Happy Five Years to Brian and Karalee!

We have been married five years today. I might have written something long and sentimental, but Brian is taking me out tonight and I have to get things ready, so I will post a wedding picture and say it has been wonderful.

Easter Post-Finally

This Easter post is a little late because we were moving and then I had to find the camera to get some pictures off of it. Some of these pictures (the good ones) are taken by my friend Hayden, they probably turn out better for her because A) she is a professional, or B) when she uses her giant camera Joshua doesn't recognize it as a camera and so she can get a lot closer than I ever could without him being distracted.

We thought we would be moving Easter weekend so I wanted to do one more fun relaxing thing before it got really hectic, so the Monday before Easter Joshua and I went over to Hayden's and decorated Easter eggs. It went much better than either of us expected and the kids had a really good time.

Here is our setup

Joshua loved to drop the eggs into the cups. It was hard to slow him down. Here I am trying to clean up some of his splashes. But even with all of that no dye hit the floor and there was only one spill.

Joshua also loved putting the eggs in the drying area, and rearranging the eggs.

The kit came with stickers which was great for the little guys.

Look at how busy and concentrating they are.

Here is all of us together. Notice that we are all wearing dark clothing, that was preemptive mommy planning against stains

And the finished product; I thought the colors came out beautifully. Well we didn't end up moving Easter weekend so the Easter bunny was able to find us. Joshua made out really well since last year we were moving and didn't do anything for Easter.

Saturday morning we had an egg hunt in our yard. We invited Ayana over because there were so many eggs. I had to laugh because while we were waiting for the Easter bunny to come I took Joshua out and he got wet and dirty, he is all boy. Here he is tromping around. But Ayana comes over dressed so beautifully for spring, she is all girl.

Joshua had a blast finding eggs. But we had to work on keeping him from getting too distracted by what was in the eggs.

He would just stop and try to open them and eat the stuff inside.

But he still came out pretty well.

Sunday morning the Easter bunny left Joshua some goodies He got finger paints, a chocolate bunny, a book with pictures of Jesus in it, Where the Wild Things Are, and a CD with songs from his favorite movie about Pooh Bear and a Heffalump.

The next morning there was an egg hunt at the Yund's yard. Again Ayana was dressed up like a princess.

Joshua just wanted to ride in Ayana's car, so we pushed him around to get his eggs. What a spoiled kid.

The kids were really good and shared the eggs.

And they got along really well.

Then it got really cute.

It was a wonderful Easter weekend with the beautiful weather and general conference. I ended up being glad we waited a week to move so we could really enjoy the weekend.

General Conference Weekend

It has been interesting figuring out how to watch General Conference ever since Joshua has been born. Part of the struggle has been we moved away from Utah and could not watch conference on the TV. We can get it on the Internet, but there has been a learning curve as to how to get that to work. We have learned that it works better if you open the window earlier than later. There has also been the issue of how to keep the computer close enough to hear the speakers but away from Joshua. This has become more of a struggle as he gets more and more mobile.

This time we were able to inherit some old computer speakers, then we put the computer out of reach, hooked in the speakers and whola, much easier conference watching. We have also learned how to listen to conference with a child demanding attention. Before Joshua we could take notes if we wanted or do something mindless to keep our hands busy, but to keep us awake. With Joshua there is no fear of falling asleep. Joshua was surprisingly good, but we went through a lot of stickers.

It was fun to watch Joshua with conference. He loved the music. After each hymn he would ask for more. He got really upset one session after the intermediate hymn when he realized that there wouldn't be another song for a while. It also took Joshua a while to realize that they were actually praying on the computer. He looked at Brian and me like we were crazy when we would fold our arms and bow our heads for someone saying a prayer on a screen. We also marked the end of each speaker with a resounding "AMEN", to kind of get Joshua interested in paying attention. It must of worked, there was once or twice when I was busy in the kitchen and missed the end of the talk, and I would hear Joshua yell "AMEN", and sure enough there was a new speaker going.

I loved that there were many talks about teaching your children about the gospel, and how much they pick up at such an early age. Joshua even proved their point. Brian had to leave for the Priesthood Session before we had family prayer. When we got to the point in Joshua's routine that it was time for prayer, he realized that Brian was missing, and Joshua started pointing at the front door and was almost in tears and started saying "Prayer, prayer, prayer". He knew his daddy was part of the family and should be there for family prayer. Sometimes it seems like kids won't notice the small things you do, especially when normally it is hard for us to get Joshua to sit down for prayer, but he obviously does, and little reminders like that help my resolve to be consistent with things like prayer and scripture study. I am thankful there will be a conference edition of the Ensign though, because I know I missed a lot of the talks.

I love conference weekend, and it was a wonderful way to spend Easter weekend.