March - A Picture's Worth a Thousand Words...

and a lot of pictures are worth more words that you probably care to read but March was busy!!

The first week of March, I had the busiest week planned that I have had in a long time.  Carson must have sensed that I had lots to do because he woke up Monday morning running a pretty high fever and stayed home from school the entire week.  He was pretty miserable and I cancelled all my plans and we hung out together.  He kind of lost his voice so he whispered all week.  Which was cute but a little frustrating by the end of the week because I'm going deaf so a whispering kid is even harder to hear.  I said "What?!" more times than I can count.  On Wednesday or Thursday, he asked about his camp out that he was supposed to go on Friday night and I told him that he would go if he was better.  He looked at me and whispered "I all better now."  Luckily, by Friday, he was not running a fever anymore so he got to go.  I'm not sure if it was the best decision because it was really cold Friday night but he had a great time.

Someone from church needed to borrow a hat so I asked Carson to model it for me so I could put it on FB.  Even with sick eyes he's a cutie.

I can't remember why this was taken but these two cuties are best buds.

We had a school's-out-for-inclement-weather day.  It was really awful weather, as you can see.  We bought Round Rock donuts to help us feel better about the horrible weather we were having.  I took a picture so you can see how terrible the weather was.

Inclement weather - Texas style!!

The night that Carson and Gary went on the camp out, Jared was working until late so Emily and I ordered take-out watched chick flicks all night.  By the time we had finished those, it was 11:00 and we both had a headache.  I guess Gary is right...there is such a thing as too many chick flicks in one sitting.  They are probably better in small doses.

Carson's class had a Rodeo day at school.  He came home looking like this:

He's a dog with his tongue hanging out.  Cutest face painting I've ever seen!!

He apparently really enjoyed Karaoke.  He always chose the same partner...his love Tori and the same song..."You've Got a Friend In Me" from Toy Story.

Gary and I chaperoned at a youth dance barn dance at our friend's land.  It was a big hit.  They had hayrides, camp fires and barn dancing.  When you chaperone a dance, you are supposed to walk around and try to convince the boys that aren't dancing to go ask the girls to dance.  I guess another of their duties is to convince the other chaperones to dance and so one of them came up to Gary and told him he needed to ask his wife to dance...so we did.  At one point during the night they announced a boys choice dance (the boys are supposed to ask the girls) and while checking out all of the dark areas to make sure there weren't any kids making out in the shadows, a chaperone found about 10 boys hiding behind the port-a-potty because they didn't want to ask the girls to dance.  Haha!!

While we were at the dance, Carson was being entertained by the 3 cute girls from church.  He had Sadie Dickerson, Kate James and Paris Nielsen over.  He was in absolute heaven!!  So were they.  They think he is the cutest thing ever.  They acted out his favorite movies, fed him pizza, tucked him in, read him stories and then told me how cute he was on the ride home.  Emily announced in YW that they came to hang out with Carson during the dance and Julia Parker said "Woah...Carson sure is lucky!!  Getting to hang out all night with three cute girls!!"  Really though...they were the lucky ones, if you ask me! :)

Jared submitted his paperwork for his mission and we needed to include a missionary picture.  As you can see....he went to a lot of effort for it. :)

Carson decided to run away to college but not before I became the favorite parent:

We celebrated Pi Day with our neighbors the Jacobs.  You would think with how nerdy we are that we would know about such a holiday but not so!!  We had never celebrated this day that you gather with friends and neighbors and eat pizza pi and pie pi.  We brought our always yummy (to us anyway) chocolate pie because chocolate in any form is my favorite.  I'm trying to remember what the other one was but I can't, darn it!

We went all out for St. Patrick's day by wearing a green shirt if we had one except that some of us (Carson) refused to wear green even with the threat of pinches so we had to paint a green shamrock on his hand and call it good.  No green food, green drinks, elf traps, rainbow licorice/gold Rolo gift bags...nothing!!  Don't be jealous of our fabulous parties.

We had Spring break but it was a bit of a bust.  Carson and I hung out around the house most of the week.  Jared worked quite a bit, went to a few Magic thingamabobs that he likes to do and got his very first speeding ticket.  Life lesson learned when he had to use a whole week's worth of his paycheck to pay for the ticket.  Emily had a fun week hanging out with friends, going prom shopping even though she hadn't been asked yet, babysat, went to help serve lunch at the Ronald McDonald house and took her Nana out to get a pedicure and was treated to one herself.

Carson had his first appointment at the orthodontist office during spring break.  We got the best news possible.  The orthodontist doesn't think that he will need braces!!  They are going to pull some of his teeth to make room for the others to come in (hoping they will come in straightish.  He has a mouth full of teeth that all want to come in to the same spot.  It sounds awful but I think braces would be harder for him.  We are keeping our fingers crossed that it all works out.  He did really well and charmed the whole office staff.  He even sat still for X-rays!!  Look at all of those teeth!!

The weather was mostly sunny until the end of the week when we supposed to go camping at our friends, the Parker's land.  The camping trip had to be cancelled due to rain.  Friday morning, just as I was waking up, Carson walked into my room with a sad face.  He said "not going" and I said "You're not going?  Not going where?" and he said (with the saddest face I have ever seen) "not going camping at Bisshuck Pocker's land" and I said "no...we aren't going to be able to go camping because of the rain" and then he face-planted himself on the bed because the sorrow of broken camp out dreams was just too much for his little heart to handle.  It was so sad but I couldn't help but smile a teensy bit at the way he says Bishop Parker.  Haha.

All week of Spring break, I wanted to go out as a family to see the new Cinderella movie but it was really hard to find a time when we could all go together.  I finally put my foot down on the last day of Spring break, ordered a mandatory family meeting and declared that we would have a FFF FHE (Forced Family Fun Family Home Evening) in which we would:

• See a movie of my choice.
• Invite no friends....family only.
• Have fun whether we liked it or not!!
• Go to dinner together afterwards.
• Each come up with a moral to the story (our spiritual thought for the evening...they were lucky I didn't make them start with a song and prayer at the dinner table)...

After all that, I remembered that I had a meeting that night at 8:30 and would probably have to leave dinner a bit early (can you say double standard?!)  I was not discouraged though!!  WE WERE GOING TO HAVE A FUN FAMILY NIGHT EVEN IF IT KILLED US!!!!! and we did and everyone lived and I made it to my meeting just a few minutes late.

Spring break ended and the kids all went back to school.  The sun was shining...the birds were singing (or trying to break through the bathroom vent and peck my eyes out)...the trees were getting their new leaves so they were that pretty green that I love (you know the green I'm talking about, right?!)....so I celebrated by sitting in my bed crying because the house was too quiet.  I know!!!  I'm the weirdest!!  I hate how quiet the house gets after the kids go back to school but look how pretty the leave were!!

A few weeks before Easter, we took Carson out for some Forced Carson Fun.  He was sooooo excited!!

This cute little boy of ours is SO LAZY!!  I had to bribe him with Round Rock donuts to get him to go have a little fun at an Easter egg hung!!  I told him if he found 2 eggs, he could have 1 donut.  He decided to counter-offer with if he found 1 egg he could have 2 donuts.  So funny!!

He did kind of enjoy himself but I just don't think he gets the point of Easter egg hunts.  That 30 minutes of sunshine nearly did us all in.  He was tired and I left with a headache.  Do you remember Mad Madam Mim from "The Sword and the Stone"?  That's how I felt...."I HATE SUNSHINE!!  I HATE HORRIBLE, WHOLESOME SUNSHINE!!  I HATE IT, I HATE IT, I HATE IT!!!"  Not really, I love sunshine...just not when it's combined with 30 minutes of trying to convince a stubborn 12 year old that egg hunts are fun!!

He was happy when it was over. ;)

Another exciting thing that happened in March, Carson went to a Boy Scout Court of Honor and received the Happy Camper Award!!  He loves camping and has up to this point been to every single one they've had (even when he's been feeling under the weather all week)!  As you can see...he was pretty darn excited about that award!!  

Finally...we were all sitting around watching the Women's session of General Conference, when someone knocked on our door.  I got up to see who was there and found an Easter basket for Emily.  She started opening the basket while we were watching until Emily looked at me and said "Mom!!  I think this in an invitation to prom!!" so we paused conference until she put all of the pieces of a puzzle together and sure enough, it was an invitation to prom:

She was pretty excited and answered by buying a pack of Magic cards (it's a game that a lot of teenagers are into right now...I don't get it) with a note attached that said "It would be "Magical" to go to prom with you."  So cute!!

So...that was our March.  Phew!!