Everyday With The Ericksons: MARCH 2019

MARCH - Some of the highlight of the month were related to school. Kinsley decided to participate in the school talent show. She had to try-out one day after school. She decided to play the piano and passed the tryouts. There was a special evening performance for families and they also had a school performance for the all the students from every grade. She did so great and I was really proud of her bravery. Kasen was excited to go watch state basketball. It is nice to be in Boise for state tournaments.

Ava had her NHD district competition. She was very excited about it - as NHD is a really big deal to her. The topic this year was: Triumph & Tragedy in History. She chose for her topic the Chinese camps during the gold rush in California. She did a website again this year with the title: Claiming the Camp: The Triumph & Tragedy of the Chinese Camps in California. She wasn't quite as nervous as last year for her interview. But since it's Ava, of course she wanted to win! She had quite a few friends that participated from GT (because it was required) so she was excited to meet up with them at the awards ceremony. It was quite the exciting event when many of her friends won and Ava ended up winning 1st place in the website division!! She was so excited. And now will head to state.

Kindness club ordered some cute shirts for everyone to wear. Ava's mom (the kindness club organizer) does such an amazing job. I have so much respect for her. I'm not sure that I've ever written about why she started the kindness club, but last year her teenage son committed suicide. Ava (2nd from the left) is her only child now. I think it is so admirable that she has channeled her grief into spreading kindness and doing something positive outside of herself.

SPORTS - I took my big camera to a basketball tournament this month to get some better pictures of Kasen this month. I love seeing him improve each week.

Ava's schedule was really getting under way with club volleyball. They had a big tournament in Nampa and Ava was really excited to start playing more regularly. They had just started their second set when Ava came down on another girl's foot. She tried really hard to keep playing, but couldn't put any pressure on her foot at all. Jed took her over to his office since it was only a couple miles away to do an x-ray. Sure enough she had a fracture. It was an avulsion fracture which meant that a chip of her bone came off and was floating in her tissue. Jed said the bone would just dissolve, but it was really painful like a bad sprained ankle. She was six weeks off her foot and had to wear a walking boot. She didn't go to practices but I took her to the next tournament to watch. After that the girls traveled to other tournaments and she didn't go. She was pretty bummed, but tried to stay positive and support the other girls. I was quite disappointed in her coach who never texted or called once to see how Ava was doing throughout the whole time.

The kids were excited to fill out their March Madness brackets - I'm pretty sure Jed won again and I lost. The kids are good at entertaining each other most of the time. They pulled out the keyboard for a few weeks. Kasen wanted it in his room. Dallin loves getting out the blog books and looking through them. He always chooses the orange book which was 2016 the year he was born. It is the only one he likes to look through. I'm so glad the kids look through them sometimes. They love seeing themselves as little kids.

Jed received some sad news from his dad this month that Sister Smith (his mission president's wife) had died. We were able to go down to the funeral in Utah together. It was such a sweet experience listening to all the wonderful comments about this lady. I had never met her, but Jed said she was very very kind and exactly what you would think of when you think of a sweet little old grandma. He said he never met anyone who treated his wife kinder than his mission president.

PERSONAL GROWTH - This month I decided to invest in myself and go for a few things that would challenge me. I joined this 6 wk workout challenge at F45 - a local gym. I had to follow a pretty strict eating regimen and workout at the gym 4x a week. I really liked the workouts. It was hard to follow a strict eating schedule, but I ended up losing 5% of my body fat so that was cool. I also decided to try some digital marketing. I had been watching some trainings and thought I'd try my hand at it. I had a great idea to offer social media managing to dentist. So I took some professional-ish looking photos in my basement with my cellphone & I put together a flyer & a quick website for my services and bought some Krispy Kreme doughnuts and went around to local offices and tried to talk to some office managers. What ended up happening though is that I couldn't get past the receptionists. They all said they would pass my information along. It was super scary and I felt like an idiot but I DID IT! I tried following up but only a few responded. They all said they weren't interested, but I appreciated those that responded vs the ones that never did. I realized I was facing an uphill battle as I had no connections to any of these dentists, but I don't regret doing it. I realized right away that I didn't like trying to convince people to buy something from me (sales!) I tried contacting dentists I knew, including Ben Dansie, but nothing came from those either. So I decided to move on from that business venture.

WICKED WEEKEND - One of the biggest events Ava & I were looking forward to this month was our Wicked weekend with some Erickson girls. We went down to the Morrison center to watch it. It was Ava's first musical and she loved it. Wicked is such a fun one to watch anyway. I actually splurged a little for better seats and it was totally worth it. We went to eat at PF Changs afterward and Ava thought that was awesome too.

Since everyone stayed for the weekend, Morgan went with Ava to the temple with some other YW from the ward. Ava has been so awesome at going to the temple every week. Jed takes her early in the morning before work and then drops her off at school on his way to the Eagle office. I'm always so impressed at her dedication to goals she sets. While everyone was here they wanted to go shopping of course. I attempted it with Dallin, but it was so not fun. He is too high energy to shop with the Ericksons (namely Susan) who goes into 500 stores and spends 2 hrs in each store looking for the best deals. Which is not a bad way to shop, just not that enjoyable with a 2 yr old named Dallin.

Speaking of Dallin, he was quite the funny kid this week (minus the times he was melting down while shopping). He was still completely obsessed with his basketball book and cards. One day he got it in his head that Steph Curry was coming over to play basketball with him and he waited by the front door for hours looking out at the driveway. He also became interested in reading everything that isn't usually read - for example the phonebook. He packed the phonebook around all month turning it page by page and reading it in complete gibberish.

SPRING CLEANING - Towards the end of the month as the weather got a little warmer and warmer, we found ourselves out in the yard. There is never a shortage of work to be done in our yard. Even during the winter, Jed stays busy plowing our long driveway. You would think with all the work we do in the fall we wouldn't have much to do in the spring but I was surprised by how much junk we cleaned out of the flower beds. Our yard sure is pretty though even with no leaves on the trees yet.

Ava took these beautiful pictures with my phone this month. I especially love the temple picture. She took this one while we were driving in the car.

SPRING BREAK - We decided we should spend part of spring break in eastern Idaho, even though there is nothing fun about going there in March. We went up to Swan Valley which was still covered in snow. It didn't really feel like spring, but was fun to spend time with family.