Busy doing What??

We have had some very busy weekends lately. Doing what though? Random things...birthday parties, baby showers, volleyball and soccer games, church activities, etc.

Carson is now 2! And while we did his birthday party Sunday with left over baby shower cake and toys wrapped up from around the house, we didn't have the heart to leave it at that. 2 years old is a big deal! So we bought an ice cream cake and gave him his little tykes slide from the Tyler grandparents on his actual birthday. He was a very happy camper again on Monday (and we felt like better parents!)

Dan and I went to see Star Trek for a date and really enjoyed it. I would recommend it for trekkies and non-trekkies alike.

This other pic was of Caleb's Mothers Day Tea. His teacher sure loves having him in class, although his enthusiasm has sent him to time out a couple times in the last couple weeks. He always confesses this with such gravity when he gets home, that I have to fight the smile and urge to tell him how cute he is. (He may get the wrong message)

And of course Danya's perfect scores on both FCATS--WOW! If you are not in Florida, you do not know how amazing this is. We are VERY proud of her. I don't normally like to prance the kids good grades out in front of everyone, even though we are sooo proud, but this is a necessary exception!

More about Em in the next post.

Blog for April!

I read your blogs more often than I write on my own blog, but I haven't even been doing much of that lately. I will give a quick update mostly by way of pics, which are funner to look at than words anyway!



End of March a group of us headed to Orlando for Time Out for Women, always a refreshing way to spend a couple of days. About an hour out of town I had a blow out on the turnpike!

A nice young guy rescued the 7 damsels in distress only about 5 minutes after we pulled off the highway.
We had time to get out the spare and the jack, and there he was! What a guy!

The rest of the conference went off without a hitch, with even a quick trip to the outlets.

Then we headed to North Carolina for Spring Break. We were able to spend time with Dan's sister Ruth and her girls in Wilmington.

We went to the Azalea Festival (the street fair) and the children's museum. The neighbors had puppies and the kids spent as much time there as possible playing with the puppies and all of the neighbor kids. They really had a nice time roaming the quiet neighborhood with the cousins. Carson especially enjoyed all of the dogs and cats around! I think he is my animal lover. He is here petting on of the cousin's cats.

Ruth has an awesome backyard and great neighborhood for kids! Here is Danya with the Wheelers. (Danya is in the middle)

About halfway through the trip we head over to Raleigh, about 2 hours away to visit the Wing family who moved up from Miami about a year and a half ago.

It was nice to see their new house and neighborhood. The Wings also have a nice yard with trees, like Ruth. The North Carolina lifestyle seems to be very easy and outdoors, but that could be because we were on vacation! Evelyn and I hung out and the kids kept each other busy. They introduced us to Rock Band, too bad it was the last night. I could really enjoy that game! I hope we can do it a Weston's in Seattle this summer!

The drive home was easy. We did it in two days. The kids did great and we were able to enjoy Easter afternoon with Dan before it was back to work and school!





So that almost brings us up to date. This past weekend was Danya's b-day.
We did a backyard Carnival, which was lots of fun! I had lots of help from Emily's friends from church and school and a neighbor which made things run smoothly.
The kids enjoyed earning tickets by playing the carnival games, and then turned the tickets in for food and prizes.

I think it went well. The relays didn't really go over too well, the kids were too busy with the games and the balloon pump died so no balloon animals, but it wasn't too nuts despite the 29 kids in the backyard!

The only incident was Emily fell and Dan had to take her to the Emergency room about halfway through the party. This picture was obviously before the accident. (Luckily the party never faltered thanks to the missionaries who had stopped by and especially a couple of parents from church who picked up the slack!) Emily had a big gash over her eye and ended up with 12 stitches, 4 inside to sew up the muscle and 8 outside! Yikes! She was very scared, but was brave. She is our first trip to the emergency room (if you don't count Josselyn-remember her?) and our first to get stitches. We made it 11 years, and hopefully we will go at least 11 more years!

Giving St. Patricks Day a shot!

Well, I got on to read all of your blogs, but google reader wasn't working and I am kind of hooked on that method of blog reading, SO I thought I would report on St. Patty's day in Miami.

I am not normally the type to do anything. But this year at around 10 am St. Pat's day, i thought i would give it a try. So I got some rainbow yarn and tied it to the door knob and then strung it throughout the house back and forth and around things and ended in a closet with a rather unconvincing pot of gold (luckily the kids got the idea and were appreciative). The loot consisted of tennis balls and mint oreos--I know strange, but they liked it. I was too late to get the gold chocolate coins I had wanted to get.Sorry, the pics didnt turn out, it was quite the web. Difficult to navigate around for me, since we had it up from 2 until after 5 so that everyone coming home at different times would have a turn to "follow the rainbow" to the "pot of gold".

Then we had Leprechaun Food for dinner. Which was the classic Corned Beef and Cabbage. Something I had heard of but didn't have the foggiest notion what it was. Being the Food storage person in my ward I dutifully read the regular installments of the food storage newletter from the stake and she included the recipe. I was intrigued and gave it a shot. MMMMMMM...Loved it! Well, I did, anyway...the kids wouldn't touch it because the meat was red and the cabbage looked like throw up (their words). I am sure this scenario is familiar to most of you parents. So they ate the multitudes of other green foods and drink that were on the table.

Caleb has been obsessing about Leprechauns this week and I can not convince him that they are imaginary creatures. Unfortunately all his friends are equally convinced and really egg each other on with details of what the leprechauns are up to!

Anyhow, it was fun. I may even try it again next year!

Quick note about the next two posts

Read what you want to read and I will not be offended if you read none at all or just look at the pictures. But this is the LONG report, so it is more for my official records than because I think you want to know all of this!

The Malaysia report was borrowed and modified from my Dad's on his blog, so it may seem a bit familiar to some of you!