::grandfather clock::

Ok, so it's not a grandfather clock, obviously. But do you remember that song? "the grandfather clock was too small for the shelf, so it stood 90 years on the floor." I don't remember the middle, but the end is something like "but it stopped, short, never to go again when the old man died."
Sad!
Almost as sad as my story.
We got the above clock for our wedding, and it's accompanied us ever since, and kept time very faithfully in our many different homes.
It died this week. Just quit. And I keep looking up at the shelf to see what time it is, and I miss it!
It makes me think about how long we've been married. Almost eight years! It's not a lot compared to some of you, but it seems like a lot to me. And a lot has happened in the last eight years. It's kind of crazy to think about. I'm sure the next eight will be crazy too!

Still plugging away at the move. If you want our new address email me, or leave me your email in the comments and I'll send it to you!

::finally::

There are a couple of long awaited things happening right now.
The first? Seems spring came along, it's thinks it's here! In fact the weekend was quite warm, and we had a couple of 90 (or near 90) degree days. It's kind of crazy.
We humans aren't the only ones happy to see the sun, that's for sure.


The other thing is moving. Yes, the time has finally come and we are mired down in boxes and mess. Since it's a cross town move we're trying to do it a bit at a time. Painful, yes. But it must be done. We got the keys to our new place saturday and have been taking a car load or two down there every day since. I'll be glad when the week is over and all our stuff is finally there. We're getting a big truck for the furniture on friday and should hopefully have some missionary manpower to help us.
So if you don't hear from me much in the next couple of days that would be why.

I'm going to try to survive it all, wish me luck.
And soon, the big boy will be in a yard that's much more his size. We're all looking forward to that!

::signs pt 3 & me::

So I got a haircut. Kind of a scary one because my hair was pretty long. I ended up cutting off like 10 inches or something.
Summer is coming. My hair drove me nuts all last summer in our lovely un-airconditioned house.
Anyway, the best part of hair is the fact that it grows back, so I'm never too afraid to experiment.

This is styled by the hairdresser--she made it a little poofier than I like, but not too bad now that I look at it.

Later, badly styled by myself--I've gotten better at it since then!

Today. Wavy/curly.

I like it.

Anyway so after I came home with cut hair Max was inspired to open his own hair salon.

So now, the Petco/No Dogs, Hotel that is Max's bedroom is also a hair salon called "Getting the Biggest Hair."
And how would you look after a visit there?
Like this:

He's a cutey!

He's already thinking ahead and opened another Salon just down the street, in the bathroom.
It's called "Getting the Silliest Hair." I'm not sure how that differs from the first one, but he did work on me for a while with a comb. It was pretty fun.

Here's the bonus sign for the night. See the one there on top on the bathroom door? It means no pooping. Makes sense, right? Since it's the bathroom?
Turns out the bathroom in our house and the "hotel" (which is accessed by the elevator/front hallway) don't allow for pooping. The only bathroom that does is the one at my parents house. It's accessed by taking the elevator to the fourth floor.
Just so you all know.

::if::

I'm supposed to be working on my talk for church on sunday right now. So, naturally I'm blogging.

Anyway, a while back Max was given a special bag to bring home from school over the weekend. It had a book, a notebook and a bear in it.
He loved and adored the bear, naturally. (you'd think he didn't have 100,000 stuffed animals of his own)

Kris named the bear Herbert, and Herbert accompanied Max during all activities.

The book was called If.

Max was quite in love with it too. They had read it a couple times at school and he knew it well.
I asked him to find a couple of his favorite pages for us.

They'll give you a good taste for the book.

(If caterpillars were toothpaste) ewwwww.



(If lightening made rhinos)

(if leaves were fish) this one is my personal favorite.

The book ends with the line "If this is the end, go dream up some more."
The notebook was in the bag so that the kids could dream up their own pages. We talked about a lot of different ideas, and somehow it all came down to this one.

I'm not sure it was his best idea, but it was his favorite and that's all that matters.

(If noodles were clouds)

They each got to have the bag one other day, and that time his page ended up saying "If buses were whales." I really liked that one, and liked that Max attempted to draw a whale with a stop sign coming out the side. It was an awesome idea.

I thought this was a fun exercise that got us thinking creatively. I think we might have to get the book.

Happy Birthday Kenny

Kenny, we miss you, happy birthday.  We had a birthday cake for you (although Max kept wanting to pretend that it was his birthday).  Here are some fun pictures. 

Here we are at The North Pole amusement park in Colorado. I was probably not 7 or something.

When we lived in Orem, Kenny would come over and play video games with me on the computer.

Kenny loved Max and Parker.

::signs pt 2::

What if you're in our house and you don't know how to get out? Or where to get out?
Well, not to worry. Just look for the signs.

(front door)

(back inner door)

(back outer door)
These signs were all painstakingly made at school, and carried home, complete with masking tape. I do appreciate them, because sometimes I just forget how to get out. And if I do, think of our hospital patients, right?


This is my favorite. I especially love the fancy M. He hung this one on our bedroom door.

Max's door is somewhat of an enigma though.

Can you see the bottom sign?
His room is Petco for some reason. The bottom sign says "No Dogs"
?? Weird, right?

Unbelievably, I have more signs to share with you later. Can you wait?

::signs pt 1::

Our house is covered with signage. In case anybody gets confused or lost or doesn't realize where they are at any given time.

The other day our house was turned into a hospital.

(i wrote the word hospital on request--didn't realize that anything needed to be added to it. that's why it says hospital, max's)

There are actually two hospitals here. They're accessed by our "elevator". Our elevator is our entry way--a little mudroom between the living room and the front porch. It has a door, and so works great for an elevator.  It can take you to a bunch of places, such as my parent's house, kris's parent's house, kris's work, etc. etc.
I'm not sure which floor belongs to which hospital. But I don't worry, because I know there's somebody at the house that can set me straight.


Then, when you arrive at the hospital, signs have to be quickly shuffled depending on which hospital it is, and which dr you'd prefer to see.



Isn't it nice having so many drs around the house? I never want for medical advice, or unnecessary treatments.

Just take the elevator, you can get worked on too!

::spring::

"Don't you know what that is? It's spring fever. That is what the name of it is.
And when you've got it, you want--oh, you don't quite know what it is you DO want,
but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so!
It seems to you that mainly what you want is to get away; get away from the same old tedious things you’re so used to seeing and so tired of, and set something new. That is the idea; you want to go and be a wanderer; you want to go wandering far away to strange countries where everything is mysterious and wonderful and romantic. And if you can’t do that, you’ll put up with considerable less; you’ll go anywhere you CAN go, just so as to get away, and be thankful of the chance, too.”"
--Mark Twain

Could there be a better description of that springy feeling I think we all get? I think it's wonderful to hear something like that put into words so well.

This weekend we had some sun, and nice temps in the 60s. It's been the first time we could go outside in short sleeves all year. It was heavenly. Next week won't be near as nice, but we're getting there.

And boy does it feel good to see grass greening up and trees thinking about getting leaves. Blossoming trees and bushes are amazing. I love them.

We love you spring. Stay a while? Please?

::31::

Happy wedding anniversary today to my sweet parents.

(is this not the cutest picture ever?)

According to my calculations we're looking at 31 years.
They're fabulous, and wonderful, and I love and appreciate them. And I want them to know it.

So happy anniversary guys. I hope you have a wonderful day. You sure do deserve it!

::easter sunday::

On Easter sunday we woke up and went to church. We had a fun meeting with a lot of music. I got to play a flute piece. One of the elders recently assigned to our ward is a music major at BYU, and so it's fun to have somebody that can actually play the accompaniment parts.
Max was really excited about the contents of his easter basket, and it was fun to get to use the basket Kris mom made for us last year. It was so cute!

After church we hid the hard boiled eggs around the house for him to find. Good old Max gets all the advantage in a hunt here at home--being the only hunter! He had a good time.

And of course it was well documented.





The funniest thing was that at the end after he'd found them all he said, "now we get to see what's IN them!" I thought he was kidding. He wasn't. He was expecting candy and was very surprised to find egg inside. We live we learn, right?

In the afternoon we took a drive down to one of the beaches--about 30-40 minutes away.
The day was lovely, the sun was out, but it was SUPER cold. Really windy and cold.

The water was beautiful. Way more beautiful than it is normally. It usually looks a lot more grey.

What's he standing on?

The sky? The sand? The sea?

Gorgeous.

Max and Sul had a great time running in the sand. Sul found some other dogs to play with, and even got up the gumption to go out in the surf. It doesn't take much for Max to get out in the water of course, and so he went way too far out. His poor little snow boots aren't exactly prepared for the freezing ocean.

And he slipped off these rocks a whole bunch into the wet yucky sand after we told him not to jump on/off them anymore.



Unfortunately it was way too cold to really enjoy the beautiful day.
But Max did insist on bringing his bubbles from his easter basket. And he absolutely insisted on using them, although we thought it was way too cold.



He blew the bubbles, then he chased them down towards the surf.

And then came back for more.

When we had finally talked him into quitting bubbling, Sultan came running through with one of his new friends and bowled Max over, right into the cold, wet, soggy sand. That was our beach curtain call. It was great for Max because then instead of blaming himself for his wet pants, hands, gloves, boots, socks and etc., he could blame Sultan.

Dad carried him back to the car and we turned on the heat for the drive home.
It was a great day. So nice to spend time all together, we love it!