April 2026

 SPRING BREAK CONT.
I made "spaghetti and meatballs" pancakes for April Fools breakfast.  Everyone had fun pulling pranks all day.  Mostly just putting toilet paper all over the house.  We also went to Chick-fil-a and the Planetarium with Grandpa Hatch.  That was a lot of fun!  Good times.  Thursday, we had lunch with Grandma Ruthie (and Aunt Jen and Nancy), before dropping Nate off at work and then stopping at the Church Art and History Museum on our way home.  That was pretty fun too.  On Friday we WEnt and got Steve and went and saw the new Super Mario Bros movie.  This was a major highlight!  We really should have done lunch or something too, but we had fun.  It was a good movie, just a LOT.  Maybe a little over stimulating.  That night we did Buddy Dates!!  Everyone was so happy about this- it ended up being pretty fun.  Nate and I had each other.  Brad and Kelly went thrift shopping and dinner.  Erika and Sadie went to mini golf and Chick-fil-a.  Jack and Hunter stayed home and got Chick-fil-a delivered and played video games.  Charity and Noah went to get food.  Molly and Devan went to Dylans and mini golf.  I think everyone had a good time!!  We magically had enough cars and drivers for this.  Good times.  4-1-26--4-3-26

EASTER SATURDAY
This was a packed day.  Conference in the morning.  Then we had Courtney, Brett and Briggs come for a morning egg hunt in the front yard and some yummy egg salad sandwich lunch.  This was a lot of fun!  I was so glad we made it happen.  It was cool that Courtney kind of invited herself to hang out for Easter.  Good stuff.  After that we had the next session of conference.  We did our Easter baskets and Egg hunt in the backyard- this was fun because we changed it up a bit with a fun game and spelling out the words of prizes with letters in the eggs.  Pretty fun.  And then we finally colored the eggs!  That was pretty fun too.  Everyone but Noah I think.  And Luke- we miss him so much this time of year!!  4-4-26

EASTER SUNDAY
We really tried to make this Easter a Christ focused one.  I got a cute book at Deseret Book with a lot of the symbols of Easter and we read a page each night.  Then we had the new creche that Nate bought and tried to really make an effort.  We did all the commercial stuff on Saturday so that we could really do Resurrection Easter on Sunday.  I think we did pretty good.  I think we want to add and do it even better next year.  We're getting there though.  We did get to watch the second day of Conference though which was awesome!  Such a good conference this time!!  4-5-26

MINISTERING
I finally got to meet Elizabeth Walker.  She is interesting and very nice.  Kris and I visited her.  It was nice to get to know her a little.  4-8-26

SOCCER SEASON!
First games of the season!  Everyone won!  Good stuff!  4-11-26

PROM- ERIKA AND NOAH IN THE SAME GROUP!
This was a fun one for me.  Noah and Erika were in the same group!  Noah took Laurie and Erika was asked by Zack Geckler's brother Josh.  I think they both had enough fun.  It wasn't Erika's favorite, but she survived.  They went to the salt flats for their day date.  Then the night of, I got to take their group pictures!  We went up to the Tunnel Springs Park.  We were there at just the wrong time.  The lighting was difficult.  But we made it work and caught some golden hour at the end.  I loved it.  4-11-26

THE SKIT
I said no to doing a skit and now I am down a friend.  Kinda weird, but I guess I should learn to "do my part".  Not sure how I feel about this all right now.  Oh well.  4-12-26

NOAH NEUROLOGIST FOLLOW-UP
We did Noah's follow-up.  Things are looking good.  They want him to get an MRI.  Hopefully everything is fine.  4-13-26

LUKE'S FUNNY STORIES
Luke's had some pretty fun stories to share with us when he calls.  One was about a pregnant cat who showed up on a porch the same time as him and his companion.  They were knocking and the people had peeked out the blinds to tell them they didn't want to talk to them, but Luke asked if that was their cat instead.  It was looking pretty sickly.  So they opened the door afterall, and right then, this mom cat, gave birth!  The woman at the door was shocked!  Luke was shocked!  Then all the chaos of the family's dog coming to the door and then the cat started to walk in their house.  It was so crazy!!  Luke felt horrible.  The people assured him that they had it from there.  So crazy!
Then there was this Nigerian lady who was slurping on chicken wings (her snack, not food), and then chomped on a bone in the middle of Luke's companion's testimony!  So funny!!  Throwing the bones behind her back- HA!  Fun stuff.  4-13-26

PORTER'S BAPTISM
Sadie and I drove up to Idaho Falls, Saturday, for Porter's baptism.  We had so much fun talking on the way there, and listening to all of Sadie's favorite music- mostly Greatest Showman.  The baptism went really well.  It was cute to see Porter in his white clothes.  He took it all very seriously.  Cute Alyssa didn't want to just sit quietly, so we got a fun show during the second half of things, but she was being so cute with Sadie.  After the baptism, we went to their church for some yummy food.  It was fun to talk with Heidi a little and get to know Joe a little better too.  Sadie had fun running around the gym and stage with all the kids.  Good times.  We had to hurry home for Ruth's FUNeral planning meeting.  4-18-2026

FAMILY HISTORY- MOLLY
Molly has been anticipating getting called into the Family History Consultant group for a while now, but this week we got to have her "experience" with them coming and teaching our family.  It was a lot of fun.  It's cool to have all these great kids for her to look up to and anticipate working with eventually.  4-19-26

LUNCH WITH ELDER ALLRED'S MOM, GINNY
This ended up being a really cool experience.  Luke's companion just really loved Luke and had begged his mom to get together with Luke's mom sometime.  She finally called me Saturday, wanting to "get together sometime", so I said, "Sure."  I really liked talking to her- we had a bunch of stuff in common- they live just over the freeway- so I figured it could be okay.  We met up at Zupas and it was really awesome!  I liked it.  She was so nice and so complimentary of Luke.  I wish Luke had talked about Elder Allred a little more so I could have returned the compliments, but it was to hear.  I wonder if we will ever get together again.  4-23-2026

ERIKA SPEAKING IN CHURCH
Erika did an amazing job on her talk today!  So proud of her and who she is.  She is going to do big things.  4-26-2026

TULIP FESTIVAL
This was a pretty fun evening.  It had been raining all day so there was hardly anyone there.  It was still a little cold, but not too bad.  I actually really loved the weather.  The tulips looked pretty ragged and weren't really worth seeing, but I loved the time with our family.  We went to a yummy restaurant after, but I can't remember what it was called.  So delicious.  4-27-2026

NOAH'S SENIOR PHOTO SHOOT
We finally took Noah's Senior Pictures!  We went up to Tunnel Springs Park.  They turned out SO GOOD!!  I was really pleased with most of them.  He was really helpful with settings while we took them and then helped with the editing and chose the background and everything for his announcements.  I was so happy to do that with him and have his input!!  Good boy!  4-29-2026