My Hero

Love this clip with Julie Bowen, who plays Claire.  I aspire to be like this...



Gotta love it - mom's revenge!

Seven Months

It has been seven months since Ryan left us and entered the MTC.  We have enjoyed watching his growth - getting pictures like these:

And of course these:

(notice the ribbon from a basket can obviously lead to hours of enjoyment for the boy)

But, it is weird how this works for me - I will be going along fine and then all of a sudden I really miss him again.  It is funny things that set it off.  I made cookies the other night and I was putting two in little baggies to put in the kids lunches.  I made all the lunches and had an extra bag - of course thinking I had forgotten someone I looked again.  Nope, I just made up five bags.  That is what I was used to - five lunches, five treats, five kids.

I am not sure how much of this would be true if he was at school, as opposed to the mission, but as our family changes I am slower to accept the changes.  Although you want your children to grow up and be self sufficient, producing members of society, when they really leave it can be hard.

So, seven down 17 to go.....

Welcome Home Steven

My brother Steven has come home from his mission.  He had a medical release at 19 months, and we are still holding out hope he will be able to get back out before he was supposed to come home (AUG).  If not, he has an honorable release and we are proud of him.  Since the kids had a 4 day weekend with Easter, we used the chance to scoot up to Dallas and welcome him home.

I think this was at the airport, but it is still up in my mom's house now. 

This cracks me up - do you think he missed technology the last few years?  A Blackberry in one hand, an iPod Touch in the other - all while being able to be a good uncle to Allie!

It was good to see he hasn't changed - notice Blue Steel from Zoolander?

It was also his 21st birthday while we were there - there are pictures of him as a youth on the mantle - I really liked this one:

Yes the picture is of Ryan and Steven as young boys - they are only a year apart and in many ways grew up as brothers.

And what does a good uncle do?  Torture his nieces, that is what.

His best impression of The Thinker.

All in all it was a good weekend with a rocking Easter Egg hunt - more on that later.  It was great to see Steven.  If he ends up back out to finish the mission great.  If not, it will be fun to have him around for a few months until he leaves for BYU - Idaho!

District Track Meet

Sophie ran in the district track meet and placed 3rd in both the 1 and 1.5 mile.  She was behind these two girls the whole time.

Only in the world of Sophie is a 3rd place finish in the district meet a bad thing.  She won a  couple of the meets in her events, and her father is hoping it gave her the running bug!  He is hoping she will like it better than soccer - I am not holding my breath!