Princess Parties

A has gone to a couple of princess birthday parties in the last couple of months. She didn't want to dress up for the first party, but she dressed up for the second one.

First day of school

A is now officially in Kindergarten! She is enjoying school and her teacher Mrs. Popiel. School is less than a mile away, so I walk her to school everyday and walk to pick her up at the end of the day. It is a nice time to chat and help her review some things from school. I am also helping out in her classroom a couple of times a week. I am enjoying being able to be in the classroom to see how A interacts with the other kids. It is also fun because this is the age I taught when I was teaching and it brings back a lot of good memories.

Birthday!

A just celebrated another birthday! Since we are here in Provo we had a barbeque and invited a lot of family to the party. There is a park nearby where we had the party. Every time I asked A what kind of cake she wanted for her birthday she said a Star Wars cake. A's aunt (who is really good at making cakes) graciously made a Star Wars cake for A. It was of R2D2 and well done! Why my daughter wanted a Star Wars cake I have no idea! Contrary to my best efforts, princesses just don't hold a candle to Star Wars. :)

Later in the week, we had a friend party. We don't know a lot of people here yet, so I handed out some invitations in A's primary class hoping we'd get about 4-5 kids at the party. We had a good turn out with 5 kids coming. As part of the party I had them decorate their own bags that they would be filling with party favors. Each child's personality came out in how they decorated the bag. Most of the little girls decorated their bags with flowers and had them all arranged in a nice pattern. A's bag was also decorated with flowers but they were interspersed with trucks and helicopters, etc. I had this party at the same park thinking that the kids could play on the playground for part of the time. It ended up being quite warm, so they didn't play much on the playground. For the party I bought a bunch of party favors and we would hide one thing and then let the kids find it, put it in their bag or play with it and then play for a few minutes while we hid the next thing. The things they got to find were sidewalk chalk, bubbles, a card game, an ice cream bowl shaped like an ice cream cone, a curly straw and candy. The kids also wanted to help hide the items so I let them take turns helping to hide the items too. A had a great time with her friends!
One thing that I would change for next time is the decorations for the bags. I bought mesh bags and foam stickers to stick on the bags. The stickers did not stay stuck on the bags and the cute designs that the kids made kept getting ruined. I kept finding stickers all over the grass that had fallen off and I had to keep trying to help the kids stick their stickers back on their bags.

Children's Parade

At the end of June, they had a children's parade here in Provo before the 4th of July parade. My sister and her family were in town visiting, so A and her cousins took part in the parade. It started on 800 East Center Street and went to 100 East Center Street. It was a lot of fun!

Before and After pictures

Duplex in Provo

We purchased a duplex about a month ago in Provo as an investment. It is an older home that needs a lot of work. It is south of BYU campus and we want to keep it as a rental property and we hope that being close to campus that it will always be easy to rent out.
We came out in May to finish the paperwork and moved in at the beginning of June to start renovations. We plan to work on it all summer and hopefully have it ready to be rented out.
A lot of our family has sacrificed a lot of their time to help us paint and patch the roof of the place for which we are very grateful There was a swamp cooler on the roof that had leaked and caused roof damage and damage to the kitchen ceiling. We got a really good deal on shingles that didn't match our roof and since we are planning on replacing the whole roof in a few years, we just patched it with mismatched shingles.
On the inside we are making a lot of changes to the bathroom, painting throughout and repairing the kitchen ceiling.
On the outside we power washed and painted the outside, patched the roof and have been trying to work on the yard.
There is still a lot of work to be done, but we are starting to see a lot of progress.

Hawaii

We were able to go to Hawaii in March. We stayed at the condo for a week and also stayed with my sister and her family for a while. WE LOVE HAWAII!! We went on a ton of new and exciting hikes, scuba dived and just enjoyed Hawaii. We got there the day before the big earthquake in Japan and there was fear of a tsunami hitting Hawaii, but not much happened. There was a little flooding, but that was all.
While scuba diving we saw a few sea turtles, a monk seal, lobster, all kinds of fish and an eel. We dove a new place that was hard to get to but had some nice corral. We had to hike down a hill to where we were going to enter and had to carry all of our gear down the hill. We also went on a whale watching boat tour where we saw a female whale and her baby breach right in front of us and a helicopter ride that took us to West Maui Mountains. In the mountains is a place called the wall of tears. It is beautiful and you can't get close enough to it hiking. It is an area of green mountain cliffs with quite a few waterfalls flowing down them. It is really breath-taking. We've hiked up and seen it from a distance, but it is much more spectacular from the air!