Happy, Dirty Kids

I need to do an Easter post and a post with our latest photo shoot (I'm in LOVE with the pictures), but for now, I just want to post a couple of funny pictures.

We swap with our friends for temple trips and we watched the kids on Saturday. I thought sidewalk chalk would be a fun activity. They wanted to water to make the chalk "creamy" (not a bad description, given the way it looked). But somehow that digressed to "blueberry hands". They thought they were so funny. And maybe they were.

Last night, we had black bean soup. I had a bowl for James that I was carefully feeding him, but I got distracted because I was getting cookies ready for Brad's pack meeting. And in the middle of that I burned my finger on a hot chocolate chip (unfortunately, I wasn't even getting a taste of it when I did this). And I feel like Annie may have been refusing to go potty at the same time. In any case, when I finally came back to the table to finish feeding James and eating myself, this is what I found. Love it!

It was the perfect comic relief I needed at just such a moment. After he'd grabbed as much as he could with his hands, he decided the best way to get at the rest was to put the bowl on his face. Awesome!

In other news, James has been taking baby steps for a couple of weeks now. He still doesn't do it all that often and is not that steady, but he has taken several steps.

Spring Break, part 2

Sorry for the long hiatus! I'm sure you've all been anxiously awaiting this post. ;)

The next day was Sunday, so we went to a ward in Newport News. This was so fun for me because my sister served her mission in Richmond and Newport News was one of her areas! We also "met" (meaning I searched out) one of the moms of one of my parents' missionaries. That was so fun! Brad thought I was a little silly for searching her out (she may have been in the other ward that met in the same building), but I still maintain that missionary moms love any connection, no matter how small, to their missionary. And I got a good report too - the missionary's mom said he LOVES my parents. :)

After church we headed down to Virginia Beach. It looked like such a beautiful day, I really thought it would be pretty crowded, but it was COLD with the wind blowing. So we took a small stroll along the boardwalk, had our picture taken with Poseidon, and went home.

Monday was Annie's 3rd birthday! We tried to make it special for her even though we weren't home. We had a big breakfast (her favorite meal of the day), let her open presents, and then headed to Colonial Williamsburg. Williamsbury was awesome! Several of the houses are the houses that were there when the colony was first founded. We saw the house of Thomas Jefferson's law tutor. It was great to experience (in a small way) a piece of our history. Brad was so nice and let me go on the opening tour and the tour of the governor's palace sans enfants.

That evening we took the kids mini golfing at our resort. Annie was a crack up! She would hit the ball wherever and then move it right in front of the hole and hit it in. She was so proud of herself. :)

We had to go to the time resort spiel in the morning on Tuesday, but after that, we headed to Richmond. We went to see a civil war museum and the White House of the Confederacy. This was SO fascinating to me! I never realized how much people in the South really still value being a Virginian rather than an American. The museum was very pro-Confederacy. When I walked out with James, someone commented that I was holding "our youngest Confederate". I felt like saying, "Not so much. We're Yankees. We're glad the North won." But instead I just smiled. The bookstore in the museum was full of books that were titled like, "How the North Perpetuated Slavery", etc. But the highlight of Richmond for me was the tour of the White House of the Confederacy. Our guide was EXACTLY who you want to take you on a tour. This man was obsessed with President and Mrs. Davis. At one point he told me he could talk for hours about Mrs. Davis. And I don't doubt it. You could tell he really wished history had turned out differently. I learned a lot about the Davises. Apparently he was best friends with Franklin Pierce and was his Secretary of Defense. There was a picture of George Washington in the house and I asked about it, and the tour guide told me that the founders of the Confederacy loved Washington and that if Washington had been alive during the Civil War, he would have led the armies of the Confederacy because he was, after all, a Virginian. Who knows? Maybe he would have . . . Just so you know how nerdy we are, Brad and I listened to Founding Brothers on the way home and Madison and Jefferson were both keenly attuned to Virginia's rights and place in the new Union. But I digress . . . Brad was not as enthralled as I was. He ripped off our "White House of the Confederacy" stickers as soon as we walked outside, lest anyone take us for white supremacists.

On Thursday, we visited Jamestown. This time, I took the hit and let Brad have a morning of tours to himself. He got to listen to one of the chief archaeologists working on the Jamestown site. Apparently until a few years ago, they thought that most of the site had been covered by the river, but then found evidence that it hadn't, so what they've discovered it relatively new. It was really fantastic. We saw the building where the first type of democracy occurred in America (as far as we know). This was by far Brad's favorite part of the trip.

We finished off the trip by stopping in DC to visit one of Brad's and my good friends. He and Brad worked at BYUSA together and then did the flagship program together, so he was in China with us. We really love him! AND I finally got to meet his wonderful wife! She was so great - I knew she would be, but it was fun to finally meet her!

We spent lots of time swimming and enjoying being together. It was a FANTASTIC trip!

There, now I'm only two or three posts behind.