Spring Break in St. Louis and other adventures!

Hi Family!
Happy Easter! Missouri played a good April Fool's joke on us today with a snowstorm!! Ugh! We listened to general conference this weekend. There were so many exciting announcements and changes within our church. We have two new apostles--the first non-white apostles in our church. They are combining the high priest quorum and Elders quorum into one group and they have retired visiting teaching and home teaching. Instead of being assigned visiting teachers, I'll have "ministering sisters". My sister Lana and I have complained for the past few years about how ineffective visiting teaching is. I've especially been feeling it over the past few months. I love helping the ladies on my visiting teaching route, but feel like a formal visit where we just sit and chit chat can be kind of a waste of time. So, with this change, there will be a bigger emphasis on helping each other rather than trying to squeeze in a visit at the last minute just to be able to report the visit.  We also received a letter earlier this week stating that all youth and children must have two adults present in the classroom at church. I think what our primary presidency is going to do is ask for volunteers to assist the teachers until we can find team teachers. Anyway, a lot of announcements!

March 19th was our Spring break. We went with our friends the Sentgeorge's to St. Louis. It was sooo cold!! Man I miss sunny AZ! We went to the Magic House, the Zoo, and the Science museum. We swam in the hotel every night. Once we were ready for bed, we watched Cake Boss, Chopped, and House Hunters. The boys were really into the food shows! Van especially loved the giant cakes. Ha ha! 

Van loves staying up past his bed time to read books. His top favorites are the Magic Tree House series and his latest read was The Boxcar Children, the book I read every year to my first graders. We also went to his first grade literacy night Camp Read-A-Lot. We sang camp songs, made puppets, fished for rhyming words, and read in the tents.

These three boys made their pinewood derby cars together. The boy on the left won first place!!

Overheard at our house:

• Will said after running really hard one day, "I ran so fast I felt like my throat ate fireworks."
• When Van finished the Boxcar Children, he came in our room the next morning and couldn't stop talking about the happy ending and the free for all foot race.
• After the priesthood session, Isaac told the boys, "I want you to know that you guys can ask me for a blessing for anything, anytime you want." Van replied, "Like a blessing for if Pokemon could be real?"
• During the priesthood session, we watched The Greatest Showman with our friends. One of the first songs is very long and William noted, "This song is super long. How could he be singing that his whole life?" When the daughter began singing a reprise he said, "Oh great, they taught it to her too?"
• This morning, Van and I planned a prank for April Fool's. Van suggested that we put out ketchup, mustard, ranch, and hot sauce on the table to eat with our French toast. When Isaac sat down and said, "Oh no. I have to eat my French toast with hot sauce?" Van got this huge grin and yelled, "APRIL FOOL'S!" 
• I wrote "BOO" on the boys' toilet seat for my prank. Will commented, "Mom, that didn't even scare me."