Ryan’s Birthday Weekend

After a great first few days of the week, our celebrations of Ryan’s 9th birthday continued through the weekend. He didn’t have a birthday party this year, but I told him he could invite a couple of friends to go bowling. He had such a hard time deciding who to invite! He went back and forth several times on who to invite, and finally decided on three friends from school. Then, two days before, he announced to another friend he was talking with that he could take him bowling! We had to have a little discussion about social etiquette.

We picked his friends up right after school, and they had a great time bowling together. Papa went with us to help me with “crowd control.” As the kids were finishing the game, three of them ended up just over 100, and two just below. I told them about a comment President Obama made about bowling 100. The boys were excited that they had bowled better than the President! The first boy we took home is the owner of Copper’s mommy. So we let all of the boys see Copper. Papa even got to hold the grand-puppy!We had a neat experience Friday evening. Dad’s cousins have been working on a lot of family names to take to the temple. They have done a lot of the temple work, along with mom and dad. Because of our schedules, Marc and I haven’t been able to join them. Friday night they were ready to do the sealings for all of them. Frances stayed home with the babies, and Marc, Mom & Dad, Dad’s cousin Karen and I went to the Bountiful Temple.

The man that did our sealings was very impressive, and obviously very intelligent. Dad knew a couple of things about him, but went home and Googled him. His name is James Mason, and here is his Wikipedia biography. Very amazing and accomplished guy!

I may have mentioned this before, but Ryan has had a crush on a girl in our neighborhood for several years. He doesn’t have non-family babysitters very often, but whenever he does, it is her. She is now 16, and he still has a crush on her. He doesn’t like me to call her his babysitter. Instead, she is his “older friend that hangs out with him” while I’m gone. So, she came and stayed with him while we went to the temple. He loved having her over for his birthday eve!

On Saturday, right on Ryan’s birthday, Marc & Frances and Alice & Claire met us at Rara & Papa’s house. We ordered Robintino’s pizza and had mint chocolate chip ice cream cake.We had fun playing with the girls and watching Ryan open his presents. Mom & I had been on the BYU campus a couple of weeks ago and stopped at the bookstore. Ryan loved his BYU basketball outfit!Ryan had a full and fun week of birthday celebrations. He is especially looking forward to the day his main birthday present (Copper) can come and live with us!

Where to begin? (In other words, exciting week!)

The last four days have been so crazy that I can’t believe it’s only been four days! I’ll try to remember everything for this update.

On Monday, April 20, Ryan’s fish Nemo died. You may remember that Brock died a couple of weeks ago. We’ve had both fish for a year, and have decided that maybe it was just “their time.” We haven’t done anything differently with the food or water, so we’re not sure what happened. Over the weekend, Nemo started spitting out his food, so we knew there was something wrong. Without going into all of the details, I did everything I could think of to help him get better. But he died about the time Ryan was going to bed on Monday night. Ryan got up and we took Nemo out to the pet cemetery and buried him in the dark (thus the absence of photos).

Tuesday was such an eventful day! I took birthday treats (doughnuts) to Ryan’s school class. His teacher gives the kids a little worksheet about themselves on 11 x 14 paper. The birthday kid fills it out, and then the teacher “interviews” the child (who is sitting on a stool at the front of the class with a microphone). Ryan LOVED the attention!After the interview, the birthday kid can choose how they want the class to sing happy birthday. Ryan didn’t have any ideas, but one of his friends (who knows he loves rugby) suggested a rugby happy birthday. So…I only took my regular camera and then could have kicked myself. That was the most hysterical thing I have ever seen! The kids would moan as they sang, and then would throw in the occasional “pow” or “whack” or “ouch” or “ohhhh” at the end of each line. So it went something like this:

(Moaning) Happy birthday to you! *whack* *oof*
Happy birthday to you! *bam* *ouch!*
Happy birthday dear Ryan! *kapow* *argh!*
Happy birthday to you! *slam!* *ohhhhh*

What made it even more hilarious was that the kids would jerk their bodies and/or fall to the floor with the various painful expressions. I should know by now to take the video camera everywhere! Oh, and after the hilarious song, Ryan's teacher said, "You all know what's next." The kids in the class all rushed Ryan and gave him merciless hugs. Again, he loved every minute of it, despite pretending not to.

Tuesday evening Ryan had another soccer game. It was considerably warmer than the last few, thank goodness! He didn’t score, but he came soooo close with this one…And a couple more of my favorites…Our most exciting event and news of the week started Tuesday after Ryan’s soccer game. We had to run some flyers around to all of my cub scouts. As we got to the home of one boy, he came running out asking if Ryan wanted to come and see the new Beagle puppies. To make a long story short, we held all of the puppies, Ryan begged for a puppy, we talked to the owners, Ryan begged more, we held more, Ryan begged more, we talked more, and Ryan begged more. We have actually been talking about getting a puppy, so I told him we’d go home and talk about getting this puppy. Well, Wednesday we put down a deposit. The puppies are only 2 ½ weeks old, so we’ll be able to bring him home around the middle of May. That will coincide nicely with the end of school. More chores to add to Ryan’s list.

Ryan decided to name the puppy Copper Rocko. Copper is a name from the mother’s line, and Rocko is the father’s name. Look…already bonding…We have a couple more fun things planned for Ryan’s birthday this weekend. I’ll post the recap of those in another couple of days.

2nd Annual "Spring in Utah" Post

For those of you not in Utah, this is the most frustrating thing about "Spring" here. As I wrote about last year, just when we've hit the 70s and the kids have started wearing shorts, we start the Utah Spring Roller Coaster.

This is what my backyard looks like right now...

And my front yard looking down the street...

And this is the forecast for the week. At least it improves.

Happy Easter!

We have had a wonderful Easter weekend!

The Easter Bunny has always visited our house bright and early Saturday morning. We have always had Saturday as the "Easter Bunny" type of day, so that we could spend Sunday thinking about the true meaning of Easter. Ryan was very pleased with his basked from the Easter Bunny this year. He even said, "Mom, I know you're the tooth fairy, but I know you're not the Easter Bunny. There's no way you could have gotten all of this stuff." What a great Easter Bunny!We spent most of Saturday at Rara & Papa's with Marc & Frances and Alice & Claire. We had a wonderful dinner, and then a fun Easter egg hunt in the backyard. Even though it was a little chilly, it stopped raining long enough for us to be outside for a while.

We had fun playing with the girls inside with the cute bunnies from Rara & Papa.Of course, we can't let a major holiday pass without dressing up the grandkids.

And an Easter/birthday picture with Rara.

Saturday evening, Ryan and I went on our "date night" to the Gateway and saw "Monsters vs. Aliens - 3D.) I'm always up for anything involving those huge and hilarious 3-D glasses. It was definitely a kids' movie (read: cheesy), but there were enough funny lines to keep parents somewhat amused. It's always fun to watch kids reaching out for things at 3-D movies, so that's also always good for a chuckle or two.

We spent Easter Sunday morning at church, and then had a nice visit with our next-door neighbors. Ryan kept them entertained by showing them everything they could do with their Nintendo DS.

We're heading to Rara & Papa's again soon for our second round of Easter celebrations. But I want to end this post with this video reminding us of the true meaning and significance of this day.

Happy Easter, everyone!

Rara’s Birthday, Cub Scout Tennis, and Ryan’s Happy Hello

We’ve had an exciting week! Ryan has been on Spring Break, so we’ve tried to fit in some fun things between my meetings and calls with students.

Wednesday we had a fun den meeting. One of our former Wolf/Bear scouts needed to do a Service Learning project for school. He asked if he could teach tennis to the boys and help them earn the tennis belt loop. We had a few boys who were out of town, so we only had five of our scouts there, but they had a great time.

Wednesday was Rara’s birthday. We were able to go out to dinner at Texas Roadhouse to celebrate. We had a great dinner and a fun time, but didn’t get Rara on the birthday saddle. :( As we were leaving, we ran into the Redds, who were our next-door-neighbors during all of my growing up years. It was fun to see them and talk for a few minutes. We hope Rara had a fun birthday week. She spent plenty of time with all of her grandkids, and many of her gifts revolved around her grandkids, so we know she enjoyed it.

Ryan requested the “Ryan’s Happy Hello” title, since it is the follow-up to our “Ryan’s Painful Goodbye” post. For Rara’s birthday dinner on Wednesday, we were in the same shopping center as Petco. As we left the restaurant, we decided to go over to Petco to look at the fish. We found a beautiful black and white and orange goldfish that kept coming over to us every time we approached the tank. We decided that he was trying to tell us something. He needed to be a part of our family. We got him. His name is Rex, and luckily he is doing very well and gets along well with Nemo.

Girls' Weekend

April 30, 2003 was one of the happiest days of my life. It was the day that I finally got a sister, after a lifetime of wishing for one!This past weekend was a lot of fun. Frances invited all of her sisters to her house for a "girls' weekend." We each chose a meal to prepare, and I chose Saturday lunch. I made a chicken salad croissant wreath. It turned out so great! Too bad we all dug into it before I thought about taking a picture.We had a lot of fun playing with the babies (Rachael brought her baby, Aaron, who is just a little bit older than Alice & Claire), talking, and watching General Conference.I also had a last minute idea of something fun we could do together, and pulled everything together quickly. Over the years, I have enjoyed making paper bag albums and mini albums in Altoid tins. I took up all of the supplies for everyone to make one of each. Here are pictures of us working on them, as well as one of the finished products.

Rachael's dinner on Saturday night was so yummy! She made whole wheat pitas with falafels and tzatziki sauce. (Thanks to the Anderson girls for also creating the fun recipe blog!)

Even though the valley only got a little bit of snow, the canyon got over a foot (added to a couple of feet already there)!

Thanks to my sister and her sisters (and mom) for the fun weekend! (And for sharing the pictures!)