Thanks, Mom, for the photo shoot! We love them!

Josh quit his job on Friday. He’s going to start working for himself again. That’s what he did to put himself through college, and it’s a change we’ve kind of been gravitating toward for a while now. And it’s finally time.

We’re all excited. Josh is excited to be working for himself, to be able to take more control of what he’s doing and what he wants to build his career as. We’re all excited about more time together as a family.

On Friday we had a party to celebrate. While Josh was at work the kids and I got ready. We decorated the house with streamers, painted a “YAY FOR DAD” banner, went to the Dollar Store for supplies, rented a Redbox movie, and made a playlist of party music (“Celebrate, good times, come on!”).

The party was soooo much fun. Everyone loved it. We ate pizza and drank soda. We played Don’t Eat Pete. We went to the backyard and sprayed each other with squirt guns and threw water balloons. We built our own ice cream sundaes. We watched a documentary about the lemurs of Madagascar. Then we put the kids on our backs and hopped around like lemurs. We had a dance party.

The kids had a blast. When each activity ended, Carson would fuss and whine, saying he wanted to keep playing Don’t Eat Pete, or didn’t we have more water balloons? But within minutes he’d be happy doing the next party event. For me it was probably the most fun we’ve ever had with just us, all of us, as a family. It was so cute to watch Annelise get so happy over collecting her pile of M&Ms in Don’t Eat Pete. It was so fun hopping around like lemurs. Carson didn’t want to stop dancing! The evening was almost magical.

It feels like our little party was the perfect way to kick off this new life change of ours. It’s a big change, for sure. We’re excited, but of course we’re also a little anxious. I think it’s going to be great, though. We’ll keep you posted. :)

Carson’s a morning person. He’s an early riser. Josh, who’s up early for work, usually convinces him to go back to bed or read books in his room until about 7:00.

This morning Josh went to an early morning temple session, so Carson didn’t have anyone to put him back to bed when he woke up early. Instead I woke up to Carson sitting in bed next to me. He had turned on Josh’s reading light and had one of his picture books open on the bed.

“Hi, mom,” he said. “How did you sleep last night?”

As much as I’d rather sleep than be woken up early, it was a pretty sweet way to start the day.

Who knew releasing a butterfly into the wild could be so traumatic? My mom, a fifth grade science teacher, gave us a monarch butterfly cocoon to hatch and release. We watched the cocoon for days. The butterfly emerged in like a fifteen-minute window between us checking on the cocoon, but we were excited to see it out.

When it came time to release the butterfly in our backyard, my mom told me that we could take the butterfly out and even hold it before it flew away. I had never held a butterfly before and was fascinated: it was so preettty. And it just climbed so delicately on my finger.

Carson was at first excited, but when he saw me holding the butterfly, he got a little shy. Annelise seemed like she wanted a turn, though, so I carefully transitioned the butterfly to her hand.

Big mistake. Before I could even snap a picture, she reached up her other hand and engulfed the poor butterfly in a fist. Then Carson and I were both crying/yelling, “No! No! Stop! Don’t kill it!” And I was trying to pry her fingers off… Finally she let go and, miraculously, the butterfly seemed unharmed. (This exact thing happened twice, because I apparently didn’t learn my lesson the first time.)

So once we got over that and established that our butterfly was still alive, I asked again if Carson wanted a turn. He acted scared and declined, so we just let the butterfly crawl and watched it some.

Finally Carson said he was ready for his turn, so I had him hold out his hand and the butterfly crawled on…

And then Carson started screaming. Screaming. “It hurts! It hurts!” he screamed. At that exact moment, Annelise (who had wandered over to the slide) took a tumble head-first and started screaming, too.

I quickly tried to get the butterfly off Carson without hurting it, rushed over to grab Annelise, and hurried us all inside.

In the house with two screaming kids, I knew I had only one defense. I plopped them at the kitchen table and pulled out two popsicles (things they haven’t seen since last summer). That stopped the crying mid-breath. So thank goodness for popsicles.

At least the whole thing did make for some pretty cute pictures. If they were videos, they would be filled with traumatic screams. But the pictures turned out just fine.