Let's see how long I can type with one hand ;)

When I say Henry is growing like a weed I'm in no way exaggerating.  He has really filled out and is sure cute!  He can laugh now when he's in the mood.  He still smiles a lot.  He loves to be held, especially when it involves him standing on someone's lap and chatting.  He LOVES to stand up.  He's just so great!  It's always so hard to watch the little ones grow, but so fun at the same time! :)

Here's a picture of the cute fella. :) <3

We've been working on getting Joshua ready for college.  We filled out his application and turned in the needed documents.  I took him to get a government-issued ID so he could take his placement tests.  And then he took said placement tests.  He tested into English 101.  I knew he would!  He's awesome at that stuff.  He tested into the lowest math they have I think, though, which is totally ok.  Math has never been his strong suit.  To be honest, though, I hope we can test him again and get him into a higher level.  I don't want him to get burnout before he finally gets to the class that will count for graduation, you know?  Anyway, so this summer he and Hyrum will be taking a class each.  We're just waiting on the scouts to figure out when they're doing their super activity so we can decide which session they'll take at the college.  Joshua wants to take Andra's oil painting class.  I think that would be a perfect one to start with.  Hyrum hasn't decided yet.  Both of them are excited.  They've been looking over the fall schedule and thinking about the classes they want to take.  It's great!

I'm trying to figure out if Hyrum can get Federal Student Aid this semester.  I'm not sure because they said he has to be 16, and he won't be 16 until September 21.  It would sure be great if he could get student aid!  We have to turn in a high school transcript too, and that's shaping up pretty nicely. :)

I don't think we can go to the Badger campout this summer.  It kind of breaks my heart to think of missing it.  The deal is, though, Jeremy is on call then.  Nobody will trade call for the 4th of July  He's just kind of stuck with it.  So that means me taking 8 children by myself.  I don't feel like I can take care of all the little ones myself, and I don't want to make the bigger ones do it when they could be playing with their cousins like the only time they ever get to see them.  I know that by not going they won't see them "the only time they can," but what can I do?  And Jeremy would be all alone for all those days, coming home to an empty house and probably alone at the office too because it's a holiday time and people always take that off.  I have just been trying not to think about it because it makes me sad to miss it, but I just don't feel like I can do it this time. :(

Michael has Day Camp this Saturday.  He's all excited.  I think it's funny that they do it in April!  In Globe it's in the summer and lasts for 3 days 8:00-2:00.  This will be fun, though!  They have all the scouts separate, so they all meet at a different church.  Michael's Webelos group will meet at the chapel next to the temple and will be there all day - 7:30 until 4:00.

I have a great visiting teaching partner.  Her name is Christine Romney.  I don't remember if it's her husband or brother-in-law who is named Park Romney, but yes, of course, we're related somehow.  She's awesome!  And actually, I was in A Capella with her daughter Emily years and years ago.  Anyway, the first month that we went visiting teaching (February) she brought me a birthday present, a Valentine's Day present, some leftover valentine making stuff from a YSA ward activity that she thought our kiddos would like playing with.  Last month when we were sick for 2 weeks and then had spring break and I fell down on the job she just made cinnamon rolls and took them to our ladies.  Just awesome.  Anyway, so I'm being a good girl now.  I already have an appointment scheduled and I read the lesson.  I'm kind of glad to have someone who will make sure I do it! (In a loving way, of course!)

And speaking of spring break, we sure had a fun one! :) We went to the zoo! Spring break was the week of March 14-18.  On Tuesday, the 15th, Jeremy had a quick checkup with his dentist.  We all went down to the valley with him.  We'd headed out the door early that morning, so I got the little ones dressed and fed the little fella while Jeremy was in there, and then we went right over to the zoo.  We got a year pass.  We haven't had one of those since we lived in the valley and Hyrum and Joshua were just little.  But since Jeremy works for Freeport we get some good discounts at the zoo and other places that Freeport donates to.  And because we had to get one of the bigger plans with all the kiddos we have, we got some nice extras, like we can ride the zoo train for free every time.  We just have to schedule it as soon as we get to the zoo so we can be sure to get in.

Anyway, so we spent 2 or 3 hours at the zoo that day.  We let the kiddos kind of get a feel for what's there so they could know what to look at the next day.  They all had their maps, and that was fun.  We had a double stroller that we rented, so that was nice.  I had a carrier for Henry, but he didn't like it very much, and he wanted to eat quite often.  Still, it wasn't so bad.

We stayed at a hotel that night.  It was in downtown Phoenix, and there weren't many restaurants in that part of town.  We found a hole in the wall restaurant that's like a deli because Timmy wanted a grilled cheese sammich.  Of course, a place like that costs a lot.  And, of course, when the sammiches came out they had white cheese instead of yellow, so Timmy wouldn't eat them.  It turned out OK, though.  We got some chips, and I guess he decided those were OK.  They had some yummy squash soup too.

We checked into the hotel before lunch, and when we did the guy said our room wasn't ready yet.  That was like 2:30.  I thought that was fine because we had to get lunch anyway.  He also asked how many kids we had, and when I told him he told me, "Make sure to tell your kids to keep it clean, ok?  Trash can, trash can, trash can."  I said, "Oh, yes," and then it dawned on me that he was totally judging us.  We may trash our own house, but we don't trash hotel rooms! ;) It kind of plagued me the whole stay.  The rooms looked pretty great when we left.  However when we showed up to our rooms at like 4:00 they still weren't ready.  We didn't have anything else to do, so we sat in the car and waited for like a half hour.  Good thing we had snackies.  Our DVD player has died because Bubby kicked it too much, so there's really nothing else to do in the car.  We got in the rooms eventually, though, and they were actually pretty nice, and the rooms had doors joining them.  That was great!  We all went for a swim.  The water was icy cold, so I just sat on the side with my feet getting numb in the water while I held Henry.  Everyone else got in.  Then the little ones decided they were too cold, so I took them up to our rooms for a warm bath while the other ones swam, and I ordered pizza from Domino's.  It was nice to not have to go out and get it.  We never have food delivered, but this once we did, and, though it cost an arm and a leg, it was great!  We may do it again sometime, but probably not more than once a year.  Ha ha!  And because I ordered the pizza online I got a discount, and there was a little status bar that told me how the pizza was coming along.  That was fun. :)

We put some peanut butter cups in the fridge because they were melty, and I think Bubby ate most of them.

Whoever Joshua was sleeping with was too wiggly, so he decided to sleep on the floor!

We ran out of bed space, so we made a little bed out of 2 chairs pushed together for Bubby.  It didn't last more than an hour or 2 before he climbed in with us, but that was OK.  And I just put Henry to bed in his car seat.  He slept great!  He didn't wake up until like 7:00.

We had the complimentary breakfast at the hotel.  I like that!  We never stay at a hotel that doesn't have breakfast anymore.  It's kind of an adventure to the kiddos, going down to breakfast and making those waffles in the fancy waffle iron.  Usually, I take the older ones down to breakfast and then bring food up to Jeremy and the little ones in our room, but this time there was a sign saying to not take food out of the breakfast room, so we didn't.  Bummer!  But everyone got food, and off we went to the zoo again!

Because we had a membership we could have gotten in an hour early, but we were too slow getting out the door.  We went right over to the zoo train kiosk.  Jeremy waited in line there while I sat and fed Henry again and the older kiddos chased the younger ones.  We had a few minutes to wait after Jeremy got the tickets, so I finished feeding Henry and we looked at the giraffes for a while.  I don't know if you know it, but Jeremy well knows that the giraffes are my favorite!  It kind of cracks me up to run because it looks like they're covering ground so fast while moving in slow motion.  They're just all kinds of funny and I love them.  It didn't hurt my feelings to stick around and watch them. ;)

The zoo train was great.  I liked that we did that first thing because then we knew what we wanted to go back and see, and because we had such an awesome driver talking to us all on the speakers along the way we knew all about the animals as we went to see them closer up later.  I think my favorite thing about the train was that I was sitting next to Timmy, and he had his map.  Every time I'd say, "Timmy, look!  It's the ____!" he'd say, "Oh!  The ___!" and whip out his map and find it on there.  It was funny because I don't know if he saw many of the actual animals.  He may have just seen their pictures on the map.  But it was so cute, and he had a great time, and that's what counts. :)

Here's a gem.  Check out Jill. ;)

Joshua's been really annoyed with me for taking his picture lately. ;) He tries to dodge every time I try to take a picture of him.

After the train we went on the Arizona trail.  It was kind of cool.  There were lots and lots of snakes.  We hung out over by the prairie dogs and buzzards for a bit, and one of the buzzards swooped down and almost hit Hyrum with its wing!  That was funny!  I wish I'd known to have the camera rolling for that!

Bald eagles

At this point the kiddos were getting grumpy because it was kind of hot and they were tired and we hadn't been to the pedal boats yet.  

Here's Jill in a tree over by the baboons.  I should have gotten a picture of Timmy by the baboons.  That was his favorite part I think.  He thought those pink bums were so, so funny. :)

Over near the orangutan there was some sort of animal that lives in a tree.  I can't remember which one.  But it has this tree that you can climb in and see how it would feel to live there.  We have pictures of Hyrum and Joshua looking out of this very tree when they were little, so we all took turns getting our pictures taken in the hole. :) Here's Michael.  Speaking of the orangutans, there was a new baby one.  So cute!  And they redid the exhibit.  A lot of things have changed since the last time we went to that zoo!  The last time I remember going was with Benji's kindergarten class when Jill was a baby!  It's kind of fun to see what's changed and have the older kids remember how things used to be.

Hyrum

Jill

Bubby

Benji (It's funny - he looks a little like Jim Carey to me with that face he's making.  Ha ha!)

Henry

Papa and Henry (We had 3 hats on this trip.  Jeremy started out wearing his straw fedora from Dollar Tree.  It's been surprisingly good and sturdy for $1!  Hyrum wore one of Jeremy's baseball caps the whole time even though it was too small.  And Jill had a pretty flowery one.  The Dollar Tree hat and Jill's hat got passed around and most of us wore at least one of them during our zoo time.  Ha ha! Jeremy's wearing Jill's hat in this picture.

Timmy

Me

Benji, Michael, and Jill riding on the tiger statue.

They have a new tiger exhibit, and the tiger was actually right up against the glass.  I couldn't get a picture, and we barely got to see the tiger at all (same with the orangutans) because there were so many people against the glass!

Benji begged all day to go on the pedal boats.  It ended up being the last thing we went to before heading out.  It was like $8 for a half hour. They let us switch halfway through, so everyone but the two little ones got a turn to ride.  That was fine with me!  Then Benji spent about 10-15 minutes pouting because he didn't get to pedal.  He just rode.  Everyone else had a great time, though. :)

I think I enjoyed the Arizona trail almost more than anything, and that surprised me.  They have a new big squirrel monkey exhibit where you can go in the habitat right with those monkeys.  They're so little and cute and they're right there!  Over by the farm animals there were some big raised garden beds that were actually just for worms.  The dirt was full of them!  We stopped there in the shade to feed Henry and the kiddos dug around to find worms.  Jill loved that!  The worm exhibit was actually something we saw on the first day, but oh well, it's going here. ;)

About lunch time people were getting grumpy, so we got some kettle corn.  I used to hate that stuff until I finally got some good stuff and now I'm converted. ;)  We sat on some benches near the pond and ate it. Yum!  Of course, some of them complained because it was kettle corn and not regular popcorn. ;) Somebody was always complaining!  But we still managed to enjoy ourselves.

You have to go through the gift shop to leave the zoo. We decided to look around for a minute that time, but in the process we lost Timmy.  A store worker noticed us looking and called in security to help us.  Hyrum was panicking and so was Jeremy.  We gathered the rest of our monkeys near the security lady with the walkie-talkie, and Jeremy went to search the parking lot.  A lady found him near where we had parked the first day and was bringing him back to the entrance when Jeremy found him.  Phew!  Jeremy figured that's where he'd gone.

And with that we were off.  We stopped to get something to eat at In-N-Out before leaving the valley, and then we stopped at Grandma Burk's house for dinner.  That meant we weren't that hungry for dinner, but I guess it was nice to not have a car full of starving people on the way. ;) And it was nice to visit for a few minutes.

And that was spring break.  It was an expensive trip, but it was way fun. :) I'm not sure when we'll go again because it's sure warming up there, but it's fun to think that we can go again before too many months pass! :)