Easter Walk

On Easter Sunday after church, we were able to go for a nature walk up a nearby canyon with Joe's cousin Ben and his family. These pictures are courtesy of his wife Jessica. We like being outdoors but haven't really done much as a family outdoors. It was fun to get out and appreciate the beauty of our surroundings. I loved the red rock especially.

The boys climbed up a ways and apparently saw a gigantic squirrel.

Here is Elizabeth trying to keep up. She loved exploring and kept wandering off.

Here's a funny picture of Natalie.

Natalie and I looking at the rock.

Elizabeth zonked out on the couch afterwards. We tried to wake her up but she wouldn't budge. She ended up sleeping until 7pm (luckily she still went to bed at a reasonable time that night).

Our Plans

I've decided that I'm going to be a better contributor to our blog. Ash has encouraged me quite a bit, but I've not made finding the time a priority. Here's to hoping I can be a little more participatory.

We're right in the middle of deciding where to go to law school for the next 3 years. We applied to 11 different schools in 11 different states, from California to New York. To date I've been accepted by 7, wait-listed by one, and rejected by one. The other two schools should be responding in the next week or two.

The most welcome news was actually our only rejection...from BYU. We were pretty sure that we wanted to go elsewhere, but the cost of BYU being so much less than most other schools, the fact that we will have to sell our house if we leave, the school's growing respectability, and other such things made staying here in Utah seem like the most reasonable thing, and perhaps what we should do. We had actually already put our house up for sale, because, again, we were pretty sure that we were going elsewhere. But, having the decision made for us so that we definitely have to move has taken a significant weight off our shoulders. We now feel fully confident with moving forward and moving on.

The four schools that are still in the running are in the Houston, Albuquerque, Sacramento, and Cleveland areas. Houston and Sacramento are the front-runners, but we'll see.

Since this is the last summer that I won't be interning for some law firm or doing some other law-related thing, we decided it would be fun to do something a little different. Richard is going out to the Flint, Michigan to install security systems, and we've actually decided to tag along. I've already had my summer-sales experience*, so I think I'll join him in being an install guy. I am not a real techy-type guy, so this will doubtless be a good experience for me. Richard has more experience in this kind of thing; I'm looking forward to being his understudy. I'm planning on having lots of fun this summer...hopefully I'll get some work done, too.

I think that's about it for now. We'll post more about future plans as things unfold.

*I honestly think being a door-to-door salesman (salesperson) is an experience that most people would gain a lot from. I know I did. There's a lot of valuable experiences separate and distinct from what one gets from door-to-door missionary work. Maybe I'll write a whole post on this subject sometime...

Easter Egg Hunt

I hope everyone had a Happy Easter yesterday. We had our egg hunt on Saturday and it was a lot of fun. It's the first year we had a hunt and Elizabeth loved finding the eggs. Natalie didn't really get the concept and mostly just held on to this green egg. (I know she looks a boy in this picture. Elizabeth had a lot more hair when she wore this outfit so she could pull it off better :)

Crawling after an egg

Elizabeth would shriek with delight when she found every egg.
Savoring the spoilsYesterday, Joe and I spoke in church about faith in Jesus Christ, specifically the Sacrament and the Resurrection (respectively). It was a great way for me to be able to celebrate the true meaning of Easter. My testimony of Jesus Christ and His Resurrection was strengthened. I'm so thankful for Him and that because of Him, death is not the end of life. We can live with those we love in heaven just as we do on earth.

Fun With Cousins

Friday night, we had a family get together with Joe's mom and two of his brothers and their families. Elizabeth loved playing with her cousins James and Joelle. It's fun to see these three together since they were all born within 10 months and are becoming good friends.

Uncle Jon entertained the kids by pretending to fall down the stairs.

They were soon doing the same thing and laughing all the way down.

We Love Daddy

Wow, I'm on a blogging roll lately. I just keep having pictures I want to post.
Sunday night was a good one for Joe. First, Elizabeth came up to him and asked him if he would be her prince. He said yes, of course, and asked her what she wanted him to do and she said "Dance with me!" He got on his knees and they danced together. It was so cute for me to watch.

Then, when Joe and I were heading to bed, we went in to check on the girls. Natalie woke up when we went in and was being so cute. Joe wanted to bring her into bed with us for a little bit but I was resisting it thinking it was too late and we all needed our sleep. How I eat my words sometimes. He ended up bringing her in and for some reason all she wanted to do was cuddle with him. She NEVER does this so it was an especially rare treat. And, she even transferred to me and cuddled with me for awhile. It was one of those moments for me when I felt so much love for the little person in my arms that it almost hurt. And I cried. Of course. I always cry :).

How thankful I am for a husband who truly cherishes me and our children. We love him even more for it! That look on Natalie's face says it all.

Music classes, Chinese Jumprope, food antics and other random pictures

I signed the girls up for music and movement classes through the community and we had our final classes last week. Joe was able to come so we could get some pictures.

Natalie loved the classes.

Here is the teacher doing some rhythym games on Natalie's foot.

Here is Elizabeth at the beginning of the older class telling her teacher that there are "two Elizabeths in this class!" (the other one is the girl picking her nose :) Elizabeth did like the classes but didn't always participate like I was hoping.

Here is a picture of Daddy & his girls. Natalie was smiling a second before this was taken, I promise. :)

Me and Elizabeth (another shot of my new hair)

The other day I decided that I would teach Elizabeth how to play Chinese Jump-rope, a favorite pastime of mine as a kid. So, we made a rope out of rubber bands and then I searched the internet hoping for a refresher course on all of the moves. I found some of them but not all. Does anyone remember all of them?

Elizabeth loved just jumping over the ropes and even did the out-in move.
Natalie wasn't too interested and instead loved to look at this wedding picture of Joe and I and say "Da!" (No mention of Mommy)

This is me doing the scissor move. Look at that air! :)The other day, Natalie absolutely refused to eat the food on her tray for dinner. After she was throwing her food, we took the tray off and put it on the table. She managed to reach her food and suddenly found it irresistible. So, we scooted her closer and she ate her entire dinner this way! Crazy kid...

Another night, we were eating lasagna and Elizabeth all of the sudden held up a piece of noodle and said "Look, Mom, a 4!" and it was indeed a four. She loves finding numbers and letters on things and in her food and it always makes me smile.

It's gone!

I finally did it...I got my hair cut. I didn't even really think about what I was doing, which was good or I might have backed out. I like how it turned out although it's been hard getting used to my lack of hair and having some bangs again. I have had a major aversion to bangs ever since it took me about 3 years to grow my bangs out during middle school and the beginning of high school (I had so many bangs I had to split up the growing out process into two stages!). So, you can appreciate what a big decision it was for me to decide to have bangs again. Anyway, now the tricky part is figuring out how to do my hair. I'm going to copy Luci and post before and after pictures.

Before: Here's one that shows the length, even though this was taken back in November

After:

Sorry for the cheesy picture but it was the only one that turned out half-decent. I am really not good at posing for a picture all by myself. :)

Ha!

64 words

Speedtest

I only did this test to show Cindy that she wasn't really bad at typing and I ended up with a higher score! :) Sorry Cindy. I am sure you would beat me with more practice, though, since I really do just have a refined "hunt and peck" style of typing. I only type with my pointer finger on my left hand and the first 3 fingers of my right hand. Yes! This makes me feel good! :)

Picture Catch-up

I've gotten behind on posting pictures so here's a lot of them. First, here's a quick update on the girls.

Natalie just turned 15 months and is still not walking. It might be soon but I thought that awhile ago, too. She is learning new words left and right, though, including "Elmo", "apple", "bye-bye" and my favorite "ga-girl" (my girl). This is from the song "My Girl" which has become Elizabeth & Natalie's new favorite song (with only slight encouragement from myself). I was trained to love Motown when I was young so why not continue the tradition? It's so cute to hear Natalie sing along. She is also starting to really love reading and will find a book and crawl over to us while dragging it so we'll read it to her.

Elizabeth is doing great. She has completely grown out of pull-ups and has stayed dry at night for about 3 weeks now. She's on a good stretch right now which I think is mostly due to the fact that I have been really trying hard to just relax and not take every bad thing she does so personally. She can definitely sense when I'm frustrated or angry and feeds off of it. Anyway, I'm sure we'll hit another challenge with her soon but it's nice to enjoy the good days. She really is a good girl.

Elizabeth making faces and being her cute self.

Natalie went through a phase where she had to have this ring of connector things around her neck and if you tried to take them off she'd cry. It was funny to see the proud look she'd get when she'd have them on. I guess she's already into jewelry. :)

We've been swapping babysitting with some neighbor friends and Elizabeth enjoyed playing with her friend Tyler.

What was fun for me to see was how cute Elizabeth was with Allen (shown below). She kept coming up to him and bringing him toys and calling him "Little Buddy". I think that she really wants a brother. She's always talking about there being a baby boy in her tummy and coming up with different names for him. Then, today she got to play with her friend Jared at the McDonald's playplace and kept calling him her brother and telling other kids to "be nice to my brother". She is already a great big sister to Natalie and it's going to be fun to watch her with our future children, too.

This past weekend we got to go to our niece Hallie's baptism. I managed to get a few pictures from the get-together afterwards.

Randon walking

Elizabeth and Joelle pretending to take pictures of each other with a play cell phone. Are they children of the 21st century or what?

Matt & Elizabeth

Natalie mooching off Uncle Tom (who is too cool to look at the camera; this is my way of getting back :)

Richard and Joe also refusing to let me take a decent picture. In all fairness, Richard had worked a graveyard the night before. What's Joe's excuse? ;)
Thank you Jaime for actually smiling!

We had a great time being with everyone for the occasion. Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures of Hallie because she ran off to play but she looked beautiful and we were all very proud of her.