April Showers Bring CRAZINESS!!

Hello

How have you been?

Here? We have been B.U.S.Y.!!!!

I feel like the past few months, practically since the beginning of the year, have been us gearing up for what we knew would be a doozy of an April. There were yard and gardening projects we wanted to get done in time to get our early spring seeds planted. Robert had 2 conferences he was travelling for. Another whirlwind trip down to Mesa. Preston's graduation festivities. We expected the month to be a doozy, and boy howdy was it a doozy! Let's break it down by week, shall we?

Week 1:

March 30th: My nephew, Easton was born. I got to attend the birth. Such a privilege to witness such a sweet miracle!

March 31st-April 2nd: Robert had a conference at The Ohio State University

April 1st-2nd: My sister Breanna and her family came to visit.

Sweet Baby Maizy!

Week 2:

April 1st-5th: We prepped and started planting our garden.

Before

After

April 1st-6th: Easton was in the NICU so we tried to visit often and do what we could to help there.

April 9th-10th: We drove down to Mesa for our awesome friend, Lizzy's wedding and then back the next day.

Week 3:

PROJECTS!!! Every moment we could spare we lived and breathed yard work and housework. 

Before

After

Before

After

 April 16th: Was spent with Preston's help heaving a ton (literally) of stuff into a couple truckloads and hauling them to the dump.

Before

After

Week 4:

April 17th-20th: Get house in order for company.

April 21st-22nd: PRESTON'S GRADUATION!!!

Robert getting sleeping Lily snuggles during the graduation celebration dinner we hosted in our backyard.

Week 5:

April 25th-27th: Help Preston and Sharon pack and move all of their stuff to our place. 

April 28th-30th: Robert went to a conference in Maryland where he was officially certified an actuary!! 

April 29th: Mary graduated preschool. (WHAT?!?)

Until the 28th we weren't sure if Preston and Sharon were moving in to live with us for the summer, or if they were just storing their stuff here and moving to Mesa on the 30th. Preston didn't get final word on an internship opportunity here in Utah until the 28th. He sadly didn't get it, so they left on the 30th to move down to Arizona for an internship he got there.

Them driving away on their way to Arizona. :'(

April 30th: Picked up Robert from the airport and took the kids straight from there to a babysitter's while we capped off the crazy month going to the temple with some of my awesome cousins.

Add the fact that during all this I had the 3 extra kids that I watch (age 4, 2, and almost 4 months) 5 days a week and on a couple days I also watched Easton (7 kids 5 and under!!!) and Robert finished up teaching for the semester and giving finals and what not (FYI giving finals is easier than taking finals). Robert and I sat on the couch May 1st, took a deep breath, and said "We survived!"

Now what? Well, our lives are ALWAYS crazy, but we are looking forward to a little more flexibility in our schedule. Robert's schedule is more relaxed during the spring and summer semesters. Lydia has less than 3 weeks left of kindergarten (WHAT?!?) and then we'll all be on summer break and looking forward to the trips and visitors we have planned. In the meantime, we're hoping to be able to add some missed things back into our routine. Namely, blogging, vlogging, and exercising. Oh, and maybe getting caught up on laundry... maybe...

Hooray for May!

P.S. Less than 5 weeks til our trip to Italy!! AHHH!!!!

Quick Kid Update

Well, I already slacked on my "2 posts per week goal" by only doing 1 vlog on Sunday last week. Life is crazy busy. I'm babysitting 3 kids now, ages 4, 2, and 11 months, from 8-5 Monday-Friday. Lydia had her first dance recital. Kids have been sick. Robert and I have entered a 6 week weight loss challenge. Busy, busy, BUSY! But hopefully more posts on that later. For now, here's a little update on my kiddos.

James - 2 years and 2 months

 What can I say?? This kid has me completely wrapped around his little fingers. He is just such a sweet boy and a total charmer. I hate to say it (because my kids playing this contact sport terrifies me!), but he LOVES football. He has been doing this cute little thing lately where he'll put his hand down in a lineman stance (if that's what it's called) and say "Hut, hut, HIKE!" and try to tackle you. (Robert taught him). We're also seeing glimpses of this super goofball side of his personality developing that already gets us laughing until our sides hurt. He'll throw a terrible two year old tantrum with the best of them, but for the most part he is a very happy boy with a chuckle that could put a smile on the grumpiest person's face. As much as he tries to talk, he says very few words clearly which has me more and more worried, but we'll take that one day at a time and we'll get some kind of intervention soon if it comes to that.

Mary - 4 years 5 months

Sweet, soft-hearted, soft-spoken Mary! She is so smart. She'll overhear us working on Lydia's homework and be able to answer nearly every question faster and more correctly than Lydia a lot of the time. She likes to keep to herself and will rarely go up to a kid to ask to play, but she lights up if another kid takes the initiative and asks her. She will immediately refer to that kid as her new best friend. She loves to craft. She will spend hours on end coloring or doing carefully thought out Perler Bead designs. She still is able to turn tears on and off like a faucet, a talent she's had since she was a baby. The other night I asked her if she wanted to start dance classes like Lydia when she turned 5. Immediately, she burst into tears and said, "I just really want to do soccer!!!" She's currently still on break from preschool and can't wait for it to start back up again at the end of February.

Lydia - 5 years 8 months

There is no shortage of spunk and sass when it comes to Lydia. She is the one that tests my parenting skills and patience the most, but then she'll turn around and do something the makes me burst into tears over how loving or thoughtful it is. I also occasionally have days where she is the extra helpful, not self-centered person I hope I'm teaching her to be. So hopefully I'm doing some things right. We're currently deciding whether or not to put her into the Chinese Dual Language Immersion at her school next year. We worry it'll be a struggle for her academically maybe too much of a struggle, but she is set on doing it because ironically her closest friend in her kindergarten class IS Chinese and she wants to be able to communicate better with her. We're leaning towards doing it but still weighing all the pros and cons and praying about it, so we'll see what happens. She just did her first dance recital. She had a blast and looked adorable. Hopefully there will be another post about that soon. She's liking dance so much that we're thinking we may want to move her into the class that meets twice a week. Grade school, dance recitals - I can't believe she's already at this stage of life!!

These kids have my heart hook, line, and sinker!! They've made me a better person. I'm proud and thankful to be their Mommy!!

Christmas Letter 2015

Merry Christmas 2015

WE’VE MOVED!!

We are once again Provo, Utahns and no longer Santa Cruz, Californians. We are no longer students and have entered the real world. And we have a backyard! It’s kind of a big deal. 

Here’s what we are all up to:

James barely turned 2 in November and already weighs nearly as much as his two older sisters. He is all boy. He loves all sports with balls including basketball, football, soccer, and baseball, although he calls them all football. When he isn’t throwing a ball, he is either playing with his train set or cars or watching Mickey Mouse, especially the ones with cars or trains. His soft side is very evident, though, as he loves any regular family moments, such as prayers or scriptures, and begs for hugs and cuddles often. 

Mary is a very smart 4-year old. She is already reading easy books, asking math questions, constantly pointing out shapes and patterns, and remembering every fact we tell her. She is also very sensitive, which makes her very sweet, but can lead to some very funny moments when she tries so hard but cannot hold in her tears. She can spend hours building with her Duplo blocks or making Perler bead creations. 

Lydia is a social kindergartener. She loves going to school and playing with her friends. She is doing very well with her reading and schoolwork. She can be super duper crazy, but when she is in the right mood can be a great helper and example for her younger siblings. She loves playing all sorts of games with her family like Uno, Go Fish, or Freeze Tag. Coloring, painting pictures, and making Perler bead creations are some of her favorite 

creative activities. 

Heidi takes care of her children during the day and also watches an extra 10-month old child five days a week. She finished out our Santa Cruz era as a hall-of-fame Primary children’s chorister for our church and is now for the first time in 10 years NOT in a Primary calling. She has a couple of Relief Society callings in our new ward and is enjoying making new friends there. Having a larger home in Provo has kept her busy doing such things as pruning and weeding rose bushes, organizing all of our stuff, and in general making everything much more beautiful. 

Robert is now a full-time professor at Brigham Young University teaching statistics. He finished up his doctorate at UCSC in June by defending his thesis on Integro-Differential Equations in Spatio-Temporal Modeling, which included doing such things as modeling ozone pressure and predicting El Niño. He has been invited to present some of his research at a conference in Italy next summer. His kids think he is silly, smart, fun to play games with, and works hard.

Wishing you lots of love this holiday season,

THE RICHARDSONS

Written by: Dr. Bob

Dear mother of the boy behind me in the checkout line...

You did not have to be embarrassed about the comments he made to me. He looked about 10 years old, but from his lack of eye contact and constant fidgeting, I figure he's either on the autism spectrum or another social communication disorder. My brother and several nephews are on the spectrum, so not only am I used to it but since I live away from most of my family I find it especially endearing and heartwarming. You felt awful when he said I sounded like a man (I have a cold). And you shushed him and pulled him away when he said I must have not showered today because my hair looked greasy (he was right). But he TOTALLY made my day when the cashier said I'd saved $145 and he cheered "Mom, she's rich!!" and then proceeded to clap for me. So, sincerely, I love him!

In other news, I've been regularly couponing for a couple months now and I think I'm starting to get the hang of it. Between the in-store savings, catalinas, and rebate apps, I spent $129.05 and saved $156.63. It's not the most percentage I've saved on a shopping trip, but it was a BIG haul and the first time I didn't feel completely overwhelmed by it. Yay for learning and improving, and hooray for stretching dollars!

Did You Miss Me??

Life gets away from you sometimes. I started a vlog because I thought it would capture moments of our family better than words and pictures did. And it did, but as a result I had no time for the written blog, which I had hoped wouldn't be the case. Then I had a miscarriage, got pregnant again and horribly pregnant sick, then miscarried again all while starting a new chapter of our lives in Utah and trying to form new friendships and routines there. This made it so I stopped vlogging as well. I've missed it - vlogging and blogging alike. So I've set a new goal. At least 2 posts a week. Whether it's a vlog or blog doesn't matter, just as long as I get 2 things posted. Here's to a New Year of getting back on the wagon!

I'M BACK!!

To Vlog or Not to Vlog?????

Once upon a time, approximately 6.5 years ago, I started this blog. It's been such a blessing to us. I had never in my whole life been a consistent journal writer or scrapbooking person of any sort. I moved away from my huge immediate family and wanted a way to keep them posted on some of my day to day life since calling 10 siblings regularly can be impossible at times. This blog has filled all those needs. But lately I find myself lacking time or energy (thinking out what and how to write really zaps my energy) to keep really on top of it. I feel like all I'm able to do, especially for the past several months, is post pictures of events with captions here and there. Sometimes this happens months after the event happened so I've forgotten all of the little memories I wanted to write down that weren't photographed. I also have been feeling more and more like I want to capture more of my growing kids' personalities and funny quips and the emotions of our day to day things - the parts you don't get from a picture. I felt the answer to this was to get in the habit of taking more videos, but I feel like the only reason I've been somewhat successful at being consistent with this blog is that knowing others had access to read it kept me accountable to it. How could I get that same accountability with videos??

ENTER VLOGGING

The first real exposure I got to the vlogging community was when Robert's cousin started a daily vlog  on YouTube with his family (check out J House Vlogs) last September. The thought intrigued me right away, but I had a lot of reservations about doing it. Mainly insecurities (do I really want people to see how I'm wearing no make up and a pony tail a lot of the time? And hear my manly voice???), fear of blogging in public places (I don't like drawing strangers' attention), and of course privacy concerns. So I've been researching more and more over the past several months, following several more family vlogs (shout out to Matt and Em and Sam and Nia), getting a ton of tips on everything, and we've (Robert and myself - Robert's been in on the entire debate) decided it's time to test the waters.

So without further ado, our newly launched vlogging channel is Find Joy With Us. And our first video is here, also below:



I think we're in "beta mode" of this new endeavor right now. We're still figuring out what exactly we want the videos to be, how we want to structure and present them, how often we want to post, or if we are really up for consistently doing this at all. So we're testing it out and learning as we go. We'd love any feedback you have to share!!!

P.S. One privacy or identity protection suggestion we're trying to follow is to do our best to not include our last name. If we continue with the vlog past "beta mode," I will probably stop this blog and start another that follows that and other identity/privacy rules. We'll see where it goes from here! :)

March So Far

Articles of Faith

We've been making a little extra effort to work on the Articles of Faith with the girls. They almost have the first 5 memorized. Here's Mary reciting the 4th :)

Running West Cliff
I'm trying once again to recommit to my running goals (though I've somewhat slacked this past week). I go with James while the girls are at preschool. Running with a stroller is not my favorite, but James' cuteness and the view make up for it.

National Pancake Day
We love when restaurants give free food for random holidays!

Lydia's New Swing Tricks
Lydia can now pump herself on the swing, making trips to the park that much more enjoyable for Mommy :) She also knows how to jump off the swing which I was completely surprised with at the end of this video.



Family Sunday Stroll
We're trying to really take advantage of the area we live in with the time we have left. This is the meadow right next to our apartment. On 4/20 it gets packed with 20,000 people smoking pot, but every other day of the year it's a beautiful place :)

Do you see the deer she's looking at?

Pi Day of the CENTURY!!
We like Pi Day! We usually eat some yummy pies to celebrate. This year being 3.14.15 made it extra special. I couldn't resist impulse buying these way overpriced shirts off of an ad I saw on facebook.

We wore them on a Pi Day Eve date night where we counted all of the circles we saw and ate pizza pie and donuts :)

Then the day of Pi Day we ran in circles at 9:26am (3.1415926) and we bought my favorite Pi Day treat.

The full truth is that my favorite is a homemade recipe I make of these, but they are not easy to do in a kitchen as small as ours, so we've settled with store bought ones while we've lived here. Not complaining though because I also love the store bought ones :)

James' Laugh
I may be biased, but I think that James has the best laugh ever.



St. Patrick's Day
I have mixed feelings about this day. I love having an excuse to wear green, and I don't mind squirting a few drops of green food coloring in whatever foods we're making and having a bit of fun with that, but I have no desire to do any of the leprechaun tricks or whatever I've seen others do. Sometimes I feel like it's only gotten as big a creative deal as it is because of Pinterest. I want to make it clear too that I have nothing against moms who go all out. In fact I'm always super impressed at all the things I see, but I don't think that will ever be me. I guess I just would rather invest my energy in some of the surrounding holidays like Pi Day, Easter, etc.  So this year all our festivities included were green clothes, green pancakes, and green milk, and the kids thought that was just great :)

Instagram Revisited - February

2/2/2015 - 5 seasons of MASH on Netflix. My life just got a little sweeter. #myfavoriteshow

2/4/2015 - Face still super numb, but 4 visits and 7 fillings later my mouth is finally cavity free again! Hip hip hooray! #untilnextcleaning

2/15/2015 - I was totally his favorite 2nd cousin once removed for 5 minutes. #coveychristopher #bestsurpriseever @kellkaelyman

2/15/2015 - I feel like as the years go on each reunion gets more chaotic and exhausting which in a weird way makes it even more wonderfully worthwhile. #wilckenreunion2015 #familiesareforever

Anniversary Fun

This year our anniversary was on a Saturday. I've decided that I LOVE when holidays/birthdays/anniversaries are on Saturdays! I think that's a sign that I'm maturing because when I was little I HATED it because it meant that I didn't get to see as many people at school or whatever to celebrate with me. I think that attitude just stayed with me all these years. But now I'm older and wiser and appreciate how if it's on Saturday we have more freedom to choose what we want to do the whole day, or even choose to celebrate it the whole weekend if you want!

So Friday night we went as a family to Pizza My Heart to celebrate our "family's birthday" ;)

So for our anniversary this year in the morning we had thought we'd go kayaking in the bay, but we decided since we only had 3ish hours in the morning we wanted to save that for a time that we had almost a whole day so last minute we decided instead we would record a music video!! We finally did a "Breaking Free" music video. We had the idea to do it 3 years ago. We even filmed a little footage for it once but then never did anything with it. We decided THE TIME HAD COME. To see the video, go to my Facebook page. :)

After finishing the video we came back home for a lazy few hours then dropped the kids at a babysitter's and went to a Children's Youth Theater production of "Beauty and the Beast." It was the most masterfully done youth theater production I've ever seen! The orchestra, the acting/singing, costumes, set, EVERYTHING was great!

After the show we went out to Chili's. Say what you want about it! It's one of our faves!

So all in all, it was a pretty low key anniversary but we had a blast! It's been forever since we were able to spend almost a whole day with just the 2 of us, and it was awesome.

We're BFFs :)