April - Showers

 March madness result came in.  Guess who won in the family?  Yep...ME!

On my last post I mentioned how much friendship means to a person as we surround ourselves each day around people.

April started off with my birthday and that was great.  I went to a concert with some girl friends at Vino Bella, a cute pub and restaurant.  Our friends Fred, Rachelle, and Andre are in a band called Flash Nations and they spotlighted me and my birthday so that was cool.  We hung out for an hour and a half and then Dan crashed the party because I told him to.  Reena is old enough to babysit, especially when the boys are already in bed so Dan made the escaped and joined me until midnight.  Food was great and the music was familiar to our tastes.  

Happy birthday to me.  34

 Conference weekend we spent time with extended family

 Zulily delivered a box of gifts for everyone as my birthday presents.  It's tradition around here that on my birthday I get to give gifts to everyone in the family.  It was especially great this year because the gifts were given from gilt free shopping

 April brought a lot of worry related to the house in Utah.  March came and went and we never got the rent from our renters.  They have been consistently late but they paid, except this time.  Then we got news from our friend across the street that he saw our renters packing up and left in a hurry.  We sent another friend of mine over, and he confirmed it.  He said they didn't want to talk to him and seemed to be in a hurry.  The friend across the street took some pictures of the house and it was so badly messed up.  Everything from the flooring to ceiling.  It was so dirty and things were broken intentionally.  There were holes in the walls, cracked doors, busted locks, water damage and a bunch of things just to name a few.  We have been too trusting and they have taken advantaged of us being far.  Our oven was missing! There were drawers missing because they were too lazy to take their things out without ripping out the drawers.  They used the crawl space as a dumpster.  The carpet was so damaged and the backyard which we left with nice grass has nothing but weeds. Our friend sent about 20 pictures of various damages which I won't post here because it only makes me angry.  We got so angry to the point of pitying them for the manner of life they lived. 

I didn't want the kids to feel the stress their parents had.  We had a garage sale and sold a few items that they left behind.  I scheduled a handy man to fix the busted garage.  Hired a painter to paint the house, hired a landscaper and went shopping with Dan for flooring.  Then I took the kids to the Thanksgiving point museum.

 Roro loved this museum

The best part of this trip was seeing our best friends the Strobells.  Wendy made some yummy delish cream puffs for us and our kids had a blast playing together

As you can see in this pic that they adore each other.  They are often found clumped together playing board games

The other awesome part of this trip was seeing grandma and grandpa Evans.  We drove up to see them for 2 days, went bowling and stayed with cousin Colter and his family.

 We got to see great grandpa Evans again and Nama and Papa

Then we went back down to Utah and explored the new Museum of Natural Curiosity at Thanksgiving point with our friends.  What a cool museum!  Very interactive.  The girls did a rope course that is suspended over 40-feet in the air. Very cool experience for them

Even Darion got to experience a little rope bridge

On the way down to the house we stopped at BYU.  I pulled out my phone and messaged nephew Chad.  He was available and could meet for ice cream.  How fun for us!  We got to meet his girlfriend, too!

                          
I took my friend Wendy out to eat the night before for her birthday present and then in the morning Dan took their family to eat at the pancake house.  We were so grateful they let all of us crashed at their house. We had fun playing the guitars together and sang songs.  Then I took the kids by myself and we headed north for Boise.

With a quick stop in Idaho Falls.

We got to Boise and booked a hotel because my sister's boys were sick.  Major bummer the kids couldn't play together too much but they got to play with their aunt

We met the little cousins at their science center and played with slime, Debrie's favorite thing to do.

But those little cousins weren't all that well so we played outside at the park and movie times at the hotel and swimming

Lots of swimming...

With the boys asleep I had Reena in charge and my sister and I snuck out for some Viet food.

We drove home after 2 days in Boise and this boy was so glad to be home.  We had to make several stops along the way but I felt pretty proud for having driven that far by myself for the first time ever!

I was pretty exhausted playing single mom so I flew Dan home from Utah on the weekend.  It was the most expensive one way flight I've ever had to pay.  Even more than 2 tickets to Hawaii.  But he didn't have to drive home and that's worth it to us.

I had some more modeling with Zulily.  Hard to turn them down for some more guilt free shopping

This year's crazy schedules stopped me from saying yes to volunteering at the kid's school's Cultural fair.  So many countries were represented. I was amazed at how diverse our school is.  It was great to be on the audience side and walk the booths and eat some amazing treats.

I continue to enjoy being an MC and co-hosting our community's open Mic and performing once a month in front of an audience and meeting other musicians in the community as well as watching my children perform.  I love where we live.

I love SSSSPRRINGGG!!!