M&S Harris Family: April 2013

We love the beginning of spring here in Utah. It feels like a celebration when you see the tulips coming out and the blossoms on trees after the long winters. One of Natty's favorite things to do in all our car time together :) is to look for the tulips and blossoms. She screams out "tulips!" or "a blossom tree!" even when they're every few feet - pretty fun.

This also means we've been getting outside more, some of the time for soccer games. With Zelle and Abs playing Waterford soccer, we've taken the younger girls with us to their games where they do homework and play on school playgrounds while we watch the games together. It's been really fun. It also means there are fewer weekend games, which makes it all more manageable. Natalie has even been playing on a little neighborhood team with a bunch of 3 and 4 year olds. It's hilarious. I keep meaning to get a picture of all 5 of our girls in their uniforms...I'll send it when I do.

In other Natalie news, she chopped her hair super short in the very front on...school picture day. She must be my 5th child because I thought it was hilarious. I don't let her know this, of course. I gave her the serious talk about not cutting your hair, but the timing and everything was just too funny. She is becoming quite the social butterfly, always wanting playdates and saying "who can I play with today?"

Suse is plugging along loving soccer, gymnastics, reading the Twits by Roald Dahl and giving me grief with practicing :)...highlight of my day. She is testing me with boundaries and my commitment to everything from chores, to wearing her eyepatch, getting her hw done, practicing. I'm sure I'll look back on this and think why did it wear me out so much, but that is the reality right now!

Lu just finished her first school play. She was Rip Van Winkle's daughter, Judith, in the play "Rip Van Winkle." It was very cute and well done, and she had a great time doing it. She's told me a few times this week how she misses play practice. She is becoming a wiry little athlete, too. I don't know about other people's mile times as kids, but I never ran it under 7 min and she ran it in 6:50 or something as a 4th grade girl. Maybe that's not that fast, but that's way faster than I ever did it. And in soccer, it's really fun to watch her. She doesn't hold her position at all - just runs all over the field - but she takes the ball up the field whenever she can, dribbles around a couple of girls and shoots several times a game. She's been the only scorer in the past couple of games, and scores a few each game. She loves it and plays soccer with the boys every day at recess. For medieval day, she wanted to be a jester. I think she was the only one in her class, and said there were maybe 2 others in the grade. All the other girls want to be princesses (of course), so it's fun to watch her personality unfold. I'm seeing more tomboy sportiness and she loves to do her own thing and be her own person.

Abby is loving soccer, babysitting, and friends. She's become a pretty social butterfly, too, which you could always tell was in her personality even as a baby. She had a great time babysitting with a friend last night, and went to a "spa" birthday party the night before. She is determined and self-motivated, which is really helpful as a mom. Sometimes that translates into getting on her sisters' cases about what they're not doing or should be doing, but as a mom, it's great to have a child who tells you what they need for a project the week before it's due, and who you know when you ask her to get something done, she will.

Zelle continues to love soccer, is making good friends this year, and works hard in school and piano (at times). She has made some cute friends this year, and we had 7-8 of them home with us after school last weekend so they could hang out and get ready for the middle school dance later that night...yikes, dances. Anyway, they're a loud, giggly, cute group of girls. She made a timeline of events in ancient world history that blew me away. She continues to learn and love learning in a way that's impressive to me. She also has been very cute with her latest piano piece. It's a really hard Brahms piece, "Hungarian Dance." After kind of stinking it up in her last recital, she's decided she wants to nail this one, so I hope she does in a couple of weeks. In any case, she's worked hard on it.

We celebrated Mark's birthday last weekend and had his parents and Mea over for dinner. He's a great husband and Dad. He had the YM over this week for swimming and games at our house, and does a lot of great things with the boys. He's also working on a 45 minute talk (which he keeps reminding me how long that is! :) ) that he's giving tomorrow morning for the seminary kids at Olympus High.

I'm loving my life. I always hope I'm prioritizing well and putting the things that matter most first. I struggle daily with that, and fitting in all the things I would like to, as all adults do. I'm also constantly struggling with that fine balance between motivating (read nagging) the girls to get the things done they need to, and being a mom who's available, loving, patient and occasionally fun. It's a great journey, though. We feel grateful every day for the amazing lives we have.

Natty's self haircut...lovely (and you can see she feels a lot of remorse)