been fun to see how our family has changed through the last 23+ years.  He also has scanned in all of my old pictures of when I was single and all my pictures from my London Study Abroad trip.  It has been awesome!  He found this old picture of when we were dating.  I matched it to a picture we took a few weeks ago.  We are definitely older (as evidenced by the gray hair) and, hopefully, wiser now--haha!

There was a time last week where we had FOUR teenagers in our family at the same time.  I found this meme that seems to ring true--haha!

Tuesday of last week the Hill Air Force Base Museum did a special Easter egg hunt for anyone 16 and younger.  They had eggs with code words on them hidden all throughout the museum.  If you wrote down all the code words you got a candy bar.  Daniel had to work so just Sarah and Noah participated:

It was fun to visit and see all the planes:

A cockpit:

Afterward we went and got some Twisted Sugar cookies:

Wednesday was Noah’s birthday.  Wahoo!!  A new teenage in the house!  Aaron got him his 13 morning donuts:

Aaron, me, Sarah and Noah went out to lunch at Cafe Rio (Noah’s choice) for lunch.  Daniel had to work.  We then had an ice cream cake with G&G T that evening.

Noah seemed to have a good day!

Thursday we just hung out.  Daniel had a follow up foot appointment that morning.  It is doing fine.   Then that afternoon Aaron and I had a Social Security meeting to discuss Matthew’s current DSPD (Department of Services for People with Disabilities) waiver and SSI (Supplemental Social Security Income) benefits and how his new job will effect them.  It was a pretty complicated two hour meeting.  I am not sure I still fully understand everything, but we know a lot more now than we did.

Friday we went to see the new Mario Bros movie.  However, when we got to the theater too see the movie we were notified that their furnace was not working and there would be no heat in the theater.  It was COLD!!  Luckily, I had a coat and a blanket in the car which I grabbed.  We didn’t freeze too much, but definitely needed the heater on in the car on the way home--haha!  Daniel had to work so it was just me, Sarah and Noah.  Here we are bundled up waiting for the movie to start:

Saturday morning was our City’s Easter egg hunt.  They asked the youth council to help out.  Sarah and Daniel got there early to help put out the Easter eggs.  

Since they didn’t know if there would still be snow on the ground or not they decided to do the hunt in the parking lot.  It was probably a good idea because the grass was pretty wet, muddy and mushy.  Sarah got stationed in the Special Needs area with her friend:

Daniel got stationed in the 10-12 year old area.  

Since Noah had just turned 13 three days prior, we still let him participate.  Don’t tell anyone....

It was mass pandemonium when it was go time.  Noah is the one with the blue sweatshirt in the middle:

When it was over we were shocked to see Matthew there.  His group home house manager had brought her daughter, Matthew and the other house mate over to participate.  We didn’t see him at first, but we definitely heard him.  He is loud--but it was fun to see him there.  He was able to pick up a few eggs.  He was too busy trying to talk to everyone else and only said a very quick hi to us before he was off again to socialize.  

Noah found one of the coveted gold eggs and got to pick out a special basket because of it.  He got the football basket:

Since Josh will be coming home soon and will need a car.  We have a dilemma because Josh needs a car, Daniel still needs a car and Sarah will be getting her Learner’s Permit in August--that is scary to me. Anyway, we need another kid vehicle because it would not be good to have three kids trying to share one car.  Anyway, we do have the old 1978 truck and I think we will let Daniel try driving it.  Aaron took him out driving Saturday to see how well he would do with a manual transmission.  He did pretty well all things considered.  However, Daniel is not too excited about driving it since it only has an AM radio, gets 8 miles to the gallon of gas, and no air conditioning.   Sarah is not excited at all since that will be her ride (via Daniel) to high school and she says it is too old of a truck to be safely driving around.  This has been quite the discussion in the past few days.  Poor Josh had to listen to this discussion all through his P-Day call today--poor guy.  That is our plan for now, but who knows what it will actually be in a few months.  Here’s the cool 1978 truck that we are trying to tell Daniel how cool it will be to drive....

The Easter Bunny came to our house Sunday morning and hid all the Easter baskets in really difficult places.  However, they all eventually got found.  Here’s Sarah’s (inside a zipped up backpack in the back of the mudroom):

Daniel (in the back of the fridge covered with Tupperware containers of leftovers):

Noah’s (inside the coat closet inside an IKEA bag folded over):

Matthew’s (in the living room behind the curtain):

Matthew got to play a piano number for Easter during Sacrament Meeting.  He did a great job and is always so excited to play.  He ran up to the piano singing loudly, then reverently played the piano, and ran back to our bench yelling exit signs and singing.  He is so excited to do anything like that.

Since it was a holiday (Easter) Josh got to call us and visit with us Sunday evening.  Aaron talked to him while driving Matthew home to his group home.  He drove by the Syracuse temple and showed Josh the progress: