Spring Break

 Ah, sweet spring break. That blissful breath amidst the swirling vortex of track season. Our break involved daily track practice, mountains of yardwork, and enough screen time to recover from it all. The highlight of the week was our one family outing: on Thursday, April 9th, we went to the temple together to do baptisms for the dead. It was the first time all five of us have gone to the temple to do baptisms all together. We have only all been in the temple together one other time, at our ward youth temple trip back in January. It was crowded and Amber didn't even do baptisms that day, so Thursday was her first time doing temple baptisms! Our family temple trip was so small and quiet and sweet. I savored it. 

We even managed to bring family names to the temple! We each brought four names of ancestors to make it an extra family-centric temple trip. Jeff baptized Jay, and Jay baptized his sisters and parents. It was a very new and awesome experience being baptized by my own son! This was the first time I had done baptisms for the dead since I was a teenager, and I loved being baptized for my ancestors by my living son. As we each finished our baptisms, we stood there in a wet dripping row in front of the font, watching Jay baptize the next person, until we were all done. Then we went to dry off and change clothes. Jeff did all of our confirmations. 

When we walked out of the temple, I invited my family on a walk around the temple grounds. When my kids were little, we would go on temple walks around the outside of the temple almost every month when I went to Costco. (Costco is a few miles down the road from the temple.) First it was me with little Jay and Rose. Then it was me with Rose and Amber. Then it was just me and Amber. Those walks ended entirely once Amber started school. I felt some serious pangs of motherly nostalgia as my tall tall kids quietly walked on the sidewalk around the temple in their nice clothes and wet hair. Nobody ran ahead, nobody used the border of the flowerbed as a balance beam, nobody tried to pick the tulips. It was one of those moments where I SAW clearly what it means to raise children in the gospel. 

Our family temple walk lasted about six minutes, because the Columbia River Temple is tiny and the sidewalk around the outside is a short loop. I'm thankful we did it. We went to Costco for dinner on the way home. We squeezed into Jeff's electric car to save on gas, and it was a snug fit for the 45 minute drive. Rose drove us to the temple (her longest highway drive to date!), and Jay drove us home. 

It was a tight squeeze, but we made it work. Gas has climbed to $5.30 per gallon here, sooo we chose to squeeze into the Nissan Leaf.

Good thing we took this family selfie before we went into the temple, because it made me realize that I still had my [prescription] sunglasses on and had left my regular glasses in the car. I went back for them.

My kids! The back of the temple has this raised circular flowerbed. We would always stop here to play when the kids were little.

Love.

Here are a few pictures from the archive, in no particular order:

2017

2017

2017

Amber, 2016

Amber, 2016

Amber, 2017

Rose, 2015

Amber, 2017

Rose, 2012

Rose and Amber, 2015

Jay and Rose, 2012

Ok, back to 2026:

We decided that the temple tulips' growth must be nourished by proximity to the House of the Lord, because they were so big and perfect! My poor tulips at home got eaten by unknown critters.

The only other pictures I have from spring break 2026 are of our work:

I attacked my garden bed and hoed out all the lush grass that grew there over the warm winter. My shoulders were screaming for the rest of the week. Swinging a hoe into the hard ground is a very jarring activity.

I almost stopped halfway there, but somehow found it in me to finish.

Cleared! I planted four tulips in that right corner, and they are the only ones that survived.

I got my family a belated Easter treat on Monday.

The green Peeps looked disgusting, but tasted the best.

Jeff manfully pruned all 20-ish fruit trees in the front lot. His elbows were sore from using the loppers, so he bought a pole saw to change it up. We are novice fruit tree caretakers, so hopefully the pruning was helpful! Rose and Amber pruned more of our raspberries too.

Rose and Amber labored all week cleaning their adjoining rooms. I am not the type of mom that requires my kids to always keep their rooms clean, but I do ask them to vacuum the carpet at least once a quarter. Haha. Their rooms felt so big without all of the books, clothes, and trash on the floor! Maybe they'll like it enough to keep it clean?

View of the girls' bedrooms from the corner of Rose's room.

One day after track practice, Rose and I worked on pruning and re-tying our sagging grape vines. I didn't get a before picture, but trust me, these look trim and amazing compared to the gnarly floppy droopy vines from before.

We decided to cut down the row of dogwood trees on the south side of our house, because they died. Amber helped me clear around the base and watched intently while I used our electric saw to cut down each tree. Then she carried the little trees to our burn pile.

Me, carrying the last tiny dogwood tree to the burn pile after cutting it down. It seemed like murder to cut down trees in our already treeless yard, but these poor things were totally dead and just getting in the way of our mowing. We plan to plant new trees at some point...

I did save the biggest dogwood tree. It had more life in it than the other stunted dead ones, so I pruned it drastically. Hopefully this helps it come back to life? I am an agricultural novice!

How tragic is this? My tulips were all eaten by creatures unknown. I'm super bummed, and also now wondering what to do with this area in front of the shed before it gets overgrown with weeds again.

On Saturday, after a week of yardwork, we burned all the clippings. Jeff started the fire, and I finished it. We even burned our massive Christmas tree. I wasn't out there for that part, but Jeff said it was an enormous quick-burning blaze. We had such a huge pile of branches and weeds to burn! We fed the fire little by little for safety, taking turns watching the fire to eat lunch. I sat in front of this big log to get out of the afternoon breeze that picked up, waiting for the last few logs to burn down sufficiently.

While I waited on the fire, I called my Dad and also made a design in the dirt with tree bark, rocks, and walnut shells.

My safe alcove out of the wind, with my bark-pattern in the dirt.

I never remembered to take a picture of the actual big fire, but when I was putting out the embers, the hose water started boiling! It reminded me of Yellowstone--the ground was bubbling. I sprayed hose water on it until the water stopped boiling. It took way longer that you might expect--close to 10 minutes!

My unfinished nemesis: our side flowerbeds. I'm trying to kill the grass under that one black tarp, and I started hacking the grass out with a hoe on the other side, to preserve the 3 darling volunteer flowers that popped up last fall. I looked them up, and Google said they are mums? I don't know where they came from, but I love them too much to smother them! 

One of my volunteer flowers! I seem to be best at growing flowers that I didn't plant, haha. 

Goal: get better at growing flowers.