Can things get crazier?!? Don't answer that!!!

Well, I noticed that I haven't written since Dallen's birthday, which was at least 6 weeks ago! March is now over, so I guess I need to recap what has been going on around here. Dallen had a fun experience where he got to perform in the St. George Tabernacle with his school choir and two other school choirs. Each school sang together, then they did their individual specialties, and then they sang a couple final songs together. There is just something about children's voices singing that bring tears to my eye. They have such an innocence about them and it filled the room.

My cousin, David, passed away this last month and for him, I am happy. For Sherrie, I am prayerful and for the rest of his family. It is hard to be left behind, but at the same time, I am grateful for the little reality checks that death has for me and helps me to realize and re-evaluate what are my goals and am I headed in the right direction. We had another death, our neighbor across the street passed away (liver failure), and Scott had to conduct that funeral. Death just brings reflection and even though I don't like to cry, I am grateful for the chance to change.

We had five dogs at once for about four days and four dogs for about two weeks. That was exciting. It drove Scott nuts, but me and the kids were in heaven. We love dogs and there was one for each child. One of the dogs we watched has a severe love for Shep. She just had to be with him all the time and got jealous if one of the other dogs were playing with him. So we would have to schedule alone time with her and Shep. She also slept way better if she were in the same room with him. It was cute. We are down to just Shep and Angel and the chaos has calmed down. I didn't think, at the time that more dogs would bring that much more, but the noise level was the biggest part of it...It's all good!

We have been working hard on Eagle projects around here. Calvin completed his. You know, I never thought that an Eagle project would bring so many spiritual experiences in our home. It's mostly been of prayers being answered, but these little teaching moments begin to mold and help my children to develop the faith that I have been trying to teach them all along. Calvin did his project on fixing a trail for the City of St. George. He did ALL the work or organizing it himself. It was really cool to watch him use his strengths and find out things about him that I didn't know were there. Anyway, the day that he was to do the project, it was supposed to be really bad weather. So, I just told him that the only person that could help him clear the weather was Heavenly Father. He was also worried that people wouldn't show up to help, so we gave him some suggestions on how he could go about getting people to come and then offered the advice that if he prayed for that too, Heavenly Father would help. Well, the day came and the weather was AMAZING!!! We couldn't have asked for better weather. Also, he was able to clock 79.5 man hours because a lot of people helped. I am so impressed with those that showed up. He had one whole family that came and helped. A lot of dads with their kids and it was just a great experience. The other experience we have had with prayer is the other night, Derrek and Alec were going to the Eagle Board to get their projects approved so they can start working on them and we couldn't find Alec's papers. I was frustrated because we had worked so hard on convincing Alec that it is something he could do and it would be worth it and here we couldn't find the papers to actually let him do it. He had signatures on them that he needed and to get those again would take time that he didn't have (he's trying to finish it before the cruise). Anyway, he prayed, Derrek prayed, I prayed. It was 15 minutes until they had to be there and we found the papers in the weirdest spot, but they were found by one of us having a thought to look there. The fact that this experience had more than one of us on our knees asking for help. To hear that Derrek was praying that his brother would find his papers was such an act of kindness and a blessing to Alec. Today they had people sign up to help and some of it was needed in the form of money and the boys said that the older men in the ward were so excited that they could help with something (because Calvin's was mostly labor intensive). It has really been a great experience. I wouldn't recommend doing three together, but this is actually how we have done everything with the three oldest. They are practically triplets and it's really hard for us to seperate them. Calvin even asked if he could have his own Eagle Court of Honor so that he didn't have to share that with his brothers.

We had a fun little family hike during Spring Break. Gorgeous area (Red Cliffs, I think it is called). I wasn't feeling well that day, but it was still fun to be there and with family. Rod's family went, my parents and Jenette. Calvin and Ashton were CRAZY and jumped in the river. It was freezing (snow run-off water!). But, it was fun!!!
Dallen and Ashton have started baseball, and I feel I am super blessed because they are on the same team this year. I was stressed, wondering how I was going to make this happen, but I only have one practice to get them to and the same games, so that we aren't there for four hours each game night (just two!). They are also on the same team as Dallen's friend, AJ, and it will be good. Ashton is the oldest one on the team and AJ is actually the youngest. I was torn whether or not to put Ashton in the lower league, but he didn't play last year and when he did tryouts this year, he left with tears in his eyes because he wasn't able to do things like the other boys. So I thought I would rather have him on top than the kid that lost every game (not that he would, but he is so hard on himself!). We start games in a week, every Wednesday and Friday night. I love sports (Scott, not so much).

I think that catches us up right now. We are counting the days until the cruise and are so excited. About four more weeks!!!