Easter Fun

We had an egg hunt on Friday at the Law School run by Virginia Law Families, one on Saturday with our ward, and one on Easter with just our family.I think Sabrina was starting to tire of them, but Clark was getting better at it each time. He even found a tricky one I hid in the bushes this morning.

  Our ward had a 5k for adults before the egg hunt and a much shorter race for the children. Sabrina has wanted to be in a race ever since she visited her cousin Laurel and saw her medal from her race. She was smiling the whole race, but none of the running pictures turned out very well since she was moving too fast!

  Here Sabrina is with her medal after the race! Maybe all the kids got medals, but she is still our number one runner!

Here is Yogurl with Clark, getting ready for the 5k. Sabrina came with us and wanted to walk, but I ended up carrying her for probably 4.5k of the 5k. Clark was in a jogging stroller (not pictured here).

Dyeing eggs! 

Sabrina used to love crawling around in here, and it looks like Clark is starting to take to the activity as well. 

 Our own egg hunt in our yard Easter morning. It was only a touch drizzly, and the kids seemed to have fun.

Yogurl bought the kids some glow sticks from the dollar store, and Clark loved playing with them. He later tried to stab me with one when he was mad at me, so he lost them for a while. 

Sabrina had fun playing with Easter toys she got. We also got them a book about the Easter story and read the account of the resurrection from the Gospels. We are so grateful for our Savior and all that he has done for us. I got to teach a lesson on the life of Christ in Gospel Principles today, which gave me a nice extra incentive to really study our Savior's life over the last few days. We are all so blessed. Happy Easter!

Sick Kids and Snow

We've been having a fair bit of bad health, but we are coming through just fine now. Previously I said that Clark had hand foot and mouth disease, but I now think it was gingivostomatitis (not gingivitis) caused by herpes. His pediatrician said this was a possibility when she first said it was hand foot and mouth, and then when the dermatologist and other pediatrician said they thought his hand might have a herpetic whitlow, I just decided that it must be herpes all around. My guess is as good as theirs. What matters is his hand is slowly healing, and it has never seemed to bother him much. He didn't even try to pull the sock off his hand that we used to keep his wound covered. What a good boy.

Sabrina also had the flu for a few days, but is doing just fine now. Yogurl spent quite a bit of time reading Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle to her while she wasn't feeling well. My favorite part about Sabrina having the flu was when the toilet almost overflowed after she got sick in the middle of the night. That is just what being a parent is all about.

Clark really likes playing at the bottom of the stairs with the gate. I don't know why he likes it, but he does. You can see he has his sock bandage on in this picture.

 One of the first days of spring here in Charlottesville. It all melted pretty soon, so I wasn't too upset by it.

Sabrina has become bored with just building towers with blocks, so she has recently started building whole cities with towers, factories and houses. This city is Chicago. Her first city was Catholic City. Maybe she will be an urban planner like her Mommy.

Visiting Dallas

We finally got down to Dallas to visit and try to get to know the area. I have to confess that I really liked Houston better than Dallas, but I think Dallas will grow on me over time. The only place that we really liked was White Rock Lake/Lakewood. It is an affordable area that we like that isn't too far from downtown, and has a great elementary school. Anything past elementary is still a long ways off for us, so we will worry about that when we get there. 

The trip wasn't bad. Except that Clark was still getting over hand foot and mouth and Yogurl spent several days with ulcers on her gums and tonsils from hand foot and mouth. It's okay though, she loved living on a diet of kefir and mango lassi. 

We stayed in a fancy hotel that we got at a steal from Hotwire. Yet we found that staying at a cheaper hotel would have suited our family much better. Free breakfast in the lobby would have been great even if it were crummy.

And now the pictures.

This is in Charlottesville's airport which is so nice to travel through. Close to home and almost never a line to get through security. Clark really liked this rocking chair they had.

This is in our hotel. They have this huge chandelier that moves like a wave and changes colors during the night. The kids thought it was pretty entertaining. 

 Taking a break at a park in Farmer's Branch. We tried to stop and play at parks often to try them out and give the kids a break, but there really weren't that many parks in the Dallas area and they were virtually all abandoned, even though it was spring break for the schools. I guess that just means our kids won't have to fight people for the best stuff at the parks.

 Just a corny picture of Clark at the Dallas Farmer's Market. Their market was nice, if not super exciting. I imagine it will be really good in late summer and early fall.

 And a corny picture of Sabrina. This picture is also a little creepy.

These kids were so tuckered out from looking around at houses and apartments. They were about as good as could be expected considering the daily routine we were on. Every apartment we looked at Sabrina ran around looking in every corner and than stated how excited she was and how she couldn't wait to live there.

Snow Storm!

We were told that we should expect some snow, but we weren't expecting 10 inches. What we should have been expecting was that our power would shut off. It stayed off from 6 am Wednesday until a little after 6 pm Thursday. This would have been fun enough normally, but it was even more fun since Clark had hand foot and mouth disease. Wednesday afternoon he had bloody ulcers all along his gumline. He also had an infected hangnail (unrelated to hand foot and mouth). We felt fairly well prepared for the power outage, and we did alright.

Sabrina really wanted to go out and play with her friends the first day. I was hesitant since I didn't want her getting all cold when we didn't know how long we might be without heating. We went ahead and bundled her up and let her go out and play. We then used some of our remaining hot water to give her a warm bath so she could be nice and cozy again. We all slept in the same bedroom and it stayed around 66 degrees all night, so we weren't too cold at all. The kids were both very well behaved sleeping in the same room which was a relief. 

The second day without power the house got down around 58 in the mid-morning so we broke out our meager firewood supply (2 logs) and started heating the place up a little. It didn't heat the house up much, but it made us feel warmer cuddled in front of the fire. 

That afternoon our friends the Bunkers were kind enough to let us come over and use their hot water (they had power) to take warm showers and bathe the kids with warm water. We ate out after that and by time we got home the power had just come on. What a fun experience.

Trips and stuff

Since we don't live too far away from Oma and Opa and I have no class on Fridays or Mondays, we decided to take a drive up to visit them last month for Opa's birthday! Sabrina was so excited about it for weeks in advance. Somehow we didn't take many pictures. I will get some more from Oma and Opa, who certainly took more than we did, and post them here later. Here Oma and Opa are sitting with Sabrina at a live production of Thumbelina. It was very entertaining and Sabrina still talks about it and asks why Thumbelina was born in a flower.

We also got to visit our friends up in DC. I went there to attend part of the J. Reuben Clark Law Society annual conference. That is the Latter-Day Saint lawyer's group. Elder Holland made a presentation there and Justice Thomas gave the keynote address at the luncheon. It was really cool. Plus I met one of my old buddies from my freshman year at BYU there. He is a lawyer at a big law firm in LA and just happened to be working in DC for a few months. Since we were both total losers (mostly me) our freshman year, it was nice to see that we (mostly him) had turned out so well after all.

Sabrina meanwhile got to play with Mr. Mark, one of her bestest friends in the whole wide world. Hopefully we can get up there to see them again before we move away to Texas.

Sabrina used her play-dough to make a sweet meal for her mommy. She had her come sit down and put on a bib to keep her clean while she ate her pizza, fish, and broccoli. What a meal!

Valentines Day and 7th Anniversary!

 We had a special Valentine's Day Breakfast with heart shaped strawberries and homemade toaster pastries!  

 For our 7th (yowzers!) anniversary, we went out to a really fancy restaurant which was fortunately doing a 50% off dinner sale for Mondays in the month of February. What a wonderful coincidence that our anniversary fell on a Monday this year! The property was originally owned by Thomas Randolph (I think) who was governor of Virginia and married to Martha Jefferson (daughter of Thomas Jefferson). Our meal included smoked beef tartare, pheasant confit, sweet potato gnocchi, rabbit ballotine and more. I don't know that I'll get steak tartare again, but I actually started to enjoy it once I got past the look of it.

And here is my beautiful bride in her wedding gown 7 glorious years after our wedding. Hopefully she was trying it on to see if it fit and not because she is planning on using it again soon.