march madness

march absolutely has 31 full days. 

if we have more months as strawberry jam packed a this march was packed, we will actually be okay. i used to feel overwhelmed when each month would pass but i feel i should be encouraged that we can do as much as we do in a month and still feel happiness and fondness toward one another as a family. 

blythe is a total mess of catastrophic proportions. 

each day on the car ride home from school, she rummages through reagan's lunchbox and finishes off his nutella sandwich. i'll keep making them if at least one of the kids keeps eating them.

blythe finally got her cat fur trimmed up. it was epic.

she's also a constant tooth brushing...

mickey mouse loving...

torturous co-shopping...

perpetual mess maker! every picture of blythe is going to be blurry because of the speed with with she moves. 

she loves to sit in her carseat, nakey, inside the house, and will spend minutes and minutes buckling and unbuckling herself.

when she's not pulling her diaper off, she's helping herself to reagan's underwear. today at church, we had been there a full 30 minutes before i realized that she had pulled her diaper off before we left church and she had been sitting free as a bird, unbeknownst to the rest of us until she flashed the row behind us.

very occasionally she will actually sit on her potty. but not for long.

and since we let her do whatever she wants, she can con scarlett into pushing her around on scarlett's old bicycle inside the house. i fully admit that she has won and we are beaten.

scarlett is my favorite middle child. she has overwhelming shyness and social anxiety one minute, but then she will completely surprise me with her exuberance for an activity.

her ballet class had observation day and it was a highlight of MY LIFE! i was so proud. i'm smiled and teared up like a giant goober. she was so intense and serious and professional. 

and she completely surprised me with how far she has come in her flexibility. we simpson girls are not known for our ease of movement. my goal is to stretch enough to catch up to her. 

and her teacher even said she had great naturally hyper-extended legs! look at the booty! i'm just so glad she likes it and feels good about herself. i'll catch her practicing from time to time in her room and i feel like i should be plotting ways to get her on the disney channel so that her life can be destroyed in just a few short years. i'll ask billy ray cyrus how they pulled it off.

but really. 

even her teacher remarked about how seriously she takes it. i tried to wink at her and wave and she IGNORED me. true stage presence right there. i'm hard to ignore.

but not so serious are the pictures i'll find on my phone after church:

she also decided she wanted to make more things into contests between her and blythe. the latest contest is, "who is the cutest girl swinging". it's a little subjective but you can't blame a girl for trying to stack the deck in her favor. 

she also found a 4 leaf clover in the yard. this is also her smile for when she practicing for her disney channel audition. slightly painful but you can still picture it on a t-shirt.

reagan's mom finally got his cub scout shirt in gear. sort of.

reagan went to a gymnastics party and had to be dragged out of the foam pit. his concept of lost socks and germ-phobia is a little underdeveloped. ignorance is bliss. i jumped in too and poured bleach on my feet when i got home.

and thomas has mastered the art of combing long girl's hair. next up is teasing the crown in order to use a bump-it!

i went to the women's conference. i didn't really want to go because it started at 8pm eastern time zone. at that time of day i like to be in some level of dishabille. but i wore my most tent/blanket-like dress and sat in the chair closet to the door. once again, o-heidi-of-little-faith was humbled. it was wonderful. the Spirit of the Lord was strong. it spoke to my heart. i thought of so many of you, my dear sisters in Christ, and how grateful i am for your support and example and continued desire to live the gospel. we are never alone.

but the chair by the door was still awesome because i ran out and drove home in 3 minutes flat and put my sweats on and assumed my nightly position on the couch, falling asleep on thomas's shoulder while he did some work on his laptop. we are a dreamy team.

finally, the twins:

and we started a new family goal of only having dessert/junk food on sunday. no one likes it but me, but we eat garbage all the time and it needs to stop. i love to bake with the kids, but they were asking for lunch dessert and dinner dessert and dessert snacks and treats for every minor accomplishment. because i'm not the worstest mom ever, i include a couple of cookies in their lunch boxes and they can have any treat offered them for a special occasion like a party or school, but at home we stick to sunday dessert. and sunday dessert is a doozy. it always includes ice cream and some crazy concoction of brownies and sweetened condensed milk and crack cocaine. practically.

this was our 7 layer brownie:

brownies, chocolate chips, sweetened condesed milk, m&ms, nutella scoops, caramel balls and cookie dough globs.  plus, ice cream. my body went into shock after the sugar overload and i cried rivulets of sugar. 

but by the next sunday, we were ready again!