Random April Photos for your viewing pleasure...

With a little narration along the way. Above. Look on Hayden's plate. It's the Muffin Man!

The finished product of our egg-dying the Friday before Easter. I don't know who sorted them by color in the carton. Not I!
I picked these from our back yard one morning before it snowed later in the day. I'm glad I did. They grow way back in the corner, so I would never see them unless in the yard. And when it is snowing, I just don't go play in the yard. Much.
We had a nice visit from Andrew, Christine and their family. They live in Wyoming and have three cute kids. Andrew is Mike's nephew.

So we enjoyed dinner together before they went on their way to St. George for Spring Break with Andrew's sister and family.
One nice WARM day (they really vary a lot!), Mike and Jonathan wen out to do some yard work.

Caroline lent a hand, as well, and they dumped the leaves on our garden plot. It's all plowed now, and ready to plant. Now, if it would just stop freezing and snowing!

These are the cute little jonquils by the back wall. Don't they look happy?
Grape hyacinth. They are natives to the yard. Lest you think we only have good stuff, see below.
I guess Dandylions are good--for salads! ha
And then, we had the visit from Katie and the boys. Here are some other shots. Blue berry pancakes for breakfast. It was still April, but there were no paper towels in them this time ;-)
Hayden is taking the snake for a walk through the kitchen. He really does have a ribbon tied around the rubber snake's neck. It's a VERY popular toy, I'm telling you!
Katie and Seth celebrating their birthdays sometime AROUND April 15. The 62 on the cake represents their combined years. Katie is 29, Seth 33. And the cake was German Chocolate! mmmmm. Dinner was good, too.
Except for this very odd character of a carrot stick I found in the bag. We think it looks like a vulture head. How about you?
Dying eggs.
This is what Katie and Corbin were doing while we were dying eggs in the kitchen. Motherhood is tough. ZZZzzzzz (I made the blankie they're snuggled under -- it's soft flannel and very cuddly)





Gail and the kids. Everybody wants to hold Corbin!

Just today, April 30. Jonathan and I were out in the back yard. It was BITTER COLD, but sunny. He's helping us rotate the composter here. There is a peach tree in the far back corner of the yard--covered in a tarp because we're attempting to save some fruit. Why bother? They will be all frozen. It's so cold here. Cherries, Pears, Apples, Apricots, Peaches. All in bloom now or were earlier, and most will not survive the freezes this year. Again.
Lest you think all my flowers are pretty . . .oh, wait, I already said that. Well, THIS (below) is the flower bed that all those cute little jonquils were smiling up from earlier in the month. Now the weeds have taken over and it's gettin' ugly out there!!!




Apple blossom buds. Soon to be frozen apple blossom buds. Note the little red and yellow car in the background on the lawn? Jonathan and I were "offroading" in the back yard! ha. Just a diversion from the carport and driveway where his dad was working on some brakes.

Happy Spring. Or winter, or whatever it is.

P.S. I braved the cold this morning and did a 5 K "Fun Run" [an oxymoron if ever there was one] and wore THREE layers of clothing on my legs. I finished in about the same time as every other time I've done it. This is probably the 4th or 5th time I've done that run and they changed the venue this year! We ran up the Canyon trail and back to the ball parks instead of around the campus. Brrrr. They didn't start until 10 a.m., but still. 40 degrees plus a windchill. Doesn't that make it in the 30's at least? I will treasure my sweatshirt, medal and t-shirt forever. ha! The sweatshirt (too small for me ) went to Caroline. The t-shirt (too big for me) went to Mike. The Medal will live in my dresser drawer with the others.

Easter and Spring Time

A sleepy little Corbin baby. He is SUCH a sleepy-head!!
Seth and "the boys", well a couple of them anyway.

Katie decided to come to Cedar City with her boys. Well, she left the Big Boy (her husband, Casey) at home in Reno because he had to be on call and she knew she wouldn’t be seeing much of him anyway. So she brought Hayden and Corbin. It’s a long drive to Cedar City from Reno on any day. But alone with two babies under three, it’s really a stretch of LONG highway. I think she made the 9 hour drive in 12 hours. Lots of stops, lots of stretching, a food break or two, diaper changes, feedings, etc. Luckily, Corbin still sleeps a lot so he wasn’t as much of a bother. Hayden, on the other hand.. . . well, lets just say he’s not looking forward to the drive home (only he doesn’t know it yet! Ha).

And I had a nice time visiting with my girls. Unfortunately, an ‘almost 2’ and ‘almost 3’ year old really do have clashing personalities in this instance! There were a couple of times that Hayden and Jonathan actually played together, but most of the time they did NOT. It kept us on our toes.

(My apologies for not remembering to edit the photos before saving and inserting them here. If you know whether or not photos can be edited, please let me know.)

Katie had a little list of things to do while she was here for the week. She got here late on the night of the 16^th, so the next day was church. There is a funny story with the photo below. Mike woke up to take this photo right after sacrament meeting was over. ALL THE boys on the bench were sleeping ! We were tending Gail and Seth’s kids that weekend while Seth worked and Gail was out of town working, so there was Hayden, Jonathan, Corbin and MIKE all snoozing along through sacrament meeting at one point. (Mike just had his “eyes closed,” he insisted.)

But when I looked down the row and realized that none of the girls were snoozing, but ALL the boys were, I just couldn’t help but smile. I pointed it out to Katie and then we both got the quiet giggles and shook the bench with silent laughter. I think Caroline got it, too. It t’was quite funny. It might help to know that it was about 90 degrees in the chapel that day. Whew. Sweltering for sure, so holding sleeping babies and tots wasn’t too terribly comfy—but what choice did we have?!

Next on her list was to make some Easter baskets like the cloth ones that I’d made our kids. She had some cute fabric, so I worked on that with her some evenings and on Friday/Saturday. They turned out cute, if I do say so myself. Katie showed the new little basket to Hayden and said it was his new Easter basket to put his eggs in. Hayden told his mommy he “want eggs.” And she was busy with something and said, “Uh huh, for your Easter eggs.” He’s only 2. He doesn’t remember last Easter. But he knows eggs! So he got the eggs out of the fridge and BROKE an RAW EGG into his brand new basket!! Too funny. Katie could hardly stop snickering long enough to document it with photos. But she did. I was at work that day.

Thursday the 21^st we had a loverly dinner party with Katie’s in-laws and some good friends, the Castro’s. Below is Katie with her in-laws (Michelle, Kaysha and Howie)

Two of the three grandmas (below). And, yes, my eyes are closed...Oh well.

Why is this snake such a popular toy with all the grand kids?

Mike made dinner on that night. He was off work from Wednesday through Friday and I only had Friday off. So, he fed the Missionaries on Wednesday (and made the dinner!), he made the grilled chicken AND Dutch Oven potatoes for Thursday’s dinner. Then Friday, Mike and his Mom headed to SLC for some errands, visits, etc. The Thursday evening dinner and socializing after was so fun. Hayden was kind of taking things in and said, “There’s THREE grandmas!” And he was right—Great Grandma Liebhardt, Grandma Linda and ‘YaYa’ Rossman. Smart boy!

Katie and I took some time on Friday afternoon and I showed her the new Aquatic Center here in town, and we walked to the “Lake at the Hills” to show her that, too.

We waxed each other’s legs, too. (no photos to document THAT! ) That was on her “List” while here. That was a major job, I’m telling you! Katie had grown quite a formidable forest upon her legs—enough to raise eyebrows if anyone actually looked upon them!! So, we waxed away one evening. Hayden was spending the night with his other grandma and grandpa, so it was kind of quiet that Friday evening. People have different hair-growth patterns. She has none on her knees; I do. I have sparse growth on calves, hers is thick. Her feet are bare, mine are not. As Katie was taking in my furry foot tops, she said, “Mom, you’re like a Hobbit!” and then we melted away into giggles and in the process she almost got her hair stuck to the wax . . .which would have made her head a little bald. Then we laughed all the harder. And my feet are nowhere NEAR the harry-ness Bilbo or Frodo or whoever the Hobbits are!! FYI. Caroline spent the night with us girls that night. We did not subject her to any painful waxing. But she did help with the basket-sewing endeavors by ironing the strips.

OK, what else did we do? We died eggs on one day with Gail and her kids. Those pictures are on Gail’s camera to be added here later. [My camera is lost in my messy room somewhere (I guess) and these that I’m posting are from Katies’ camera.]

Saturday, Nick came from SLC and he and Katie, Hayden and Caroline all drove to Zion while I tended Corbin and made preps for our early family Easter Dinner of sorts.

Those kids all came back tired, Mike and his mom returned from SLC in the afternoon, and Gail’s family joined us, too. We had three of my five kids AND more than half our grandkids here for our Saturday night dinner! YAY!! [Yes, Tandy, we DID miss you guys!] It was fun. We had a very fast little Easter egg hunt in the wet front yard just after dinner. It had just rained. Nick filmed it on Katie’s flip camera and I think it took 1 minute and 15 seconds to find 15 eggs. Ha. We kept it small and simple on purpose. Caroline was the only one who knew that plastic eggs were usually filled with candy and/or money. But we didn’t want the 2 and 3 year olds to HAVE candy, so we just hid them empty, and since they didn't know any better, they were just fine with it. Caroline was a little disappointed, I suppose. It was Nick’s first experience as “Bunny” he said [he was the designated hider and did a nice job]. I think they had a fun, all-be-it brief time.

I’m posting this on Sunday. I made fresh Blueberry muffins for breakfast this morning and made some in the shape of gingerbread men. I have a silicon mold-thing that makes them. The muffin men popped right out, prompting me to sing “Oh do you know the muffin man?” as I plopped them on their plates. hee hee. Church, Sunday dinner, relaxing, then Katie and the boys head home to Casey tomorrow. It’s been a fun week! Thanks for coming, Katie and kids!