Our friends, Billy and Bethany Stewart are our neighbors. Billy is a full-time student in elementary education and his wife is a full-time nurse, who works nights. Their schedules sometimes conflict and create gaps where they need someone to be with their 3 girls, so now I'm that someone. It's only about 10 hours a week, but it's enough to help pay for gas and food during the week. The girls are 1, 2 and 5 and really cute, cuddly, sweet girls...which is what I'm used to, so it could be a lot worse.
I'm so glad we saved a lot of our Fisher-price toys, the Littlest Pet toys, the dollhouse, and that Lauren has about 50 stuffed animals! The girls love to play at our house, and I've enjoyed having little squishy baby cheeks to kiss again.
Landon hid the eggs exceptionally well, so the girls had to really work for what they found.
Emma got an I-tunes giftcard and some flip-flops and Lauren got a ducky Pillow Pet! They brought them out for Easter, I guess, because we had looked high and low at Christmas time and couldn't find any actual Pillow-Pet brand duckies. Emma bought a Taylor Swift CD and some other songs, so they were both very happy.
We only dyed a dozen eggs this year, then promptly turned them into egg salad and deviled eggs for lunch and dinner. 
We went to Church (Landon had to teach primary and I had to teach YW), then came home and ate a delicious Easter feast in our pajamas: ham, asparagus, green jello-with carrots (a shout-out to Nanny), baked potatoes, deviled eggs, rolls (store-bought, but I did make homemade rolls on Monday for leftover ham sandwiches), and lemonade. We watched Amazing Race while we polished off a coconut cake for dessert. It was a relaxing, no-stress Easter...just the way we like it.
As far as I know, she is growing a pineapple (you really can grow a pineapple plant...we watched a Youtube video about it...I'll post the video so you can watch it), cilantro, cabbage, basil, zinnias, a mini-rose plant, and some kind of flowers that attract butterflies. Landon bought her a mini-greenhouse kit from Scholastic that had flowers that supposedly attract butterflies...we'll see. Anyway, I just do what she tells me--buy more soil, save plastic butter/sour cream containers, don't throw her stuff away, etc. She does the all the rest. I've heard her talking to Landon about building a raised flower bed to put outside the house that she wants to paint pink and brown. I love that she's into this little hobby, but I try to stay out of it. 
One of my least favorite activities is when the schools have "spirit week" and the kids are encouraged to dress up every day. This is "character day" where you dress up like a movie, TV or book character. Emma chose Annabeth, a character in Percy Jackson (Lightning Thief). Basically, she just put on a hat and wore a name tag so everyone knew she was dressed up.
Lauren made Hot Fudge Pudding Cake out of our family cookbook. It is cooked in a crockpot and served warm, obviously. It looks kind of funny, but it was delicious! A good one to try from the cookbook.
I've been making lots of recipes out of the cookbook lately. Try Kristen's Honey Curry Chicken, if you want to try something yummy and different. I literally moaned while I ate it. SO GOOD!
Saturday morning we left around 11:00 and met Shannon (and Buddy) at the Provo mall parking lot, then went together to Chuck-a-rama to meet Kristen, Nase and Oliviana for lunch. Shannon made plans to come to "town" so we could see and visit with her, but unfortunately we didn't get to spend more than an hour or so together. I didn't get any pictures of Shannon, but she's lost some weight and looks like a real 4th grade teacher! It was nice to see her, even briefly. Chuck-a-rama is apparently the unofficial Polynesian gathering place, so we had to fight for every piece of chicken/meat we could get our hands on. Made me feel like I earned it though. Oliviana was stuck to Lauren like glue at the buffet. She had to eat/drink whatever Lauren was having and go wherever Lauren was going. 
After gorging ourselves, we did some shopping at the biggest DI I've ever seen, then checked in to our hotel in Provo. This is me, with my favorite little Tongan girl... 
Kristen, Oliviana and the Lukes (minus John) came over to swim with us, and we had the whole pool/hot tub to ourselves the entire time we were there. The kids had fun swimming and got really tired. I had fun talking with Jane and Kristen, while Landon took off for some gun shopping/browsing at Gunnies. After the Lukes left (with lots of group hugs by all the kids), we went to Kneaders for dinner, then back to the hotel room for a jewelry-making lesson by Kristen. I was in my jammies and in the king-size bed with a magazine...no jewelry-making for me!
The girls loved making bracelets and earrings with Kristen. It was the highlight of the trip for them. Kristen was so patient with the girls and they really loved the attention. Oliviana got kind of bored and decided to go for a ride on Lauren's back.
Then we had some tickle time with Uncle Landon:
And Emma fell asleep:
We spent Sunday morning at Kristen's house trying to help her fix her computer, talked on the phone to Dad and David, who was visiting everyone in Vancouver, then said good-bye and headed north to Salt Lake for the last session of conference. Our tickets came with a parking pass to a parking garage about 3 or 4 blocks from the conference center, so we jumped on the light-rail train (Traxx) and rode it down a couple stops. The girls thought this was SO fun! They have forgotten when we used to live in Utah and rode Traxx frequently, as well as when we lived in Vancouver and rode Maxx many times in Portland. They may have enjoyed the train more than the conference itself, as well as riding up and down the escalators in the conference center. Consequences of living in a rural town in Idaho, I guess!
We really enjoyed seeing conference in the Conference Center, though. The girls each wrote down on a piece of paper what they thought each speaker was speaking about, then compared notes in the car on the way home. They were both right on! It's easier to pay attention when you're there in person. Emma was especially excited because she really hoped that President Monson would speak, and he did right at the end. It was such a fun time for all of us. This was our second time being there all together, and we're excited to do it again some time.