May 31

Last weekend we went to San Diego for Memorial Day. We stayed at Kristal's and my mom and Dustin came and met us there. We had a great time! We went to the beach on Saturday and Monday, which the kids all just loved! Then Kristal had plenty of plans for us to go do when we weren't at the beach. They had the Cow Parade in La Jolla right now. They decorated 40 life-sized fiberglass cows and put them all around the downtown area. We had a great time walking around finding the cows. I think we found 23 of them. We had a picnic at the park and saw the seals and went in a cave. And we rode the ferry to Coronado Island to get ice cream. It was a great little vacation.

Things with Aaron have been going really well! Last week, before San Diego, was a really hard week. Aaron was constantly tantruming and it was wearing me out. So on Wednesday Bob gave me a blessing and I know that really helped. Also that book I got from the library had a lot of good ideas. He did so well in San Diego, even my mom noticed the difference. He still has tantrums, but not nearly as bad as it was. I think we're making a lot of progress.

This is what the blessing said:

• I'll be blessed with patience and strength in working with Aaron
• I should make the home comforting and conducive to opportunities to teach
• I should listen to the Spirit to teach Aaron spiritual and temporal things
• Find time to be with Aaron
• He will learn the importance of love and the gospel
• Progress will be made
• We have four wonderful children with different strengths and personalities. We should celebrate this.
• My health will continue to improve

This is the last week of school. We are all excited for the break. I've been working on making plans to entertain the kids over the summer so they don't get bored and fight or watch tv too much. Some of the ideas I have so far are a movie night once a week, a cooking day where the kids pick something to make and we make it together, a craft day, a pool day where we visit friends with pools. And I'm getting them signed up in a couple of summer reading programs and they'll have three weeks of swimming lessons.