Digital Scrapbook Retreat

It seems like all we did was eat at the retreat! Lunch at Olive Garden and dinner at PF Chang's . . . can't get better than that! It was a great day with Julie and Brooke and I'm looking forward to more retreats with them! I'm going to need many more to get digital scrapbooking down! Paper is all I know!

This is my first digital page--very basic, I know! I'm hoping to find time to practice and learn to do more. Hmmm, to blog or to play with Photoshop . . . that is the question!

Field Trip to the Farm

Mason went on his 2nd preschool field trip last week! Tristyn and I joined him at the farm. I didn't think that we'd get him past the milk jug conveyer belt! He could have watched the cartons roll past him for the full hour! As always, he wasn't real interested in the animals. He played with the food dispenser for a while so I gave him a quarter and he liked to watch the food come out, but didn't want to feed it to the donkey! I wasn't brave enough to let him eat it from my hand either, so the donkey had to eat it off the concrete (I know, I'm a wimp).



Mas also liked the tulip sign that shows how tulips grow from bulbs.

My little jail bird! I need one of these at home!

Tristyn had a blast watching all the animals and especially liked the big sheep and little piggies. Mason loved the ducks, which is always his favorite and the park, and liked running up and down the ramp by the duck pond. He had a lot of fun on the wagon ride and even thanked the horses that pulled it when he got off!

Thanks for another great fieldtrip! We had a great morning!

One Proud Daughter

On May 11th, my mom completed a goal and fulfilled a dream that she has had for a LOOONG time . . . over 30 years! She graduated from the Nursing Program at Central Wyoming College in Jackson. She will also soon take the board exam to become a Registered Nurse. It was such a great experience to sit in the audience and watch as she accepted her pin and degree. We're all so proud of her for hanging in there even when things got really tough. She's a great example to us all I feel lucky to be her daughter.



Doesn't she look great in her new outfit? My dad gave her the beautiful new necklace and DanaRae's family gave her a cute new watch.

Here she is accepting the Professionalism in Nursing Award, which is given to the student who fosters teamwork and a positive attitude, among several other things. I think she was surprised to receive it, but as the Dean was reading the content of the award, we were all thinking that it sounded just like mom!

Here's the award!

And the diploma!

Great job, mom! We all love you tons and can't even express how proud we are of you! We never doubted that you could do it and know that you'll also do well on the board exam! You've shown us all that anything is possible if you put forth your full effort! Congratulations!

Mother's Day

I had a great Mother's Day weekend. It started with a digital scrapbooking retreat on Friday with Julie and Brooke. Since I'm pretty much Photoshop illiterate, it was fun to play around with it and work on a few srapbook projects (although I now have even more partially completed projects). After teaching my primary lesson on Sunday, Melissa, Tristyn and I loaded up and headed for Rexburg for a BBQ at DanaRae's house for our mom. We put Tristyn forward facing and she LOVED it! She had a perma-grin for the first 30 minutes of the trip! Melissa loved the tub of toys that kept Tristyn entertained for the whole trip.



Diane and Emelia were also there. Emelia made a super cute little bird house for grandma and gave her a big kiss on the cheek.

Tristyn loved cralking (crawling/walking) around Rae's house and especially liked crawling up and down the single stair that separates the front room from the kitchen.

Hanging out with Grandma.

It was a special Mother's Day since a lot of the family was able to get together to also celebrate my mom's graduation from Nursing School, which was the following night in Jackson. We have an awesome mom that never gives up and works dang hard for every little thing she has. We are lucky to have such a great example of love, service, and endurance. It was awesome to spend the day with her!

Dan and Mason spent the day with his mom and sister. Julie was so nice to invite them, even though she had to cook her own Mother's Day dinner! Thanks for including them!

To all the moms out there . . . I hope you had a great day!

Perfection...Some try...most fail...and some of us are just plain lucky

Hey all, on Friday May 1^st, Jim decided to join a co-worker and I for a game of golf at Murray Parkway. Jim showed up late of course, had to catch up with us on the second hole. Despite his tardiness, Jim pulled his game together on the 4^th hole when he hit a hole in one. As Ranger and I were yelling and celebrating, Jim made the comment, “That wasn’t a very pretty shot”. Regardless, it was a hole in one and a great shot. Jim can fill in any details that I’m missing. --Dan

Bring on the sun

We forgot to bring Mason's sunglasses, so he is wearing mom's.

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Flower Pots

The kids brought these little flower pots home from daycare today! I love them! Tristyn's is made from her foot prints and Mason's from his hand prints. The best thing about them . . . they won't wilt!

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Little Walker!

Tristyn took her first official steps tonight! She has been walking around furniture and pushing things around while walking for several weeks, but tonight she took 3-4 steps several different times. This video is about the 3rd time that we got her to try it. She was coming for my camera case. She's now eleven months old. The past few days she has been pointing at everything and I can't remember if I already posted that she'll say 'ee' for 'fishy' and 'du' for 'duck'. She loves to watch Mason and try to do whatever he's doing. She likes to be chased and is becoming quite the tease! She also likes to climb up on the little chairs to look out the window and also up on to Mason's little table. I see several goose eggs in her future! Mason will love it when she can run after him (we'll love it too since we don't have the energy for it).

Grandpa and Grandma's

We recently got together with Dan's family to celebrate his Dad and brothers' birthdays. The kids both had a blast. Tristyn loved sitting at this little table to eat and play with her cousins. Aren't her flip flops super cute?

Mason and a few cousins played in the sandbox at a neighbor's house.

Tristyn had fun watching them from the swing.

She also had her first 4-wheeler ride. At first she wondered what the loud red thing zooming through the yard was, but when she got on she was all smiles and had a great time! On of Mason's favorite things about Grandma and Grandpa Higbee's house is the 4-wheeler rides, so I think Tristyn will feel the same way.

Backyard fun

Mason has had a lot of fun writing with sidewalk chalk on the patio. Here you can see where he wrote HAT and MASON several times.

His N's look a bit like M's and the S and O are kind of light, but here's a better shot of his name. There were a bunch of ants on the patio, so Melissa also wrote ANT for him and he has remembered how to spell it.

Handsome Jack stopped by to go diggin' in the Jeep.

Mason looks like he's the driver's ed teacher that has to supervise Jack's technique.



Here's to many more evenings of backyard fun!

"I puked my guts out . . .

But I didn't puke my heart out". A great quote by Michael Scott! We watched the Rabies 5k episode of The Office in preparation for April 22nd, when my work held their first 5K run/walk as part of our Active For Life program. Melissa joined me and we completed our first 5k! I wish I could say that we ran it in 25 minutes, but I'm still proud to say that we walked it in about 50 minutes. It made me want to get in running shape so I can actually compete with the runners next time! The fastest male and female runner took home a trophy, so that would be worth it right??

Here we are before wondering if we'll make it in the 80 degree weather (the hottest day of the year thus far).

Like a cake walk . . . we were a little thirsty afterward, but it wasn't bad at all.

At each mile mark Melissa put a flower in her hair. At least she smelled flowery instead of sweaty afterward!



We ran for the last few steps before the finish line so everyone would think we ran the whole time--I'll have to find that photo and try to post it later. I'm sure we didn't fool anyone (mainly because they all passed us while they ran and we walked!). We had a lot of fun so thanks to our HR and training department for putting it together.

Popcorn Popping

We were lucky to catch a nice sunny Sunday where I could grab a few photos of the kids in front of a 'popcorn' tree at the church. I love these trees and wish my whole yard was full of them! By the time we took the photos, a lot of the flower petals had blown off. The tree still looked awesome and the kids super cute!

Dan balanced Tristyn and let go just before I took the photo. She can stand for several seconds on her own, but will still get down to crawl rather than taking a step! She hates to sit on the grass or stand on it barefoot. Hopefully she'll grow out of that this summer so she can play outside! There was another baby wearing the same bug dress that day. I think she looks like Minnie Mouse with the bow.

After playing by the trees we had to bribe Mason with a sucker to go in to our meetings. Oh wait . . . we have to do that pretty much every Sunday! Hopefully the other parents don't mind that we sometimes provide them for the whole class. Kids learn to listen and obey some day, right?? I can't wait!

Under the Sea 3D

A couple of weeks ago we took the kids to the Planetarium to see Under the Sea in 3D. We hoped Mason would sit through it since it was only 40 minutes. Since he has loved popcorn lately, we hooked him up with a "Little Dipper" combo and headed in for the movie.

At first Mason loved the glasses and was interested in the show. Then he was surprised by a couple of fish that quickly snatched their food in 3D. He freaked out and took the glasses off. He put them slightly over one eye for a while, but then ditched them for the rest of the movie. He still kind of watched the blurry images--in between watching me stand in the back with Tristyn and climbing on the chair. At one point he lost his balance and fell backwards, hitting his head on the concrete floor. He had a nice goose egg and cut. Luckily, he didn't cry for long (I'm sure the family sitting next to us was tired of us by then).

Tristyn was tired, but was pretty good during the movie. She liked to watch it and wanted to eat our glasses. Melissa came a long because she had been wanting to take Mason to the fountains at Gateway forever.

The kids loved this contraption that sent balls through tubes and a lot wires throughout the building.

Here we are waiting for the fountains to turn on. We needed to take off so Dan could go to the gun show, so we didn't hang around long. we'll have to go back down when it's a bit warmer!



We had a lot of fun. I wish that Mason would have paid more attention to the movie and worn the glasses the whole time, but I'm sure he would have freaked out more when the sharks swam out in the crowd and when the sea lions kissed us! That was cool!

Kinked Neck

So you don't have to break your neck to look at a couple of recent photos, here they are right side up!

Swine Flu

On Wednesday Dan had to get fitted for this crazy mask. As I understand it, he can't go into a clinic where the swine flu could be present if this type of mask won't fit him correctly. He said they sprayed stuff into the 'hood' portion to make sure that it didn't leak into the mask portion. Talk about closterphobic--hopefully I never have to wear one! This is probably the closest I'll get to being married to an astronaut!