I Can't Believe It

We've been out of the house to go place and visit people and see things and let me just say it's about the best thing on Earth.  I know I've said we've been sick a lot and I'm not trying to exaggerate - it's just the plain old truth.  And so for the month of April we almost all stayed away from the doctor but I'll get to that later.

We had Easter early in the month this year and we had an eggcellent time.  We visited Grandma Marge's for egg dying and the best lunch a grandma can share, grilled cheese sandwiches and root beer floats.  Here are a few of our eggs.  This year we tried dying with kool-aid instead of the traditional egg dye and we also used a technique incorporating rubber cement (paint egg as desired with rubber cement, let dry then dye egg, after egg dries rub off the rubber cement - similar to the white crayon technique but you could repaint and redye to add multiple colors/layers if you wanted to).  Elizabeth also borrowed some dye/color from our cousins and painted the beautiful multi-colored eggs below.  We even made some fancy flowers out of paper and pipe cleaners. And we also made egg decorations for our house - string wet with liquid fabric softener wrapped around a balloon.

 

 

Chris ventured to southern Utah and one of the many wonders of the world that you should take the time to see if you never have - Moab.  He went with four of his cousins and they rode their mountain bikes on the slick rock.  Chris made a bike rack for the bed of his pickup truck out of pvc pipe, similar to this one.  It allowed 5 bikes and gear to ride safely in the bed of the truck.  This year Chris is planning to ride his newly acquired bike as part of his hunting in Wyoming so this was part of the practice or training.

 

 

We went for an outing together as a family and visited the new City Creek Shopping Center. It is a nice outdoor/indoor shopping center in downtown Salt Lake.  They're aren't really any stores that I was too excited about - I do most of my shopping online - but it is a nice place to go walk around and have some food and let the kids burn off some energy.  There are lots of fun water fountains and when it gets warmer I suppose it will be packed with families.  We also stopped by temple square to see the beautiful flowers and the temple.

The following weekend we made a vehicle change.  We've been looking at purchasing a new Toyota Prius to save on fuel for awhile but we had a leased Toyota Rav4 and the lease wasn't up until March 2013 so we were just getting our research done.  Well Chris found a used Prius for sale through his work (they re-sale the fleet vehicles) so we were able to get a great deal on a used one with low miles and we were also able to sale our Rav4 quickly.  After picking up the new car we went to Park City for a quick stay-cation.  We usually go up once a year and stay for one night.  This year we let the girls swim in the pool of the hotel and then we went out for pizza and treats.  The pictures from the pizza place are great - we were right next to the mood lighting but I like the red.

The girls have been playing a lot together as of late.  For the most part they do pretty well together.  One of their most favorite things to do is get out the dress up box and play princesses.  They also like to just put the shoes on and run around the kitchen to see who can make the loudest noise. Elizabeth learned about letter V at preschool and they talked about volcanoes.  The kids enjoyed it so much the teacher sent home instructions and we made our very own erupting volcano.

 

Olivia turned 3 on April 27th.  She was so excited for her birthday this year.  We went to the store and she picked out her own cake and was very disappointed when we weren't able to take it home that very day.  We just did a small celebration with our family of four (reasons to follow shortly) and so we picked up the cake and picked out balloons and then we patiently waited for dad to come home so we could have pizza for dinner then per request of Olivia we opened presents and went to a local bounce house and then came home for cake after.  She seemed to love the whole day.

 

 

 

And in case you missed the past three years flying by here is a brief re-cape in photos, Olivia on her birthday, April 27, every year just - born at hospital 2009, at home in her crib being her happy self 2010, having her favorite snack, a sucker, in the kitchen 2011& anxiously awaiting the gifts 2012.

 

Lastly to the injury report.  Chris took a spill on his bike in Moab and hit his toe pretty hard on the red rock.  The ensuing doctor's report shows a diagnosis of turf toe. He was hoping it was broken but instead it has just been very painful and tender.  And we couldn't escape the month without a major medical report - this time all the people are safe but the puppy dog is not.  Our poor chocolate lab moose had to have surgery to repair a torn ligament in his back leg.  The procedure is called tplo surgery and is very common in the size and breed of dog. Basically he tore his acl.  One might suppose that the surgery is not cheap and of course we cancelled our pet insurance one month prior to the injury occurring but he is a young pup, not even two yet, so we felt it was best to have the surgery.  Now comes the hard part, I'm supposed to keep him from walking let alone running for eight whole weeks.  Here's to hoping that our Moose gets back to normal soon.