Easter

Easter is here and with it the start of Spring festivities. We did the egg thing yesterday with one of Beth's friends. It still brings back great memories of sitting at the wooden kitchen table at 489 (house where I grew up) trying to dip my egg and hold it perfectly so I could get the perfectly blended mix (three colors with the third being the combination of the two that lines up in the middle). Our kids are mostly at the age of dumping them in the dye and pulling them out 2 seconds later. Stickers are then applied and they're on to the next one. You can go through an amazing amount of eggs this way. Fortunately I like to eat hard boiled eggs, because they piled up quickly. We did do the basic Paas kit although I browsed the store and encountered many deluxe new egg tricks you can do with strange label applications. We'll have to try those another year.

Easter day consisted of the ritual race down the stairs to look for baskets. Carol and I tried to talk about the more important Easter events, but it's a tough battle. The girls always look for bunny tracks in the snow. Lydia visited us 2 years ago and ever since then the Easter Bunny has left tracks that the kids search for. They were there this year much to the kids delight.

Anyway, we made it through the sugar high (and low) and off to church.

Carol made a fabulous Easter dinner with ham, artichokes and blueberry cobbler. Delicious! We all gobbled it up and rolled the kids upstairs (picture Violet, the girl who became swollen like a blueberry in Willy Wonka).

Carol and I did feel a little better about the whole day when we asked about the true meaning of Easter before dinner. Beth and Isabel both gave great accounts of the last days of Christ. Isabel read a poem she got in Primary and Beth wrote a story about Jesus and Easter. Here are a few quotes (original spelling and punctuation included...I'm pretty sure I didn't know what a colon was until junior high).

Easter is not about candy eggs or bunny's. It's about Jesus's reserection. the story is: their were bad guys who did not like Jesus so they took him to Pilot. Pilot siad Jesus is not hurting us. But the bad guy's would keep beging. So finily pilot siad "OK you may crusify Jesus." the bad guy's shouted "hurray". and hanged him on a cross for three days then layed his body in a tomb. People came to see jesus. But in three days an angel came and removed the rock and Jesus came out. he was liveing! everyone came. and thats the true mening of easter.

And so it is.

Happy Easter!!!

More photos here.

Visit to SLC

The kids and I just got back from visiting SLC. We had a great time and it was so much fun to see grandparents, aunts and uncles and cousins. The new babes are beautiful and I had soooooo much fun holding them and feeding them. It was also fun to spend the night with Mary a couple of times. As Judy says, "The night is magical" and it truly was. Thanks Mares for all the time I got to spend with them.

We also had a grand time with grandparents. The kids had fun going to the park, the children's museum, to the movies with Gram, to Costco (where Gram spoiled them sufficiently), swimming at the Lions Club, sleeping over at Joe's, going to the bookstore with Nanny (and winning the grand prize Courdory bear), going to Jungle Jim's with Lauren, playing in the little, big house with Gram T. and oh sooooo much more. We had a fun filled grand time. And you would think with all we did I would have more pictures, but alas I do not. I guess I really do rely too much on Tom for the picture taking.

Happy A Day

12 years...it's been fast, furious and fabulous. I couldn't be more blessed!!

Mackey Wins the Iditarod

Fellow Fairbanks man and neck cancer survivor Lance Mackey won the Iditarod last night. He was the only one to win the Yukon Quest and Iditarod in the same year last year and he repeated this year. He almost lost but used some clever trickery to lull his competition (Jeff King) into a 2 hour nap at a late checkpoint (he pretended to sleep and then snuck out as soon as he heard his fellow musher doze off) which gave him an hour lead with under a hundred miles left. Most thought King would win until the nap as he was running with 16 dogs compared to Mackey's 11. Congrats Lance! Read here for more details.

Happy Birthday Indeed

I did have a very happy birthday thanks to calls from Carol, the kids, Maama and Popop, Jonathan and Kathleen. It was great to talk to everyone, open some presents and overall I had a wonderful day. I also got to eat one of my all time favorite foods...steel cut oatmeal. I kind of debated whether or not I should make a dessert, but I didn't have plums (so plum cake was out) and I was really craving the steel cut. The candle went in just fine and it tasted great (add 1/2 tsp salt, 4C water, 1C steel cut oatmeal, 1 fuji apple with skin cut up fine, cook covered for 40 minutes at a simmer, add sugar and cinnamon to taste...even better with whole milk in place of one of the cups of water). Yum yum. Anyway, I am grateful for my wonderful family and I look forward to seeing all of you soon!

Happy Birthday Tom

35 years ago the most adorable, handsome man was born. The kids and I celebrated Tom's birthday with his parents by having a delicious dinner and the Hammond traditional "Big Tin Chocolate Cake". It was a great party and the only thing missing was the birthday boy! Tom got to celebrate by his lonesome in Alsaska since his family is spending spring break visiting the new twins and family in Salt Lake. We are looking forward to having another party, this time including the man of honor, when we get back to Fairbanks. Happy Birthday Tom! We all love you infinity and more!

Iditarod

The Iditarod started over the weekend. They have a rather interesting "ceremonial" start in Anchorage followed by a restart in Willow which is just up the Parks highway. I just followed the Yukon Quest which is a 1000 mile dog race from Fairbanks to Canada and the Iditarod is the other big race up here in Alaska. Anyway, I was just looking on the Iditarod website and they actually have GPS trackers on all the racers this year so you can see where each one is on the trail. I thought it was pretty neat-o so I thought I'd post the link for all you closet mushers out there. You do have to register to see the map (at least I did), but I can't imagine getting spammed from a sled dogger. Here's the link.

http://race.ionearth.com/iditarod/

Old Toys

Owen has started playing a little more with his Fisher Price Little People stuff lately. Beth and Isabel play too (Beth has a favorite bunny called Giggles-Chee-Nye-Nye...no idea why). Anyway, I was looking on ebay for toys and found some of the old ("vintage" per ebay) Fisher Price toys. I had a favorite (Super Dog) which was a dog with triangle ears and a red collar that I have many fond memories with. My mom even got me a replacement last year which I must say I love. Anyway, as I was browsing, I came across the Sesame Street set from the older Fisher Price stuff (the version I used to play with). I nostalgically (is that a word?) browsed through the photos and then glanced at the price...

$169.50 + $62 shipping!!!!!

Wow!!! I guess we'll stick with the newer stuff. If it is still for sale the link to the listing is here.