The whirlwind of April

For being a month full of significant events, it has been very undocumented.  I'll start with the fun stuff.  Connor's 5th birthday, which also happened to be Easter and General Conference.  We started off with the egg hunt and then opened birthday presents 5 minutes later.  It worked great. 

Connor's friend has the same birthday and I when she emailed about a small party I asked if we could put two names on the cake.  Luckily both boys love space.

This is my 5 year old boy.  His mind is still unbelievable.  Africa is the only continent that he doesn't have all the countries and capitals memorized.  I can not wait to see what he becomes someday.  He loves to be tickled and loves to tease me, which of course leads to more tickles.  I'm pretty sure he would eat pancakes every night for dinner if I let him and can easily out eat me.  His current interests are space and countries.  We have neighbors in our building for Afghansitan and Thailand and he thinks that's awesome.  He's become an amazing swimmer.  The progress he's made these past two months of lessons has been incredible.  His last lesson he was swimming free style.  All by himself. BIt was with a new teacher and she was pretty impressed.    

The real reason why this month has been such a whirlwind is because we're moving back to Utah.  Before we put our place on the market we moved 1/3 of our stuff to a storage unit and did a major cleaning.  I hate tile floors.  We put our place on the market 2 weeks ago and have been living in this incredibly clean, ready to show house ever since.  We were hoping it would be a quick sell but nothings happened yet.  I'm learning about patience and that Jared and I are in the minority in thinking that the top floor is the best floor to be on.  Who cares about stairs?  Obviously quite a few people.  We are thrilled to be moving back and the kids ask if we're moving to Utah everyday.  Usually this involves them getting dressed (without me asking which is unheard of), shoes and everything, and packing a box or backpack.  Soon kids, hopefully very soon.

it's been a lovely spring

saturday swimming

Saturday swimming has become a highlight of our week.   

I should also point out Sierra really likes swimming and jumping into the pool too.  She's just uncooperative when I try to get a video of it.

swimming

I learned something about signing up for a gym.  If you want to sign up for a gym, talk to them a month before you really want to sign up.  After a month of weekly phone calls they'll throw in every offer they can just so you'll finally join.  Due to my lack of initial commitment we got 4 free months of swimming lessons. 

We're surrounded by pools here in Reston.  We go there multiple times a week during the summer.  Because of having two kidlets we spent most of the summer in the kid pools that are about a foot deep.  Connor has always loved those.  He's never loved going under water but by the end of the summer he was warming up to it a bit.

We were excited for his first swimming lesson at Lifetime.  We went the Saturday before just to warm him up to it a bit.  He talked about going to swimming lessons all weekend.  The day finally came.  I passed him off to his teacher and went to swim some laps.  After two laps I looked up and saw Connor running to the locker room with his teacher frantically running after him.  Apparently he was excited up until he had to get in the pool.  They were starting off in the deep end and wanted nothing to do with it.  Luckily the other kids didn't show up and it was a one on one lesson.  I joined in and we stayed in the shallow end the rest of the time.

We talked a lot about being brave that week.  We went to the pool a few times to work on conquering that fear.  He told me he was scared he would get stuck under water.  I can't say I blame him for being scared if you put it like that.  Grandma and Grandpa Wisan even told him he could go on their boat if he learned to be a good swimmer.  I'm not sure what clicked for him,(although he has mentioned several times we haven't been on Grandma and Grandpa's boat yet) but the next week he was great.  It's been amazing to see his progress in just four weeks.  Now he can stay afloat by him self for short periods of time, jump in a swim to the top, and he loves holding onto the wall and going under water.  It's been so fun and he's absolutely loving it.  See for yourself!

my little monkeys

I'm not quite sure how it happened. I'm still a little shocked, because this is quite out of character for us, but we joined a gym.  Not just any gym, we joined Lifetime.  The reason we decided to join was because of the kid classes.  They're amazing!  So, for the benefit of my kids I'm willing to spend my mornings at the gym.  It's tough to have to go workout every morning, but like I say, it's for the kids :)

The gymnastics class was one of the big sellers for us.

my handsome boy

my sweet girl

my sweet girl who protested a nap so long she couldn't quite make it into bed

Silence

Tonight while I was doing the dishes and Jared was mudding the wall I noticed something.  Silence.  I asked Jared if he knew the where abouts of our little girl.  He did not.  Dishes were put on hold.  I found her in Connor's room with a bottle of lotion.