We were very busy over spring break. On Monday, Brittney came over with her Personal Progress book and asked if I could help her work on it. For those of you unfamiliar with personal progress, it's a program our church uses for girls ages 12-18. It's sort of the equivalent of earning an Eagle Scout. The activities are divided into "values", of which there are eight (faith, divine nature, individual worth, knowledge, choice & accountability, good worth, integrity, and virtue). For each value the girl has to complete 6 experiences and a 10 hour project. Usually the girl works on it over the six years she is in the program.
We opened up Brittney's book to see what she had done. The book was blank. So we started from the beginning :) We worked really hard this week. Brittney was at our house pretty much every day from morning until late at night. There are a few of the experiences that require doing something for two to three weeks, but other than those things and a couple of the projects that still need more hours, Brittney is done! I am really proud of her!!!
Brittney's projects kept us very busy. Monday and Tuesday we planned, built and planted a small garden. We've tried gardening before, with impressive results - and I don't mean impressive in a good way. I have never known of anyone who has killed so many plants at once. I think we bought the wrong dirt. Or something. Anyway, we're starting small this year. We built a small raised bed, about 3x3 and filled our old sandbox with potting soil. In the raised bed, we planted cucumbers, red bell peppers, zucchini, squash, and a tomato plant. In the turtle sandbox, we planted two more tomato plants (we picked three different kinds), and four herbs: cilantro, parsley, dill and basil. We bought the herbs as seeds, but all the others as successfully sprouted plants. That way at least we start off with plants that have already started growing, so we can't kill them before they sprout. It's been a week now and all of the plants are still green. One of the tomato plants even has a blossom on it! I take that as a good sign :)
As a side note, I need to include that we managed to build the raised bed completely from materials we already had. It's built out of left over pieces from our bookcases that Papa built 5 years ago when we moved in. Rob was very insistent that we try not to buy anything unnecessary. When Brit and I told him we had figured out how to make it from lumber we had, he was thrilled and said "this is a K*****'s dream - to find out that something he has saved for years and years saved him money!" Yeah, that pretty much sums up the reason why we have so many odds and ends stored in the garage and the attic. At least I finally got him to throw away the hurricane candles that melted together into a huge lump - of course, that took about half a decade to convince him to do. And yes, I am aware that we *could* have melted them down and created new candles. I'd rather just buy new candles though.
Another one of Brittney's projects was to help teach Kylie to play soccer. Hours and hours were spent in the backyard, kicking and catching soccer balls. Grass stains galore adorn Kylie's pants, but she had a blast!
Another one of our favorite Elders was reassigned last week. Elder McRae has been here for several months and we'll miss him! Elder Harper is staying here though, at least for now :) Jack especially loved this companionship of elders. They both spent a lot of time playing with him.
I can't believe Eva is now four months old!!! Half of me feels like the time has flown by and the other half can't believe we've only had her here for 16ish weeks :) She has grown so much! Below is a picture of Eva at four months next to the outfit she wore home from the hospital. Last Friday she figured out how to roll from back to front! G'ma K told us she always paid special attention to that particular milestone as it was the beginning of independence. She was right :) Eva is starting to figure out that she can go places on her own, she just can't figure out exactly how to get moving on her own yet. It's very frustrating to her. G'ma K told us Rob use to scream in frustration when he couldn't make himself roll over or move where he wanted to move to. Apparently Eva takes after him. She gets very mad when her arm gets stuck under her and she can't figure out how to get it out of the way. I thought maybe Eva would be laid back like Kylie and be content to hang out and watch things going on around her. Kylie was the only one of our children not to start crawling at six months old; she waited until ten months. Seeing Eva's reaction to rolling over, I'm betting Kylie's going to maintain her solitary status!
Finally, a picture of Megan and Kylie (Jack and Beth had already fallen asleep) talking with Nona and Papa (currently in Russia on their mission) on skype ~
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