Short Notice

So.....it's kinda short notice, but everyone is invited to this.
It's today.
Like, right now:

(For some reason it scanned black, but it's really an awesome purple)

And if you didn't get your original in the mail until today, it's because we just received them Monday and mailed them Tuesday. It's not because we secretly didn't want you to come (ahem, Chanda). Ü


I AM SOOOOOO EXCITED!!!!!

Remember that doll?

Remember that doll we bought Deacon for his birthday eleven days ago?

You know, the one that is supposed to help him prepare for his new baby sister and how to handle her delicate, fragile body?
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*


I don't think this bodes well for baby Roslyn....or baby Adelaide....(we're still trying to decide between the two names).

Conference, Birthdays, and Easter

I was trying to make Conference "extra" special and made cinnamon rolls the night before so they'd be ready first thing Sunday morning. For some reason they turned out dry. We ate one and chucked the rest. Not so special. Oh well! Conference was good. I liked the Easter talk by Elder Holland. I think that talk, along with the Easter Egg Hunt we did for Deacon confused Nathan. He really thought Easter was that Sunday. So then it became a joke all week long. If there was a commercial on TV, Nate would say, "Why are they still advertising Easter? It was last week." Ü

Deacon picked up on the egg hunt really quick. Especially since Nathan put jelly beans in each one. He would find the egg, open it, let the jelly bean hit the carpet, chuck the egg halves over his shoulder, eat the jelly bean, and look for the next egg. I was trying to get him to put the eggs in his basket, but they had served their purpose and he was moving on.

Tax season is usually our busiest time of year at work, but it has been pretty slow lately. Monday they offered to let me go home early and I was all over it. I came home unannounced, seven hours early, and the look of worry on Nathan's face was priceless. He was so sure I was laid off. So we went to Red Robin and used Nate's birthday coupon for a free hamburger. On Wednesday, I took Deac to get some birthday pictures done. He was so good, except he would not smile. He would just stare at the camera. I finally told him to show his teeth so all his pictures turned out with him having a scrunched face/closed eyes and lots of teeth (kinda like the one below). They are adorable though and I can't wait to get them back.

My birthday boys with their cheesy grins

Speaking of birthdays, Deacon's was on Friday and Nate's was on Saturday. With Deac's current basketball obessision I decided to make him a hoop ball cake. I was going to buy grape rope (licorice) to make neat little basketball lines. But I forgot to buy some, so I thought it would be no problem to mix a bunch of food coloring in the frosting to get a nice black color. I guess it was more of a gray-green because Nathan saw me frosting the cake and asked, "Why are you smearing avacado on his cake?"

When you ask him how old he is, he will say 'two' but hold up five fingers.

Nathan had to go to work right after Deacon blew out his candles, so we gave presents the next day. I went a little crazy buying Deacon's birthday presents so I split them up and used some for his Easter basket. And by "crazy" I mean I spent $12 at the dollar store Ü hahaha. Nathan says I better step it up next year and actually wrap his birthday presents :) Here his is grunting and reaching for the presents in my hand: We got him a little baby doll to prepare him for a baby sister. It came with a plastic bottle that Deacon tries to suck on (yeah, little scary to put toys in your mouth that possibly came to the dollar store via China and lead paint). He love, love, loves the golf club that came with a ball and hole. And he's a fan of the foam alphabet puzzle too. I don't know if he's just a lucky guesser, but he seems to know about ten letters pretty regularly.

Nathan told me exactly what he wanted for his birthday, so there really wasn't any surprising him. But I at least expected to be able to wrap them for him to open on his birthday. No such luck, he found the packages and opened them a week early. Behold: the sour pickles he has been searching months for. He finally found them on Ebay and I ordered them:I've never seen a more happy man

And from Amazon:

He had a wonderful time teasing his Sunday School class with the remote control fart machine. It is very realistic with five different "settings." There are a couple family reunions this summer, so I just want to give a warning to everyone.

Nathan had to work all night Friday, so I made a little birthday breakfast when he came home Saturday. Yummy crepes with cream cheese and blackberry jelly or with fresh strawberries and whip cream. Deacon kept calling them cake-cakes....I think pancakes? Not a lot of birthday pictures because we mostly video taped. That night we had strawberry shortcakes for Nathan's birthday, but I had accidentally put the whip cream back in the freezer after breakfast, so it was frozen and we were all sugared out anyway.

The Easter Bunny was a little late coming to our house. After church, and after our naps. Nathan's is The Littlest Petshop basket Ü. He got Cadbury eggs (his fave), Jerky, ring pops, a chocolate bunny, and FRUIT SNACKS. He's been eating Deacon's fruit snacks, so I finally bought him his own box. Deacon got chocolate that was covered in sports wrappers (basketball, soccer, baseball, football, etc). He loved them and took and hour to eat two because he just wanted to play with them with the wrappers on. He also got some playdough, monkey plates, and Trail Mix, aka Nuts.

"Large and in Charge"

I'm 30 weeks along and I think the end might be in sight! I was excited to find this new maternity top for $6.00! I spoke briefly with Nathan's dad this evening and told him we had a wonderful Easter feast. He immediately said, "Oh, what did Nathan make you?" Ha! I was indignant! Ü This was a meal that I actually thought out and planned and Nathan only "helped" (he usually tries to take over). So we had a wonderful honey glazed ham, good ol' Nauvoo Potatoes (aka funeral potatoes), a yummy green bean casserole, rolls, and pop. We rarely buy soda, so it was an extra treat (courtesy of the dollar store). Yeah, nothing says Easter like orange soda.

Marchness

This month Nathan sold his baby.

I was relieved that we found a sucker to buy it.

Hahaha. Ü I'm kidding. It's a good bike and we sold it to Nathan's BIL Matt. So it's still in the family and maybe Nathan can visit it every other weekend if he pays child support. I told Matt if he gets in a wreck, he better not die. Because then I would feel really, really bad (and it is all about my feelings). Then Matt said my instructions conflicted with the strict instructions his wife gave him. I believe---roughly translated---she said something to the effect that if you're gonna wreck, you better die. Because you're worth more dead than disabled. Ha..ha..ha...?

We have been having beautiful weather this month, so lots of outside time for Deacon. Nathan *cough*overachiever*cough* took Deacon to 3 different parks in 2 days! Well, I sure showed him by taking D to the library (haha) and then a new park across the street from it. A lady showed up with her kid and a dog. Deacon loved the dog, but it had no boundaries! It kept jumping on him and knocking him to the ground. I kept hinting to the lady, "My what a BIG dog" or "Wow, he sure is playful (read:hyper)." I think she finally picked up what I was putting down because then she said that it wasn't her dog, it just followed her to the park.

Before Deacon would play on the playground, he had to go around to each of the six basketball courts and point to the basket saying, "Hoo-hoo-hoop ball?" And then when he got to one that didn't have a net he said, "Uh-oh."

The only pants that are long enough for his legs are too big in the waist!

So we reached a record "heat wave" for March last Saturday and it got up to 74 degrees.....and then it promptly snowed two days later and we've been freezing ever since.

Nathan had Spring Break during the week of the ninth. We went to the open house for the new Draper Temple. The only other open house I've been to was the one for the Las Vegas Temple a looooong time ago, so I kept wondering when they were going to pass out the little booties to put over your shoes. Apparently they don't do that anymore.

We met at a church at the bottom of a hill where they showed a short video about the purpose of temples. Then they had tour buses take us up the hill to the temple. After walking around inside there were cookies and juice in a separate building with lots of beautiful paintings of Christ and different temples. Then more buses to take us back down the hill. Deacon has been obsessed with buses lately (a school bus pulls in front of our neighbor's house everyday at 8:20 and he always runs to the window to wave), so he loved his first time riding on a bus. Or maybe he just loved the cookie? There was a lady with a baby sitting next to us on the bus. She happened to have one of those really soft blankets (blee-bleeze) that Deacon LOVES, so he kept reaching over and "petting" it.

We also had the "Week of the Headband" this month (I just made that name up). We were going for a walk one Sunday afternoon, so I decided to play a joke. I grabbed one of my sweatbands and had it tight across the middle of my forehead and was sporting a wicked side ponytail. Nathan glanced up at me.....and said nothing! As we headed outside, I paused and said, "Um, are you really going to let me go out looking like this? We have to live in this neighborhood!!" He honestly didn't see a problem. I am now second guessing every outfit I've ever worn where I asked him if it looked okay.

Deacon saw the NBA insignia on the sweatband and says "hoop ball" when he wears it. He also likes to put it on our heads. Sure, he's embarrassed for himself, but not for me?Deacon's new thing is to slide down the stairs on his belly, face first. He thinks it is soooo fun. Nathan decided it would be even more fun to slide down in a sleeping bag.
Let's just say all 200+ pounds of Nate is hard to stop on a dime, so "thank goodness" the wall was there to help slow him down.
In other news, Deacon likes to eat raw butter and sleep standing up. But that's a whole other story for his blog!

Valen"trains" Weekend

Deacon recently discovered the show "Thomas and Friends" and asks for it by pointing to the TV and saying, "Choo, choo, choo?" So we ventured north to the Union Station in O-town to check out their retired train yard. We dressed him in overalls like an engineer, but it was so cold we had to bundle him in layers and the effect was lost, haha. They actually had a few trains there, including the one that brought the Olympic Cauldron to SLC back in 2002.

I was intrigued with this cork board they had inside the station because it was made out of actual corks!

He was in heaven while we were there, but cried as we drove away saying, "Choo-choo" in between tears :(
***As I write this he is sitting on my lap all grins saying choo-choo, over and over.....


On Saturday I had a little Valentine surprise for Nathan. I'd been hiding a bottle of Martinelli's in the back of the fridge and made some chocolate dipped strawberries.

Then he surprised me with this hilarious card he made. Let's just say he has officially used more of my scrapbook supplies than I have Ü. I just finished reading Beneath a Marble Sky and had given him a breakdown of the story and how it centers around the Taj Mahal which a sultan built as a "small" token of the immense love he had for his wife. So I thought it was cute that he put that on the front of the card and tied it in with a cute saying on the inside.
That night we snacked on our strawberries and bubbly while watching this:
Don't judge!
This is seriously the best show. I dare you to watch the pilot episode and not be hooked!