Easter egg hunt

Every year, one of the families in our neighborhood puts on an Easter egg hunt. It has always been an adventure for us- for a long time, we couldn't get Tyler to figure out what we wanted him to do, and then last year it snowed. But this year was great! Not too cold, and both kids were quite into the project of gathering eggs to put in their baskets.

The only problem came when one of Kaitlyn's eggs broke open early on and she discovered that there was chocolate inside. Stop everything! No need to look for more eggs, let's just plop down here and open these puppies up!

Eventually we talked her into waiting until she got home to open the loot.

Yummy.

Hogle Zoo

Last weekend was rather boring, if only because Christopher was gone on a mountain biking trip with his friends to Moab again. But he came home with a prize: a splint. He fell and broke his hand, as the little blue arrow shows you here. Thank goodness it was their last ride of the weekend.




At least he isn't in a cast. The splint he can take on and off as needed, which is nice. It has been fun watching him to try and learn to do things with his left hand only. Poor guy. Every time Kaitlyn sees the cast she says "Daddy broken".

Monday is my one day of the week that Tyler doesn't go to school, so I usually save things that take a long time for Mondays. And this week, I found a friend to go to the zoo with us. I haven't taken Tyler since he was a year old (too young to enjoy it), and now they are both old enough to know the names of the animals and their sounds.

They loved it! They both got really into telling me what animal they were seeing. Hogle is a pretty good zoo, actually. And right now they even have a baby elephant.

Right next to the elephants, there was a rhino resting in his pen. Kaitlyn looked at him for a moment, and then said "dinosaur!". Not quite, honey. But close.

And then we came to this cougar. She wasn't sure exactly what to make of him either. Until he made a menacing growl at her. I guess it sounded enough like "meow" for her to make up her mind, because she said "cat?!" Yup. Really really big cat.

I don't know why, but giraffes are kinda my favorite. I love how much their body structure looks like horses, but . . . distorted into something even cooler. I guess my kids were more interested in their juice boxes at this point.

And of course, we have to get at least one picture of the family on a statue animal.

This was Tyler's favorite moment, when he found some meekrats that were just as excited about him as he was about them. Tyler would jump up and shriek with glee when one came over to him, and then the meekrat would jump around and run off. When it ran back to see him, Tyler would shriek and the meekrat would play with him and they both seemed to love it. You can see in this picture that there is a meekrat checking out each toddler.

They have a carousel at the zoo with zoo animals for you to ride on. Kaitlyn really wanted the giraffe, but she was just as happy with the elephant. So happy, in fact, that when I told her it was time to get off she clung tighter and shook her head frantically. I finally had to pry her off, sobbing. Poor thing.

We even rode the train at the end too.

It really was a great day at the zoo!

Photoshop fun

I haven't made a post in a while, but we haven't done anything that interesting anyway. Well, we did get to go see Brian Regan perform as a date night, but I don't have any pictures of that. That was a lot of fun though.

I am still taking my photography class. I am really enjoying it, and I think I am gaining a lot more confidence from everything I have learned. I'm no pro, but it is a fun hobby. So I thought I would share my "assignment" this week. We had to take a picture and then send in the original and the edited version. And today, Kaitlyn decided to empty the toy box entirely and sit in it to watch TV.

The Original:

And the Edited:

For the other Photoshop nuts out there, I used Pioneer Woman's actions to burn the edges and warm the tones. Then I burned the glare on the toy box and dodged her hair, because your eye is naturally drawn to the lightest part of the photograph, and I wanted the focus to be on her and not the corner of the box. I also used the healing brush to smooth out the harsh shadow on the TV.

As for the actual shot, the things I learned in class really helped me get the settings right. I liked that the composition followed the rule of thirds (more or less), and my teacher reminded us how important it is to get on the child's level for candid shots. I thought it told a story here, which is always better than just a kid smiling at the camera.

Overall, I am pretty happy with it!

Cabin pics

I know the picture is overexposed- I had it on the wrong ISO setting. But I still love the goggles that Daddy got for Tyler.

We had a lot of fun last weekend snowmobiling- the snow was perfect. Very wet and packed down, so we didn't have to fight the powder.

Daddy also discovered that it was the easiest snowman he ever made- he just made the snowball and rolled it down the hill. Done!

The kids liked to help though. Kaitlyn would pack handfulls onto the base, and Tyler would throw some snow at it.

We're going again this weekend, and I'm really excited because it snowed today! Should be lots of fun.

Been thinking.

A couple of things have really got me thinking lately. They aren't related actually. But they have both been on my mind.

1. A week ago, I was meeting with a friend in the RS Presidency for my VT interview. (If that load of LDS garble meant nothing to you, don't sweat it.) We were chatting about odd things, and at one point were ranting about our least favorite chore. Mine is dishes and washing the counter. I told her that it isn't my house if there aren't dishes to be done. Or, more accurately, my mother isn't currently in town to clean up faster than I can blink (sorry for being such a dissapointment, mom . . .). She said hers is laundry. I think what gets us in each case is that they just never get DONE. You finish them, sure. But then next time you turn around they need to get done all over again. I could clean my kitchen counter 5 times every day, but since we all eat there and toddlers never contain messes to just their plates, it will get messy again faster than I realize.

I then confessed that I am really struggling lately. Not with actual problems that can be fixed, though I certainly have those too. But I told her I felt exactly like I did my senior year of high school, which was a rather tough time for me. I won't go into detail, since it is rather personal. I just feel like . . . like I've been working hard on things, and then stopping now to wonder if that is even where I want to be in the first place. Like I'm not sure that I want to be where everybody else thinks I should be (or even thinks I already am). And I hate that. Because I thought I worked through this. I had a rough time with this last time, and for years I was so much stronger and happy with where my life was, and now I am doing it all over again.

And she pointed out that maybe sometimes life is like that chore that never gets done fully. We can clean things, we can "finish" the job, but inside I am still the same person with the same strengths and faults that struggled last time. And if I solved things last time, I can work it out this time.

I'm working hard to see the optimism in that statement. Because sometimes I just want to give up. Sometimes I think that if I watch my little girl wreck something I just finished cleaning one more time, I am just going to give up trying to clean it in the first place. Kinda like how I stopped going to the gym when months of daily workouts never lost me a pound. And I feel like that internally now.

I don't have the answer now, but it is something I am thinking about.

2. The next thing that really has been hard this week happened to someone I barely know. My older brother had a best friend in high school, and I knew his younger sister fairly well. At the younger sister's wedding reception, I got to meet Steven's wife Catie and hear about their family. They had two little kids, and it turned out that we were expecting at about the same time. I didn't talk to them terribly long, but they had a good, happy little life out East where he was teaching at a college. I started watching their blog shortly after that- I never commented, but I liked keeping up with them.

Instead of being born the same time as Kaitlyn, their little girl ended up being born as soon as it was safe to take her, because Catie was diagnosed with cancer and they had to get treatment started. Thankfully that little 2 lbs girl was nursed into a healthy toddler now. But after a couple of years of struggle, Catie passed away last week. Her children are 6, 4 and 2 now. And I just cried.

She wasn't that much older than me. She wasn't that much different from me, on paper. But she was stronger than me, I know that much. By all accounts, she was a wonderful and loving mom. Her blog was entitled "Our Life is Good", and at times it was rather hard to follow how her health was doing because she only talked about the good things in her life. She talked about what mattered to her: how much fun she had with her children recently, how wonderful her friends were that came to visit or ran a race in her honor, how much she loved her husband. After her death, her husband posted that it struck him when he started collecting photos how she never lost the gleam of happiness and hope in her eyes, even at the end when she was in so much pain. He said that she never lost her faith or her optimism, in public or in private.

What an amazing thing to have said about you. I lose my optimism all the time, and I'm not even facing anything! I've been trying to take that example lately, and enjoy the time that I spend with my little kids every day. I guess it just reminds you that every day is a blessing from God, and not something to be wasted.

Tyler moment

Tyler is a funny guy. Lately I have been really struggling with . . . hopelessness about him. I just don't see progress like I want to. One of our biggest struggles is getting him to actively care about the world around him enough to communicate and change it. That's a simple thing for most kids- they want juice, so they ask for juice. But Tyler just waits and hopes for things silently.

The other night I made a dessert for FHE night. Kaitlyn loved it, but Tyler wouldn't touch it. Just skuttled back from it as though it was going to eat him instead. The next day for lunch, he was eating rather well so I thought I would put a small slice on his plate for him. But then he said "NO! I don't want it!" and pushed it away. For Tyler that was awesome! I don't know why he is so upset over a dessert, but I guess whatever motivates him is good with me.

But my favorite Tyler moment is one his teacher told me about today. I guess yesterday when he came into the classroom he went to the center of the room and looked around as though he had never seen the place before. And then he spread his arms out and said "this is WONDERFUL!" The aides all said it made their day.

On the down side, he has somehow learned the chorus to Bad Romance from Lady GaGa. Daddy is encouraging this, which worries me. "Ro - ma , ro - ma - LA! Ro - ma, Ro - ma -LA! I got a RO - MA!"

Kaitlyn's first haircut

Well, I decided it was finally time. As much as I love putting Kaitlyn's hair into pigtails and such, the ends were just scraggly baby hair, and it need to get evened up a bit. So I asked my neighbor friend Julane, and she gave Kaitlyn this cute little bob! And now, a before and after:

In case you are wondering, her hair is that curly for the first day, slowly falling down until it is mostly straight the day after a wash. But really all it took for that look was some shine serum and a little bit of gel. I am rather jealous.

After getting the haircut, we got to spend time with some friends at Kangaroo Zoo, a local bounce house. This was Kaitlyn's first time old enough to go up and down everything on her own, and she sure took advantage of that. I had a hard time keeping track when two kids would run in opposite directions at once!

I hate the shadow on this next picture, but I love seeing her tongue stick out for the water as she reaches on her tippy toes. Once she discovered this drinking fountain, she didn't want to do anything else. Her shirt was soaked, but every time I took her away she ran right back to it.