The Grad and His Cheering Section

Well it was amazing watching my husband walk. I had senioritis just as bad as he did this last week, but now we are through and I am trying to get ready for the big move. I feel like the past five years have flown by. Here are some fun pictures of Graduation and the after party.






Here are some of our after party.

The Easter Bunny and A Tea Party

Sorry to all of you who get these by e-mail but I have two posts I need to do. So I will just combine our Easter fun and our Tea Party Rally in one.

First I would like to wish my Aunt Lynette a Happy Happy Birthday! I heard yo had a wonderful party. I am sorry I didn't get to come and help. I would have gladly sacrificed my finger to make your party hat. I will keep your age to myself but I just want to say that you don't look a day over 20. And to Aunt Charlotte I totally agree Joshua is the happiest baby ever. I was just looking at how many pictures I have of him smiling. Sometimes I will catch him smiling at me when I am not even looking at him. God knew to send me a good one.

We had a great Easter. Chris's mom and dad flew up from Texas for his brother's graduation. For all those wondering why they didn't come for Chris's graduation, Chris and Patrick were graduating two weeks apart and they couldn't afford to stay that long away from their jobs and since Chris has his own cheering section and Patrick is still single we were glad to have them for Easter. We had a blast. Saturday we went to the egg hunt at Macey's and they got to meet the Easter Bunny.


That night we colored eggs. Uncle Isaiah was really excited about this. It had been years since he had colored eggs.

Uncle Patrick and his new girlfriend were too busy slobbering all over each other and Granddad was snoozing, but Nona and mom and dad joined in.



It was fun and we had the prettiest eggs I have ever seen.

Then sunday morning we woke them up before church to find their baskets. Benny found his pretty fast. Caleb didn't care about finding his. Once he saw Benny's candy that was all he wanted.


After church we had our egg hunt. It was cute to finally have a kid who understood what he was supposed to be doing.








Later that week we did our civic duty and attended our local Tea Party in order to protest these bailouts and stimulus packages. It felt good to be actively doing something that we as a family believe strongly in. We made it our Family Home Evening and Benny must have taken in more than we thought; cause when we got there he jumped out of the car with his sign and started yelling "NO MORE TAXES". I had to prompt him a little when I started recording but I swear he was doing it on his own before I turned the camera on. All the people walking to the rally with us were cheering him on. That had to be one of my proudest moments as a mother. Maybe he'll be the next Rick Perry. I can only dream. Caleb also had fun holding a sign for us. And yes it was snowing and freezing and we did drag our kids out to show them the importance of standing up for what you believe in no matter the cost or risk.



Here is our double stroller decked out too

and I just thought this kid was awesome. In case you can't see it well that is supposed to be a ball and chain around his ankle.

Senior Night at BYU

My husband is graduating Cum Laud from BYU this semester. I am so proud of him. All his hard work has really paid off. Last night we were talking about it and I told Chris I feel like his work is kinda getting pushed off tp the side since this isn't the end of the school road for us but he really does deserve to feel a great accomplishment has been made. MY HUSBAND HAS A BACHELORS IN CHEMISTRY!!! Any how, BYU always throws a big carnival for the grads. It was so much fun this year. We ran into a few people some of you guys might recognize that were also Graduating.
Patrick and Dixie Lewis: Patrick is Graduating, but got excepted to Grad school here so they will be staying a little longer in Wymount and they are expecting their first baby in June.

Nissa and Travis Brown: These busy bees are both graduating this semester and are headed to Indiana (I think) where Travis will be working on a Ph.D.

We talked them all into bowling with us and it was lots of fun. Benny and Ellie had a blast rolling the ball down the ramp and Caleb had fun roaming down everyone else's lanes.




Chris was really proud of his only strike.

Here is Joshua just looking cute in the black lights

and with a whopping score of 100 I was the champ. I know I have some mad bowling skills.

To Do List

Okay Tia had a great idea. She suggested I make a list of everything I want to do before I leave Utah. I really hadn't thought about it, but now it has been on my mind all day. There are so many things I can't list them all but I will list the ones I can most likely accomplish.

1. Go camping with my family
2. Eat at Cafe Rio
3. Hike to Timp cave agian ( hopefully it will be easier since I am not eight months pregnant).
   
4. Hike to the Y
5. Go to a party at Amy's ;0)
   
6. Walk a couple of 5k's
7. Go through the SLC temple with my husband. (Any angels volunteering to babysit 3 adorable boys?)
8. Go to the SLC zoo
9. Visit "This is the Place"
10. Find time to Ramble through the church graveyard.
11. Catch another Comedy Sportz show
12. Go to Music and the Spoken Word
13. Find my brother a a place to live in A.F.
14. Visit Antelope Island
15. Eat some Ruby River pasta
16. Go to the gym atleast three times aweek
17. Eat at the Moa on BYU campus
18. Go to Jump On It one more time
19. Visit Moab again and Canyon Lands
20. See the fireworks from the stadium on the fourth of July

Okay so anyone who would like to participate in any of these with me call and set a date and if you would like to take me to one of the listed places to eat I will except. I will post updates as I get these things done. Hopefully all twenty but will see. Moab is kind of a stretch.

Angels on Earth

Wow what an awesome conference this weekend. First I would like to offer much praise and gratitude to my neighbor Seralina for watching my children so me and Chris could attend a session of conference. This was our last conference here in Utah and we have never been able to attend a live session so we really wanted to go since who knows when we will be back in Utah. After many phone calls searching for someone who was willing to sacrifice there peace and quit my neighbor gladly said she would. She is a single mom raising to kids on her own and I know that she probably would have really enjoyed the peaceful sunday afternoon, but she took my kids with a smile. I am really going to miss her as a neighbor. She is almost always willing to bend over backwards to help someone. Chris and I didn't have tickets but we went up early and waited in the standby line and asked around. We were able to find two tickets and got to enjoy the sunday afternoon session from the upper terrace. What an experience. The choir is so amazing live. I have always enjoyed listening to them, but wow how much better it is in person. And what an ending to end with "Till We meet again". I hope everyone out there with kids will some day find there Angel On Earth and have a chance to go to a live session. Oh and the protesters were pretty cool too. The news made it look like there was this big crowed but really I only saw like ten and they were hilarious. Especially the one dressed as a Devil shaking the lightning can. I thought people were excellent examples by just ignoring them and going on there way. Plus most of the stuff they shouted was silly and very misinformed. I can't really pick a favorite talk but there were definitely some who stood out and were just what I needed to hear. The first one to stand out was Elder Hales talk in the Saturday morning session. I told Chris that we really needed to watch all of conference cause I knew someone was going to speak straight to us. we have been so stressed lately trying to figure out where we are going to find the money to make it through med school. Elder Hales spoke on keeping a family budget and overcoming our unnecessary wants. He also talked about having Faith that the lord will be there. Also President Eyring's talk about not letting fear and doubt weaken your faith really helped. Sometimes we just want to get angry and blame others for our troubles, but we need to stand on our own two feet and again have faith the lord will provide a away. I loved Presidents Monsons overall push for faith and overcoming weakness'. Dallin Oaks reminded us to work hard on missionary work, something that me and Chris hope to be able to do in Temple for the next four years. Overall a very fulfilling weekend.

One Very Expensive Bean

This week was quite an adventure. On Wednesday I was nursing the baby, and getting ready to put the kids down for a nap while Benny and Caleb watched a show. All of a sudden Benny starts crying and says "Mommy will you get this bean out of my ear". That's right everyone my scientist of a son decided to experiment with a black eyed pea and the size of the hole in his ear. His Hypothesis was that the bean would come right out. Unfortunately his result was that it was stuck and so far down that we had to have it removed while he was asleep. We first went to the E. R. where a very unfortunate looking resident tried for aout an hour to get it out. I guess Medical school doesn't always produce the best results. Some of her ideas were to squirt water in his ear which only caused it to get irritated. The next brilliant idea was for him to jump up and down with his head to the side in order to I guess bounce it out!! Even if a three year old even had the motor skills to do this it still made my mouth drop when they asked him to do it. Benny was extremely patient while they had their little guessing game till they finally gave up and sent me to an ENT doctor who took one look and said for sure he would need to be put to sleep to keep from damaging his ear drum. So after a long night of benny not being able to sleep and an even longer morning of him asking for something to eat, we wne to the surgical center. He was so brave. while we were waiting this very kind elderly couple handed him the biggest pink frosted sugar cookie I had ever seen. I told him he had to wait till after to eat it. Boy did he watch that cookie. He carried it every where. Care fully putting it down so that it would not break. He made sure several times that I promised not to eat it while he was asleep, (like he can't trust me with a delicious giant cookie). The couple got great joy in watching him carry his cookie around. Unfortunately my camera battery was dead, so I didn't get a picture of him in his cute night gown. He was so brave. When they came to get him he just marched right back there to see the big lights. They came out about five minutes later and the doctor told me that everything went well and they actually had to cut the bean in half to get it out. Well he was all a chatter as soon as he woke up talking about the bright spider-man lights and that the doctor put a mask on him and laid him on a rolling bed and then he woke up and the bean was out. It was pretty cute and all the nurses were all over him. I think he got a little to much attention. Hopefully it doesn't make him want to try it again. When I ask him if he is going to stick things in his ears or nose again, he says " NO mommy and I am going to make sure Caleb and Joshua don't either." what a good big brother. Well I guess that is my first lesson in having boys. I hear girls don't do this as much. Any way I did get a picture of him proudly displaying his bean. What will be his next experiment. I can only wait to see.