April Showers

Hola! I can't wait for the break that starts this Friday. Last week was tough because Erik had a meeting with India every night at 8 or 9, including Friday. Erik usually puts the kids to bed and it's pretty chaotic because Oliver and Lael tend to fight and we're often also trying to get Henry down. Basically, I don't wish our bedtimes on anyone. Since it's impossible for Erik to work in peace, he spent several nights taking his conference call in the driveway while sitting in the minivan using our wireless internet connection and his laptop. Yes, poor guy. The car is now his office.

Living in 925 square feet definitely has its challenges. Right now all three kids are in the same room and Lael and Henry are both on the bottom of the bunk in a double bed. So I sent Erik with Oliver over to Santa Cruz to pick up a twin bed that I found on Craigslist for Lael. During the spring break we are going to turn what has been the office into a room for her. It's quite the undertaking - it means I have to get rid of a lot of stuff and sell several large pieces of furniture (desks, chairs and a TV), which is always a huge pain because of flaky Craigslist people, but it will be worth it. We are going to get a 55'' flat screen TV that will go above the piano in the living room and we are going off cable because Erik has put up an antenna on the roof and has built a sage system that works as a DVR. We are going to get everything we can't pick up off the air from hulu or the internet. It sure will be nice not to pay that cable bill!

This week I was asked to make 80 bridal shower invitations and same-day baby shower invites, so I whipped these out the same day on the computer - it was the only way I could get them done on such short notice. I included the files for you to see since I had them handy. I don't know why but the bridal shower invite colors came out really funky in the html version - it's actually pink and gold, but I guess something got lost in translation. Also, I helped someone else design these or I would have made slightly different choices but we put pearls on the swirls and they turned out cute enough. The baby shower invite was simple because I had 30 minutes to get it done and it was mostly emailed out. Hope the event turns out well, since it's such short notice and there is general conference.

Just to add to this week's craziness, we were offered the same multilevel communications business opportunity by no less than 3 ward members within 48 hours. Makes me feel like I'm living in Utah. Don't fear – we are passing (like we have the time even if we were remotely interested or weren't horrible salespeople). We won't be hitting you up at any rate.

The kids each had a rare birthday party to go to. Oliver took the GATE (gifted and talented) test Saturday. He could have taken it during school the week before but they had him listed under the wrong teacher and his teacher didn't bother to call me until the test was over. When I dropped Oliver off, the district people were strange. The woman in charge told us parents to go ahead and buy the children whatever gifts we had promised the kids for "passing" because they had already earned them (What? Like I promised him anything). Then she said they didn't use the terms "pass" and "fail" but they prefered the word "achieve" to describe a high score on the "intellligence assessment test." Whatever. Oliver thought the test was fun and he said he got everything right except the two questions he didn't have time to finish. The extreme overconfidence stems from the fact that he gets 100 percent every single week on the spelling pretest and math is his favorite subject, so he does well there too. It's hard to tell where he's really at, though, since he's in a group of kids where English is obviously their second language. I'm interested to see the results but there really are no programs offered him at our school – not until middle school, so it doesn't matter that much how he does for now. And it's not the only way to get him into the GATE program. We'll find out how he did at the end of the school year.

We had the usual Tuesday and Thursday baseball games but it was so cold Thursday that as soon as Erik got there I left with Henry and went to Costco. (I know, many of you are not feeling bad for me because I think it's cold in the 50s.) Lael said lots of funny things but maybe I'll remember them for next week. Henry didn't make any horrible messes, although he did baby experiments on what fits into an electric pencil sharpener and lost the battery cover moments after it was found and repaired. (We cleaned the house while watching Conference today and found lots of little missing things). And the Senior Swansons are back from their cruise - yay! We missed spending Sunday evenings at their house and it's good to be back in the routine, even though we probably drive them crazy. Here's hoping for an uneventful week so I can get that room ready! OK, so there's no hope for me since I have a fieldtrip for Lael and two baby showers. Hope it's a calm week for all of you at least.