Easter 2012

I know most of you have seen many of these photos on Facebook already. If so, I'm sorry to be indulgent. But I want them here, for journaling purposing. Anyway, for the past few years, I have wanted to take photos of my girls with the tulips at the Oakland temple that are always so spectacular, but I never get it together in time before they are gone. This year I had these sweet little dresses from Joel and Mignon's wedding and I had to squeeze it in. Even if it meant that our guests had to let themselves into our house before we arrived home on Easter (Saturday.)

Ok, I know you think this is staged because we have a picture kind of like this from a couple of years ago, but honestly I didn't even see Reese until I uploaded these onto my computer. With one of my two bad eyes closed to snap the photo, I only saw Avery dancing with the statue.

Our cousins came over for Saturday Easter festivities. The dads hid the eggs, and the older kids hunted in the back yard while the younger kids hunted in the front.

It was a beautiful and eggsighting day!

Nature Nerds

 Wow, this past two weeks it has been fun to see the season change from winter (more like Utah's spring) to spring! You know the "Spring" song on Seven Brides for Seven Brothers? We feel like we are living that song with everything blooming and animals run around two by two. We need to learn the words, because we try to sing it every day. We walk a couple of miles every day down our street, and always we discover something new. We have become real nature nerds. Here are some things we discovered on our nature walk today:

Below: Cardinals! They are so beautiful. We have learned their different songs, so we can spot them easier (you thought I was joking about the nature nerd thing?). And no, they aren't that difficult to spot because of their vibrant colors. Did you know it's the males that are so bright?

The Eastern Towhee. This is in our "back yard."

We don't know what kind of lizard this is, which is strange because Jake knows his lizards. hopefully it's not poisonous.. Maybe Mckay can help us out.

 The trees change every day. I didn't get a picture of what I call the "popcorn trees" before they turned green. You thought apricot tree blossoms looked like popcorn! These purple ones are my favorite.

 Break time at the pond...

 And of course, the turtles. The water looks really gross right here because right now pollen is everywhere (this is around the edge of the water, the rest of the pond is clear and beautiful). Everything is yellow right now- all of the cars are caked in pollen, and you can even see it the air. I had our windows open for a half hour today and I had to dust the pollen off of everything. Thank goodness I don't have allergies! Poor Dixie does, though. When we go outside she starts hacking and her eyes begin to water.

Those are all of the critters we captured with our camera. We also saw a snake, woodpecker and blue tailed skinks. I'm surprised we didn't see any rabbits because they are everywhere. I wish we had our camera yesterday because we spotted a couple of anoles (remember those lizards that Mckay had that change from green to brown? Yep, those.) and caught one of them. I tried to convince Jake to let me keep him, but we had to set him free. 

We have really been enjoying the beauties of North Carolina. I'm so grateful to be out here, it's been so fun to explore and experience new things. 

Now we just need to get this baby here. We are excited to have mom come on Tuesday! If I could have this baby sometime between now and then, that would be perfect, so pray for us.  Love you all!

F*A*M*I*L*Y

We got our Christmas gift from the Clives. It is a treasure! Thanks to you all for helping. Dad and I love it. How'd ya'll get so creative?

Pepper says, "Hey".

(Actually, she say's, "Hey, I want a treat")

Life goes on

We really dig our office

The Chef! Ready to make a stir fry dinner.

Treadmill for Christmas Ma at another Youth Conference

(no photo of Dad because our battery went dead after only one photo and I forgot to bring the charger) We were at Aspen Grove - just a little passed Spencer's family cabin in Provo Canyon.

Jensie K

Does Jensie look like an Orton baby or what! She is wearing the same blessing dress that her mommy, Karalyn, wore when she was blessed.

Jensie K Orton Baby Blessing

Great Times

Kiera Chandler

Hello Everyone,

I thought you might enjoy some photos of our life and times in Utah the last couple of weeks.

We are happy to have Mignon and Joel back home. They are living with us for 2 or 3 months while Mig is job hunting and Joel is preparing for a test. It's great to have them. The house was getting a little too quiet.

Joel and Mignon drove 4 days to get here. It took longer than they thought for a few reasons, but the last day they spent a few hours stranded in Laramie Wy. because of the weather. When the roads did open, they had to drive on some pretty awful roads for a while. They arrived around 10pm on the 20th of Feb. I was amazed at Joel - He unloaded the Jeep (everything they own stuffed in it) soon after getting here. Then we all went to bed and he (without Mignon knowing) drove to the store and bought birthday stuff for Mignon. While she was asleep, he got on our computer and printed out a birthday iron on transfer and pressed it on a new t-shirt, blew up a bunch of pink balloons, taped up a birthday sign in the kitchen. Then he went to bed for a very few hours, got up early to make Mignon breakfast and when all that was done, he drove to Salt Lake to start his new, old job!

We had a visit from Kiera and her parents, Alex and Amber. Alex returned after deployment overseas for 10 months. they were able to come to Utah for a visit. It was the first time Alex had ever seen his daughter, as she was born a couple of months after he left. We were invited to her baby blessing last Sunday. Alex gave a very nice blessing.

That same Sunday, Feb 26 - Jensie K Orton was blessed by her father in our home that evening. It was a beautiful blessing for a beautiful baby. The Snyder family came too, McKay and Karalyn provided pizza and rootbeer floats following. What a wonderful Sunday we had.