April

Mim's birthday started the month off right. She'd been looking forward to it for weeks and weeks. She woke up to 300 and something balloons outside her bedroom door (she moved into her new basement room a few days beore, right at the end of March). I wish I had done that many for her birthday party, but now I know how many balloons it really takes to cover the whole family room floor.

 We had just the grandparents over for cake (rainbow cake, of course) and ice cream on her actual birthday. That's when Mike and I gave her the presents from us, too.

{Marble run was a big hit with Mim.}

{Poor Danger. She's terrified of balloons and she had to cross the family room to get between her food and going outside.}

A few days later we went to the aquarium with the Youngs while they were on spring break. I could watch otters all day.

The next week I was picking up Mim from preschool and she asked if she could go splash in a puddle there in the parking lot. I said ok, so she went and splashed and then ran back to me. One of her little preschool friends yelled hi to her as she was running and Mim turned her head but didn't stop running. That's when she smacked her forehead right into the edge of the car door. It was one of those moments when you see what's going to happen and you want to stop it, but you can't get the words out because it happens so fast. It was very sad and there was a dent in her skin that lasted for about a half hour and kind of freaked me out.

We also got an awesome sectional during April. It makes me love our basement so much.

My birthday is also in April, of course. Mike took me out to City Creek for a little shopping (with no complaining from him) and then to the Melting Pot, which he'd been dying to have me try.

Mim got me a big notebook and a bunch of pens for all my lists. Pretty cute.

We also got pretty farm-y during April. For the first time I did all the garden prep, planning, and planting myself, without any help from my dad. Well, I did call him a bunch of times, but I did all the actual work myself this year. Tilling nearly tore my arms off. We also got some baby chicks- 7 of them. We got some dwarf bunnies, too, because why not?

{Post raking, tilling, and raking again, pre- planting}

{All planted}

{She was my favorite. I named her Sweetie Cake and she would fall asleep almost immediately when I picked her up.}

 We did a lot of playing outside during April, too. So fun.

{All of Mim's play kitchen stuff had been packed away in the garage, so they got to play outside with it for a few days.}

 Bits and pieces:

{Eleanor does what she wants.}

{These two had a really long streak of being sweet to each other- it was mom heaven.}

{Eleanor played in her for awhile one day.}

{A message from Mim to Mike.}

{This is her current favorite outfit- all her sparkliest clothes.}

{We finally got around to taking Conner and Alicia out as a thank you for watching the girls while we were in Vegas. Ruth's Chris- so delicious.}

{Mim organized her crayons into color families.}

March

March was awesome.

WE FINISHED THE BASEMENT!!

The first bit of the month was painting trim and installing trim and doors and doing all the other little bits and pieces that we needed to get done before carpet came in and then, on the 12th, the big day came and the carpet installer came. Then he didn't finish. So then, on the 13th, the actual big day, he finished up in the morning and we were DONE. It was such a good feeling. I filmed the girls' reaction, which was a whole lot of squealing and running in circles.

{The night before carpet- it was so crazy how empty it was.}

{Mim loved the carpet pad a lot- there was lots of pink and purple in it.}

{Then there was carpet.}

{So pleased about finally being allowed downstairs.}

{We got our lights done the same day as carpet and I LOVE them.}

{The lovesac went downstairs the same night the carpet was finished and was followed shortly by the tv.}

Only a few days after the basement was finished I was working on reorganizing and relocating some stuff, mostly upstairs, when I realized the girls had been quiet for some time.

I went downstairs. They weren't in Mim's room, they weren't in the family room...

 They were in the storage room. They used up about one third of a big bag of flour. By the looks of them, I was pretty sure Mim dumped a lot of that flour directly on to Eleanor. They were both super happy, though.

Eleanor had her first piggy tails in March, too. It was adorable.

Mim also had her first big friend party right at the end of the month. It was crazy and super fun. We had a big Easter egg hunt, some rainbow cupcakes, and played like crazy in a bunch of balloons. I already wrote about that on my other blog HERE.

Jan-Feb

As I mentioned in an earlier post, January was pretty gross, weather-wise. It was hurt-your-lungs-to-breathe cold and the air quality was terrible, so we spent a lot of time inside:

{Eleanor got pretty good with her spoon.}

Mike started going to school again, too:

Towards the end of the month we got some awesome snow storms and we got to play outside again, which was a relief. I was about at the end of my rope and very excited to not be cooped up all day.

So, February. We hired out the taping and mudding in the basement and they were done after a few hours each day for three days. I can't imagine how much longer it would have been for Mike and I to do it. After that, I spent every evening in the basement priming, then painting. I think it took me about 2 weeks to get it all done. Then we tiled the bathroom floor and could FINALLY get the washer and dryer back in place. It was like a dream come true, doing laundry at my own house again.

{This was on one of the ceiling painting days.}

Mike and I also had our anniversary in February. We were celebrating 6 years and wanted to make it good, since last year we both kept getting sick and we never ended up going out (I don't think). It was my turn to plan and it ended up being kind of a dud. My plan was to go to a shooting range and then to the Melting Pot. That was the plan. What actually happened was that we couldn't find the place where the shooting range was supposed to be and I couldn't get reservations at the Melting Pot. We ended up going to the City Creek mall and to Ruth's Chris. I suppose it wasn't really a dud, but it just happened that we couldn't do any of the things we originally wanted to do. Mike did get to try on a Rolex, though.

We didn't do much for Valentine's Day. Mike and the girls got me flowers and there was some small gift exchanging, but I think my highlight was making these Valentine
s with Mim for her to give to her little preschool friends.

Right at the end of February we got all our trim and doors (which all had to be custom made-ouch) and I started painting those.

The girls were also pretty busy during February:

{Eleanor had a cold for a few weeks and it meant a lot of laying on the floor in despair.}

{She got better and started acting like herself again.}

{I took Mim on a special mommy-daughter date.}

{Mim also started asking me to take pictures of her while she struck poses. She's pretty good.}