We haven't had much going on lately. I tried to upload a video of the kids singing to Grandpa C for his birthday, but although it's uploaded on YouTube, it doesn't show up in blogger when I look at my youtube videos. Annoying.

Other things we've been up to:

We hosted two BYU folk dancers last week. That means they slept in our house, ate breakfast, and left. Two nights. Not bad. They were nice guys. Hosting also meant that we got two free tickets to their show. Dan was dying to go, but Gretchen won the arm wrestle, so she got the ticket. It was a really great show! Here's a picture of us with one of the dancers. Please note how amazing she looks after dancing for 2.5 hours and how pasty and tired I look after just watching. Yikes.

Here's the fam eating breakfast on a Saturday morning surrounded by...

ROCKWALL HOLDS. Yes, Dan is building a rockwall in our crawl space. He'll be done soon. Until then, here's a picture of what it looks like in there so far. It's not very tall, but because of the angle, it's definitely going to be challenging.

He's going to do that back wall, too.

We had K&G over for Mother's Day.

Our pomegranate tree has one fruit on it! Hey, one is better than none. We'll see if it hangs on long enough to ripen this fall.

Sam's birthday is Friday. He's been counting down the days for about two weeks. He sure is a cute kid. He wants an Iron Man cake. Not sure how I'm going to pull that one off. He's trickier than he looks. Tune in later this week to see if I succeed.

Trampoline match-up

Carter: 1
Sam: 0

And please forgive the smoothie 'stache.

Our week

I love my kids! Can't believe how much they grow in a year.

Last Mother's Day:

 This year:

Poor Afton had a major cold/runny nose yesterday. Dan took her home from church after Sacrament meeting. She picked out the turtleneck.

Earlier this week, Sam came down with a major case of hives. I'd never seen hives before so I was freaking out. At one point his entire body was covered in big welts. Dan calmed me down and said they'd probably pass in a few days. He was right. I also discovered that it's hard to take a good picture of hives. Can you see them?

Dan and I went on a date of Friday to see The Avengers. I give it 8.5/10. I don't know about Dan.

This weekend Dan worked on his secret project a lot and we had a nice Mother's Day. I'm lucky to be a mom to two sweet kids and a wife to such a great husband. I'm also grateful to have an amazing mom for an example.

Good, good, good, good intentions...

I thought I would be a great mom this week and take the kids strawberry picking one morning. It was only 30 minutes away, but Sam asked if we were almost there about 5 times. It was a nice little establishment. The owner explained that the strawberries were almost all gone but I might be able to find some over near the dumpster. I'm guess most other people didn't think to start by the dumpster...

We grabbed our buckets and got to picking. Sam picked about two before he said he had to use the bathroom. We trudged back to the small store they had and asked if they had a bathroom. They didn't and told us to just "go around back." When finished, we got back to the dumpster and I started picking again. Sam said he was done and would rather play in the sand. That was fine with me. Afton was content to sit for a few minutes. That's when I snapped these pictures.

 Then I noticed that Afton, who had previously been eating strawberries I fed her, was now eating rotting strawberries off the ground.

So I firmly told her "no!" and she proceeded to cry and either leaned up against me or tried to sit in my lap for the rest of the time, which made it hard to squat and pick strawberries. I kept picking until I couldn't take the crying anymore, we paid, and she screamed until we were about 10 minutes from home.

Maybe I'll try again next year. Maybe I won't!

Lionel

I like Lionel Ritchie just fine. I especially like this song:

 I'd never seen the music video before now. It's kind of strange. But it was the 80's, afterall.

Lately I feel like I'm seeing Lionel all over the place. Is he having a revival?

We were at the park the other day and there was this:

Sorry it's fuzzy. Let's take a closer look at that doctor on the right.



Lionel.

Then today I was out when I noticed a face staring at me from the sidewalk.

I'm being haunted by the face of Lionel Richie. And I like it.

Happy birthday to me

Monday was my birthday. If I wasn't officially in the late-20s before, I sure am now! The festivities actually began on Sunday because we thought it would be easier to have Kirk, Gretchen, Carter and Wendy over on that day. So we had them (as well as Megan - a friend from church - and her two kids) over for dinner, cake, and to open a few presents.

I must mention that I had a church meeting for an hour Sunday afternoon and when I came home, I discovered Dan decorating. He did an awesome job! I don't want to take the streamers down.

Dan's cake, as usual, did NOT disappoint! "Hoppy birthday, Love Bunny!"

We had a "2" and then he added 8 candles.

I was spoiled. Gretchen and Kirk got me a paper towel holder (they hate our current one). Mom and Dad got me a polarizing filter, two recipe books, and new pots and pans!

 (In a rare act of kindness, I am sharing some of my spoils. Skittles.)

The party continued on my actual birthday. The first thing Sam said to me was "Happy birthday." I was so happy he remembered! (Dan had already left for work.) Gretchen watched the kids while I did a little shopping and then she fed me and my kids lunch. I did 6 loads of laundry, sewed a little during nap time, went to the gym, had dinner w/ the fam (red beans and rice), ate cake and opened the rest of my thoughtful gifts. It was a great day!

(Pardon my post-gym appearance.)

My handyman

As you know, Dan is a handy man. He's not really a handyman, but he's a handy man. See? So lately he thought it would be nice to finish a little crawlspace area that's off of one of our bedrooms. He's got big plans for it, but I don't want to ruin the surprise. We'll talk about that when it's all done.

For now, here are some semi-before shots. (The flooring in the middle wasn't even there at first. Pretend like it's not there.)

Well, these aren't really good at capturing the room. Sorry. You'll just have to wait and see how it looks after!

The last Easter post

Dying eggs

 Sam wouldn't touch 'em.

 Carter would.

 Little chocolate egg hunt Easter morning. (Pre-8:30 church)

Sam playing while I try to setup the tripod for a family shot. He sure is cute.

 Not very flattering of me, but I had to snuggle my little man. Then after seeing how unflattering this option was, we switched.

 What's that? You want to see a picture of me and Dan kissing? Oh. Okay. I happen to have one right here. What a coincidence!

Later, Kirk, Gretchen, Wendy, and Carter came over for dinner. We had ham, cheesy potatoes, salad, rolls, fruit salad, and cake. It was delicious. But I only got a picture of the cake. It's supposed to look like an egg in grass.

To cap off the evening, we had an egg hunt in the backyard for the kiddos. Good thing. I don't think they'd gotten enough sugar at the other 20 egg hunts we'd had!