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!

::easter saturday::

On saturday Kris woke up early and went fishing. He didn't catch anything and he fell in a really dirty stinky river, but he didn't let it ruin his weekend.
When he got back we decorated eggs with crayons and markers.



Max was very serious about it and for some reason very motivated to get all the eggs done as quickly as possible. By special request Kris had to make a Bill Nye the Science Guy egg as well as a Guitar Hero egg. Don't ask me about the last one, he's never gotten to play it!

I love eggs decorated by little boys because they always remind me of Cammon.

Cracked and black or brown or blue. And kind of yucky and smeary. I think Max's were quite good and traditional.

After that we headed over to our friends the Nielsons to have an egg hunt. Sadly, very sadly, it was cold and really rainy. So our plans for an outdoor egg hunt were foiled. But the Nielsons have a big basement, so we had the hunt down there. It was too dark for pictures, but I did get a few good ones of egg dying before the hunt.







And some bad pictures of me eating bunny food.

I'm honestly not sure which of those photos is worse. Should we take a vote?

The kids got huge hauls of eggs, considering that everybody brought some stuffed eggs and there were only four kids old enough to hunt! It was really fun.



After this we went and had a delicious burger for dinner. I was really full. Really really full. It was a good day.