April

For April Fools Day, I came up with a great joke to play on the family.  I used AI to recreate our family pictures with all of us holding cats!  AI is still new and developing but it’s pretty amazing what it can do.  I don’t subscribe to an AI platform so the free version only lets you recreate three photos a day.  It took me three days to get all of the pictures created.  Then I had them printed at Walmart and asked William to pick them up when he was in Ephraim.  He brought the folder home and set it on the table.  I was gone when he brought them home and didn’t show up until later with the girls.  Lorien walked into the house before me and went right to the folder and opened it up!  She was so confused when she looked at the pictures and invited the attention of Irie, William, and Jacob who were nearby.  When I walked into the house, they were all looking at the pictures!  I was so upset- my joke was ruined!  I had to tell them what I was planning and we decided to still pull the joke on Scott and Adam.  Scott noticed the pictures right away when he woke up that morning and looked at them.  It took Adam 3 days before he finally said, “Hey, why are there cats in our pictures?!”  I really thought it would take him much longer to notice.  It was a good joke idea and I am sad that it didn’t work out fully as I had hoped, but on the plus side, we have some pretty cool new family pictures!

Over our spring break we were able to meet up with Bradley and Melissa and kids in Spanish Fork while they were visiting Utah to look at houses.  We went to the model train expo held at the Spanish Fork fair grounds which turned out to be a cool event.

I was able to be a chaperone for Lorien’s class when they attended the Hale Center Theater to see a production of The Hunchback of Notre Dame.  I love seeing plays, especially at the Hale Theater.  The show was amazing and it was fun to be able to be with Lorien and her friends to see it. 

This year we are in a major drought.  The winter was exceptionally warm and dry.  When spring arrived and the grass started to green up, a lot of our lawn stayed yellow.  I’ve been working with the owner of the local nursery to figure out what could be wrong with it.  We discovered grubs and some fungus.  With the warm winter weather, the grubs may have been eating the lawn all year long.  We are trying to treat it and are hoping that it will recover some.

My parents had some really bad luck when their basement flooded due to a broken pipe on their water heater.  We helped them clear everything out of their basement, which was a giant task with how much stuff has been stored in their basement over the years.  On the same day, their refrigerator also stopped working.  I have been trying to help them get everything put back together but it’s going to take a long time.  As kids, we have been trying to get our parents to clean out their basement for years now.  Maybe this will be the thing that finally forces them to do it. After our family helped with cleanup, we went to Denny’s for dinner.  Lorien ordered a kids meal that consisted of pancakes with a side of pancakes.  And she ate them all.