New Orleans!!

Here are some pictures of our fabulous trip to New Orleans, the big easy. Unfortunately, the battery died on our camera the first full day we were there and I didn't bring the charger. So most of the pictures we have are on Darren's camera. He will have to post those to his blog. I did get a lot of use out of the video camera so if I can figure out how to post some of those, I will. These are all pictures from our first day there.


















Part of the French Quarter - taken by Darren


















One of the delicious restaurants we ate at. It was also in the French Quarter. You can kind of see some of the surrounding buildings.



















We didn't have a car there so a lot of our transportation was on the cable cars. We spent some time waiting for the cars to come. This is how Darren made good use of his time on one of those waits.


















At the convention the students in our group went to, they had vendors like Crayola, Roseart, etc giving out freebies. We came home with a lot of art supplies and this is Ethan putting them to good use.

Jackson Square

Jackson Square is a park/square in New Orleans with a big statue of Andrew Jackson on a horse in the middle of the park. It is surrounded by a lot of benches, a fountain and beautiful flowers and trees. Right outside of the square is a beautiful old Catholic church. I don't remember the name of the church --- I'm thinking St Andrews??-- but maybe someone will help me out in the comments. Anyway, it is one of the oldest Catholic churches around. The outside doesn't look that old because they work hard to keep it up. But here are some pictures on the outside and inside. Darren took all of these pictures so I hope I don't get in trouble for posting them. But he usually doesn't post anything from my snapshot camera and these were on the snapshot camera. They deserve to be posted because he did a great job. I am giving him credit, though :-)



















Jackson Square with a beautiful Live Oak tree and some azaelas.

























The Catholic church
























A painting and one of many statues inside the church. These were at the very front behind the altar.




















Some of the candles burning. You could purchase a candle to burn in the gift shop.























Holy water
























One of many stained glass windows.























Me sitting on one of the pews.

Easter 2008

Happy late Easter! I forgot to post Easter pictures until I saw them on everyone else's blogs.




















The boys with their Easter baskets

















Kevin painting eggs.
























Ethan showing off his newly colored egg.
Jacob was thankfully asleep during egg coloring time.

Rebecca's Tag

This is an answer to Rebecca's tag. The question is: How did you choose the names for your children?
I'm afraid there are no amazing stories here. For our first child there was really only one name Darren wanted and that was Kevin. So at the hospital I gave in. For the other two I wrote down a bunch of names I liked from the baby book, and gave the list to Darren. He vetoed most of them but agreed to the ones we chose, Ethan and Jacob. Middle names, though, are family names. Kevin's middle name, William, is after Darren's grandfather. Ethan's middle name, Darren, is obviously after his father. Jacob's middle name, Keith, is after my dad.

My personality

Here is my personality map. Thanks, Carrie, it was fun. For those of you that don't know how to do it, just put the cursor over one of the colors and it will show you what it represents. The bigger the square, the more I have in my personality.

Darren's b-day

March 6 was Darren's birthday so here are some pictures of the big celebration. Better late than never. Enjoy!















Darren lighting his own cake.
















The pose before blowing them out.














One of Darren's presents.















Another of Darren's presents. For Christmas last year (from work) he got a triple combination and this past year he got a Bible. He was excited because he has needed some new ones. So I bought him a new scripture case for Christmas to go with them. One of the first weeks he took them to church he left them there and we have never been able to find them. Of course, his name wasn't in them either. So he got some new ones for his birthday. And his name was on them this time.

Ice Removal

This winter, as the snow on our roof has started to melt, it formed a huge overhang of ice. It was pretty hazardous. If a piece fell it was probably big enough to hurt someone or something it fell upon. We quit parking next to the house. Yesterday I was inside fixing dinner and I heard huge banging sounds. I was about to go yell at the kids to quit banging on whatever they were banging but then I looked out the window. Darren had gotten home from work and was trying to knock the ice down with a broken handle of a shovel or hoe or something like that. So I ran and got the camera to document it. I was a big "help".



















Darren hitting at the ice (and the mini van in the background).



















Chunks of ice falling.




















Chunks of ice falling on Darren. It did hit him on the arm/hand and made him bleed. Good thing it wasn't on his head.















Some of the ice on the ground.

Clark's New Ride

Some of you already know that last Monday we bought a new minivan. It is a Toyota Sienna and we love it! I should have taken a picture earlier but didn't and now Darren has my camera. So I'll post a picture later. Anyway, it's a great car. The story I want to post tonight is the sale of our Geo Prism. I looked on the Kelly's Blue Book website and found that for the condition and miles of our car I could sell it for $1800. We priced it at $1200 or best offer so that it would sell fast. Darren said if I sold it, I could decide what to do with the money. So today I contacted the local papers to put adds in the classifieds and I also put a "for sale" sign in the car itself. This week I planned to drive that car around and park it on the street at work so it would be more visible. Tonight I drove it to Albertsons to pick up some chicken for dinner (it was cheap chicken Monday). A couple met me at the deli counter and asked if I was the one selling the car. I said I was and they said they were interested. So they met me at our house about an hour later, test drove the car, and offered me $1000 for it. Darren and I had already decided that we would accept that if someone offered. So I sold my car in one day. And that's my story.

Deep Copper

A couple of weeks ago Kristi came over and helped me paint the kitchen. A few months ago we took the wallpaper down and it has been that way ever since - which means it wasn't looking very pretty. So here is what the new phase looks like. When it finally warms up and dries up enough outside we will do the cabinets and trim. More on that later. Darren and I attempted to change the outlets to white but found that it's more complicated then we thought. We figured the old ones would have to do for now.

















Kristi on top of the fridge. She looks like she's having fun, doesn't she?















Finished product
















Another finished product

Space Derby

I am supposed to be doing taxes right not but the software is not working as it should (actually it's probably me not knowing what to do with it on our Mac). So I have to wait for Darren to help me and decided to make good use of my time by updating my blog. I have a lot of pictures for blog entries so the next three entries are new. Make sure you check all of them out :-) You never know what you might miss.

Thursday night was Kevin's first Space Derby at pack meeting.



















Here are Darren, Kevin, and Ethan sanding down the rocket.















This is what Jake was doing during the rocket making. He was more interested in dinosaurs at the time.














Putting the finishing touches on the rocket.















Getting ready for the rocket to fly. Darren and I often take turns going to Kevin's functions because Jacob is at a difficult age to take to some of them. Darren usually goes to pack meeting but decided he wanted a break from this one. That was fine with me because it was my turn to go. That is, it was fine with me until I got there and realized this was almost as much a dad event as it was a cub scout event. I was the only mom helping a scout. There were moms there watching but it was the dads that were involved the most. Then when they told me his rocket wasn't ready to fly I did not know what to do. I hadn't done anything with making it, that was all Darren. So I didn't know what it needed. I had to borrow a pocket knife from one of the dads, look at someone else's finished rocket, attempt to make some notches in the bottom and borrow a piece from another scout to make the rocket ready. We did get it done and Kevin's rocket won both times it raced. So it all worked out in the end. But we will know at the next derby, Darren must be there. And in all fairness to Darren, he didn't know it would be such a dad event, either.



















Kevin and his winning rocket.

















Kevin's rocket "in the air". His opponent's rocket didn't even make it far enough to be in the picture.

Miscellaneous

Below are some miscellaneous pictures I have taken recently to use on my blog but have never added them. Since they don't really go with any other pictures, I have just combined them.















Our beautiful blooming Christmas Cactus.















The serving bowls my parents brought me back from Costa Rica. They worked great when we had taco soup.














Kevin and Jacob doing their morning ritual - watching cartoons in my bed. Ethan requested that I take this picture so I did it to humor him. But it is cute.

Snow

You've all seen Darren's blog and the many winter photographs he has been taking. In fact, he's out right now doing some more. Here are my snow photographs. I know, they don't compare to his but it's the best I can do.



















Darren shoveling snow. Look how much snow we have shoveled from our driveway this year. It's almost as tall as Darren is.
















This is the flower bed by our front door. I love this spot for early blooming flowers because it is against the south side of our house and is the first place the snow melts completely. In the past four winters we have lived in this house the crocuses start popping up in late February, early March. I don't think it's going to be as early this year.















Ethan and Kevin like to come out and "help" us shovel the driveway. They get the shovels out for about two minutes and move snow around, then play in the snow. Here Ethan has made a bed in the snow.

















Kevin's bed in the big pile of snow next to the driveway.

















All the boys on the sled at Snowfest (see Darren's blog for more info/pictures on that).

Our Sunday morning/early afternoon

This year we get to go to church at 2:00 pm. I've never done that before, and, to be honest, it's not my favorite time to go to church. But it does leave a lot of time in the mornings to do things. We are still trying to get our routine worked out. Darren and I have decided to try and put Jake down for his nap at 11:30 or 12:00. So yesterday morning I wanted to put him in the bathtub and get him all ready for church before his nap. That way we could wake him up right before church and he would be ready to go. His hair was looking really long and unkempt. I decided to get out the clippers and cut his hair before I put him in the bathtub. He's not the most cooperative kid at getting his hair cut. In fact, he hates it. He had tears rolling down his face and all the hairs that fell onto his face stuck to the tears. I had Kevin take some pictures but he didn't get very close. When I was two thirds of the way done the clippers broke and I couldn't get them to stay together long enough to finish. About this time, Darren woke up from his nap ( or maybe Jake's screaming woke him up?). He tried to fix them, gave up and went to Walgreens to get some new ones. Then I held Jake while he finished the hair cut. By that time there was hair all over the bathroom , Jake and me. I put Jake in the tub while I worked on Ethan's hair. His haircut went much quicker. Just as he as getting in the tub with Jake, he noticed something in the tub that wasn't supposed to be there. Lets just say Jake had done something in the tub that would have been easier to clean up in his diaper. I quickly pulled Jake out of the tub which caused a lot of water to get all over the hair on the floor of the bathroom. We got the tub cleaned up, new water put in and kids back in the tub. Then tackled the bathroom mess. It turned out to be a not so relaxing Sunday morning/early afternoon.

Utah snapshots

We went to Utah for the Bartholomew Christmas party last weekend. ( I know, Christmas is over but this is when Ben could be home on leave from Iraq and Andy was home from his mission. We didn't know Andy was coming home a month early when we planned all this.) Anyway, here are a few snapshots from the weekend.
















Kevin and Ethan showing off the Pokemon game Andy gave them. Just as a warning, if Kevin asks any of you to play it with him, he will win. No one knows as much about Pokemon as Kevin does unless maybe Jared. (Mitchell, I'm guessing not Hawes. But maybe Jared Hawes knows just as much too. :-))



















Ben and Jenna taking a nap together. Ben woke up when I was taking this picture but he humored me and "went back to sleep" for the picture. They look cute together, don't they?
















The kids showing off the presents they got from the present game.



















I tried several times to get a good picture of Jenna because she was being really cute playing with a ribbon and crawling around in the wrapping paper. But she just woudn't hold still long enough to get a focused shot. This is the best I could do.
















Darren, Jake with his new truck and Ethan with his new dinosaur.

Rexburg Temple Open house

This morning at 7:00 am we had tickets to go to the Rexburg Temple open house. When tickets first became available they were gone within the first few days. We didn't get any at that time. But because of the high demand of interest in the open house, they opened up more time slots early in the mornings. Since we didn't have a printer at the time, Tracie helped us get some tickets. So this morning we finally saw it and it is beautiful. I was afraid Jacob would be trying to get into everything but he was actually scared to be put down. Either Darren or I had to hold him the whole time. And he's a heavy kid, especially climbing several sets of stairs. But I think it was a great experience for the kids. How many opportunities do you actually have to tour a temple? Not many. At church yesterday they said they were going to put out 30,000 more tickets so if anyone is interested go to www.lds.org to get tickets. (And actually, they didn't even take our ticket this morning. I don't think they will turn anyone away that doesn't have a ticket. A co-worker of mine went with her daughter without tickets and they got in without any trouble.) The open house runs until Jan 26 and then the dedication is Feb 3, 2008. Last week I also had an opportunity to be an usher at the open house. I stood by the baptistry door and made sure everyone went in and out the right doors to keep traffic flowing smoothly. Darren gets to be an usher later this month. We didn't take any pictures because you can't take them in the temple and we had to park at the stake center down the hill from the temple. So even to take a picture by the temple we would have had to have gone back to the stake center to get the camera and then march up the icy hill early on a cold January morning to take a picture. We'll just have to do it when it gets a little warmer.

Bringing in 2008

Happy New Year everyone! We brought in the new year with a great group of people. Here are Ethan, Tracie, Jeff, me, Jon, and Kristi and Darren is behind the camera.
















Darren really wanted to have a make out contest at midnight but no other couples wanted to participate. So here are Darren and I making out.

























































And New Years Eve also happens to be Kristi's birthday. She blew her candles out the first time but had her eyes closed. So we relit them and had her pose again so we could get a good picture.