Shan gave birth to Trysten/Zadek (to be determined) on 27 May 2010 at 1:30pm. He is 22 inches and 8 lbs. 11 oz. Both he and Shan are doing great.

He has been a little reticent to show his eyes, but they are there. Even more remarkable is that he has hair!!

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.