Yellowstone 2013

At the beginning of May, mom came out to help with Erin's baby. She got here early so she could come up and visit before the baby was born. Hazel made an early arrival, but we still managed to skip church and get in a visit to Yellowstone. We love visiting Yellowstone since we are so (relatively) close! That is something we will definitely miss if when we move. (I figured out the "strikethrough" feature, can you tell?)

Sunday, May 5th, 2013

Not zoomed in! 

All tuckered out... awww

The dinosaur poop thing. 

Old Faithful

Artist's Paint Pots

My Birthday 2013

On Monday morning, I got up, took a shower, and went to get dressed. I heard Charlie and Chad in the other room, so I snuck in to say hello, only to find Charlie covered in barf. Chad had to go down to Pocatello to take a test for employment with the Post Office, and Chad's parents were supposed to come over and watch Charlie. I decided to stay home since he was sick. It didn't take a lot of convincing.

So. After going to school to set up some sub plans, I spent the morning snuggling Charlie, reading a book, taking a nap, and cleaning up the yard a little bit. In the afternoon when Chad got home, we went for a bike ride to get some ice cream,

played at the park, and then went to an early dinner at Applebee's with Chad's parents. We came home, opened some presents, video chatted with Grandma, ate cake, and watched West Wing. It was a pretty fabulous day.

Birthday presents: Googley eyes & Amazon gift card (Mollie), new Easter outfit (Erin), rolling storage crate for school and cooling rack for baking (Chad's parents), piano bench cover, gift card to Applebee's and plane tickets to CT!!! (mom and dad) I also got a gardening bench/kneeling pad, a bath pillow, Scrabble Flash, Ellen stand-up DVD, and a book of my last year of blogging from Chad.

The next day I got my hair cut for the school's Locks of Love assembly. It ended up a little shorter than I would have thought, but it will grow out.

We thought Charlie was feeling better, but then he barfed yesterday morning, and filled a bunch of diapers. Then he was barfing again at 2am this morning. It has been a tiring week. This weekend is General Conference, so it will be nice to be home for a couple of days.

Before

After

Easter 2013

It seems I have neglected to post anything about Easter. We took tons of pictures, so some of them have to make the blog. At least when we get the blog made into a book, Easter will be in there, albeit out of order. Chad's parents were in town, and then Christian and Stephen joined us for dinner. We didn't get a picture of the whole group! We're bad at that....

Big cheesers while we dye Easter eggs.

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The Easter Bunny's accomplice. Shhhh!!!!

           

                     

                                                                         Chocolate bunny! 

Italian Cheesecake for dessert. Not as sweet as traditional cheesecake because it's made with ricotta. Delicious nonetheless! 

Update - Spring Break

At the beginning of the week, we went down to visit Erin and her family. We stopped in Ogden on the way down for a break from sitting in the car. We went to the Treehouse Museum and visited the Visitor's Center for the Ogden Temple (currently being rebuilt).

We even found a cookie outlet and bought sugar cookies for cheap.

Addie and Charlie had fun playing together. Addie has a sippy cup that Charlie was particularly fond of, so we picked one up at Walmart today. He loves it.

After a snag with our Priceline room for the night, (They only had a smoking room, which we refused to stay in. If it happens to you make sure to make it clear that you have a "smoking allergy") we found another room (further away, though) but had fun feeling like we were on a "real" vacation. You know you are cheap when the Days Inn feels like a luxury. Maybe someday we can afford a 3 star hotel! 

We played at the park, 

made Easy Candy, ate at Tucano's (yum!!), 

went shopping and stayed up late. It was pretty awesome. Thanks for a good time, Erin etc.! 

Today we did some spring cleaning. I cleaned out the car, and then we took it for a car wash. We got stuck in the car wash from hell when the cycle restarted about 2 minutes in. This happened 3 times before someone came and rescued us. Now, having a problem with your automatic car wash causes an interesting dilemma. You technically can't leave your car because you don't know when the water will start spraying again. So you are stuck inside the car wash. So what to do? We found our receipt and called the office as we sat in the bay. We called twice. They were apparently watching it to see what it would do. They finally let us out and directed us into their other lane for a Touchless Car Wash. About 45 minutes we finally drove away with our cleaned car. The benefits of repeating the first 2 minutes of the car wash over and over again is that the windshield and hood of the car got really clean!

We have also been talking about painting our front door for some time now. We were tired of dirty white, and wanted something to catch your attention. Well, I think we found it. No word on how long the yellow will stay, but there it is. We will definitely turn some heads. And if we say "It's the house with the yellow door", there should be little question as to which one that is.

This tulip grew through a receipt. This is just strange. 

Before

After

My Spring Break is almost over! :o( We will spend the weekend with Chad's family for Stephen's senior recital and Easter. Good luck Stephen! 

Fingerpainting

A while ago, Chad went to record a middle school band festival in Driggs/Teton/somewhere about an hour to the northeast of us.  I stayed home with Charlie and did some fingerpainting! I found a website that had a recipe for fingerpaint from flour, corn starch and food coloring, since I (correctly) assumed a lot of it would end up in Charlie's mouth.

Here are the results!

The aftermath. 

Saturday mornings

This morning Chad got Charlie out of his crib and laid him in bed next to me. Charlie laid there and drank his bottle as he woke up. About 5 minutes later, he turned his little chubby cheeks to me with a little smirk on his lips, wide-eyed, and says "Mamamamama". And then just grins.

I wish I had it on tape because it was pretty adorable.

And this is why Saturday mornings are better than any other morning of the week.

In other news, it is snowing and windy here today. I am done with snow and wind.