Easter and Spring

Javin has been wanting to blow a bubble for the longest time. He finally did it YEAH!! Practice makes perfect. Just don't really be around him while he's trying because we sometimes get spit on during the process.

This is the tree in front of our house in full bloom. The trees here have been beautiful. Just ask the million or so people who were here last week for the cherry blossom festival.

The Friday before Easter we had an easter egg party at a park with some people from the ward. The kids had tons of fun!

Here they are counting their eggs to make sure they didn't take too many. I only donated 12 per kid so that's all we could come home with.

More counting and hunting

Here are just a couple of the eggs that we died on Friday night. It was weird not having daddy here because this is usually the activity that he does with the kids. He likes to do all kind of crazy tie die ones. This year they were just plain solid colors.

Dying eggs is fun

Javin liked to draw on the eggs first and then see his design magically appear.

We had a great Easter the kids had fun at the park and at our house.

Spring and BYE BYE DAD

So today was a beautiful day and a friend of mine recently told me of this awesome park that is about 20 minutes away from our house. Since Javin is home from school and we have no dad around I figured we could kill the day by playing at the park. It is on two acres and has 4 different themed playgrounds on it. Here are the boys getting caught.

On this course they have a raceway set up and so the boys of course had to run and race.

Here they are just getting to the park and climbing. Caellum is such a great climber I've always been impressed with his skills. Javin is too of course but he has three years on Cael.

We got to the park and there were so many people there that we actually had to park across the street and up quite a way even to get there. I'll be excited to take them back when it's not Spring Break and see if there are fewer kids but they had tons of fun and want to go back tomorrow.

Here we have Ryan's last day here. We took him to the airport and found out that since the flight was run by the Air Force we could get family boarding passes to go through security and to the gate with him. IT was nice that we got to see him up until the end.

My parents were here because they had already scheduled time to come and see us for Spring Break and it was nice to have their help with the kids at the airport.

I took the opportunity to take some flattering picture right after security. When we were getting Ryan's seat assignment it was just he and I at the airport and the lady looked at my humongous belly and then asked Ryan how long he was going to be gone. When he said 4 months you should have seen the look she gave him. If looks could kill he wouldn't be here anymore. HAHA I said you know maybe on my first child I'd be a little upset but by the third it's kind of like just make sure you are there at the hospital I can handle the rest by myself. Anyway, it made me laugh.

You can't tell that the boys had had a long day and were pretty much done by this point can you.?!? As the plane started to board it called for officers first followed by anyone ranked E-15 or higher and then they started boarding by row number. Ryan was in row 22 and they started with 1-14 and 35 and above. This took a long time and we were joking how Ryan was going to be the last person on the plane. When they called for the next number they called for 14-20. Next came, 25 and higher. We all started laughing because Ryan literally ended up as the last person on the plane.

Here he is getting on. He told me he wasn't going to turn around but I got a pretty good one anyway. We'll sure miss him but we've already talked to him on the web cam twice and once on the phone. Good thing for modern technology.

Here's a shot of Grandpa and the kids during Spring Break

Here are a couple of shots from the National Zoo a couple of weekends ago. We knew this was going to be the last warm Saturday before Ryan left so we headed to the metro and downtown to see the National Zoo with Grandma and Papa Thompson. The kids had a ton of fun. Caellum has always loved zoos and Javin not so much but this time he stopped to read every sign and was excited to find the male and female of each thing he spotted. It was lots of fun followed by a yummy dinner of Thai food.

We've had a great time since the weather has started warming up and can't wait to play some more.

Happy Green Patrick's Day

Cael helped me pick out decorations for our Green Patrick"s day party (that's what he kept calling it) We made split pea soup, had green salad with green veggies, I got lime sherbet and sprite and then sugar cookies and gold treasures.

I found these ties at Target and they both insisted on wearing them all day long. Every body made a fuss over Cael all day and Javin said that all the kids at school liked it. Hope everybody had a fun holiday..

Chuck E Cheese

So, since Ryan was off so many days because of the snow he has been having to work weekends to make up for it. We decided since he'd be working all weekend that we would take the kids to Chuck E Cheese's for dinner and fun on Saturday after he got done with work. I forgot my camera (of course) but when Caellum won the jackpot on a game Ryan got his phone out for these pictures.

He won like 105 tickets from the jackpot which was awesome when it came time to get prizes later.

The kids had tons of fun and we were glad that Ryan and grandma and papa could come with us. Cael not only loved getting the tickets he also loved feeding them to the ticket counter machine.

SNOWMAGEDDON 2010

So over this last weekend we got over three feet of snow. We finally dug ourselves out and then came round two of the blizzard. Tuesday and Wednesday brought another 8 inches. The roads were horrible. They canceled school all week. Ryan hasn't been to work since last week and the metro is shut down and so is the federal government. CRAZY!! We took advandtage of the beautiful sun today to dig ourselves out. AGAIN> The boys love playing in the snow!!!

AND Eating it!!

These are the icicles on our neighbors house. Crazy.

Did you know I have a deck. Also, check out my garbage can buried under three feet of snow. Needless to say I had to have Ryan dig this out too so that I can use it this week.

This tree usually has a trunk!! This is where we have been having to pile some of the snow when we dig our cars out.

It's been a fun crazy week. It's been nice to have Ryan and Javin home with us all week long especially if Ryan ends up leaving us at the end of the month. The boys sure do love to wrestle with him.

EVEN MORE SNOW!!!

So, the federal government has shut down. Schools are canceled. The metro is closed and busses aren't running. Even our 4 wheel drive SUB got stuck in the snow in our neighborhood. Where the heck do we live. Alaska. NOPE Virginia. Crazy!!! Over the weekend we got about 30 inches of snow. Which is really pretty and tons of fun, but not when the place you live isn't used to getting snow. They were prediciting that it would take them 6 days to clear the main roads and the metro is completely covered in snow. Ryan and Javin both had yesterday off and it hadn't snowed since Saturday night so we ventured out to get out of the house. The sun was shining, all of the snow on and around our cars was gone, we have a vehicle with 4 wheel drive we can totally get around right?!? WRONG> Our neighborhood hasn't been cleared and there is only enough room on the road for one car at a time. After going to lunch and the grocery store we were on our way home and another car was coming so Ryan scooted over to let him pass and then we were stuck. WE were lucky that a tractor came by after about 10 minutes and helped dig us out. The roads were really bad and after being out and about I can totally see why school buses aren't out in this. The real cincher is that today and tomorrow we are supposed to get another 10 to 12 inches more. They haven't even cleared off the other storm yet. Crazy snow. At this rate with all of the snow days the kids last day of school which is already June 22 is going to be even longer into the summer. Fun to not have to go to school now, sad that we aren't really going to be getting a summer break. Ryan has loved being home and not going to work. He is home again today. So, we are going to go to Dicks Sporting Goods today to see if we can track down some tubes because apparently the golf course that we live on has some amazing tubing hills. I love getting all of this snow it's beautiful and fun but too bad they don't really have the resources to clear it all. The state spent their entire snow removal budget for the year on the storm back in December. Luckily we weren't in the areas that have been without power since Friday. So glad to have power. Also, I still haven't found my camera since our trip to Utah at Christmas so if I find it soon I'll take some pictures of all of this crazy snow!!!

NEW DUE DATE

NEW DUE DATE:

So I went to my 21 week ultrasound on the 18th and the Dr's at the hospital were concerned because the baby was small for 21 weeks but great size for 20 weeks. So, they decided I should do another ultrasound to make sure that the baby is growing. I called my DR for a second opinion and he said that the ultrasound we did at 8 weeks actually projected a due date of June 4th so he thinks the baby is growing just fine and pushed my due date back a week. We will continue to measure and if it looks like I'm small in my measurements then we might do another ultrasound. So, now, the due date is June 4th instead of May 29th. Other than that things are going great.

Javin just started a sports and games class on Monday's which he loves and Cael is of course three and full of temper tantrums which are awesome. Good thing he's so cute and fun when he isn't mad.