Amazing April

After a vacation, I have found that there is often punishment to be served for allowing yourself to have a good time. When I returned home from Las Vegas, I spent most of the rest of April taking care of sick children. I still haven't fully unpacked, but am finally close to being caught up with laundry and housework. Amidst all of the illnesses, we still managed to have some fun.

We colored eggs for Easter and had to be extra careful due to Miles' egg allergy.




We created eggs with silly faces this year, and Miles offered up a silly face of his own.

The Easter bunny arrived and left outfits, goodies and toys.

Tate was very sick with a high fever Easter morning, so we let him sleep and Miles got to find all of the eggs without any competition.

Miles enjoyed what the Easter bunny brought and we spent the morning playing with the new things and getting a little hopped up on sugar.

When Tate awoke he checked out his new things and rediscovered the eggs Miles had already found.

Miles got dressed in his Sunday best, as he had to give a talk in Primary. Scott had to teach a lesson and work in the clerk's office, and I was supposed to help out in the nursery and assist with Miles' talk, so we got help with what we could and juggled what we couldn't, so that we could take care of Tate. Consequently, I couldn't get a picture of the boys together in their Easter clothes. But I got these great pictures of Miles, even if he didn't want to have them taken.

Miles had another karate testing this month and received his cheetah patch and corresponding bandanna. He is really doing well and it is fun to see his growth.

I normally take a few pictures of Miles at home in his new attire, but this time grabbed a few pictures in the parking lot at karate instead. Turned out to be a smart decision because we didn't make it home before he started throwing up.

The next Sunday, after more than a week of high fevers, vomiting and extreme crankiness, Tate was able to put on his cute Easter outfit and pose for a couple of pictures. I would like to point out that he was also wearing some darling pants and shoes, but somehow managed to get melted chocolate on the pants and so he was just in his diaper for the waist-up photos. And how about that new haircut?! What a little doll (in my usual unbiased opinion).

Miles illness caused him to miss out on a friend's birthday party, as well as dinosaur sharing day at preschool, both of which were devastating to a 4-year old boy. But, he had recovered enough to be able to accompany his class on their field trip to the farm at Thanksgiving Point. Tate and I went along as well and we all had a really lovely time.

Miles got to feed the animals, take a wagon ride and have snack time with his class. After the rest of his class left to go home, I let Miles and his friend Talmage stay a few extra minutes and play in the little jailhouse on the farm.

Here's to a May with no sick children!

Viva Las Vegas!

I recently returned from our annual family girl trip (we missed you this year Dawnelle). This year, my mom, sister and I jetted off to fabulous Las Vegas, one of my favorite places to play. And although we managed to steer clear of much of the trouble one can easily find in Vegas, we still had a blast.

We spent more time than we should have in various shopping venues and brought home more than our overflowing suitcases allowed. Las Vegas is an incredible place to shop. The number of shopping malls, outlet stores and casino shops is unreal (in the best way possible). It doesn't hurt that we are queen bargain hunters. Love, love, love to shop in Vegas.




Miles loves rhinos, so we took this picture for him on one of our shopping adventures.



My favorite thing we did this year was to see the Beatles "Love" Cirque du Soleil show at the Mirage. It was unbelievably good. It was especially fun because the songs were all familiar. The show was so creative and entertaining. Plus, we had wonderful seats. We could have reached out and touched the performers (if we were weird like that). I even had a couple of the performers sneak up behind me and scare me. My mom and sis got a big kick out of me being so startled. Such a fun night. I highly recommend this show.









We played many card games, took naps, went to a movie and ate at yummy restaurants.




We got a little silly.










We watched many water shows at the Bellagio. This is my all-time favorite thing to do in Las Vegas. Maybe I'm a dork, but I could watch these amazing water shows all day and night. I mean, water swaying to the rhythm and spraying in time to really fun and catchy music, and then shooting sky high at pinnacle points in the song. . . what could be better than that? Yep, probably am a dork.

We discovered that Elvis was alive and well in Vegas. He had, however, fallen on hard times and was accepting tip money for photo ops. We were happy to oblige.




My mom and sister took the ride up to the top of the fake Eiffel Tower at the Paris casino and got some incredible aerial shots of Las Vegas. They also got some really beautiful shots of the Bellagio water shows. Did I mention how much I love those things? :)

For the record, I skipped out on the Eiffel tower experience and decided to take a break and do some people watching. There is nothing like people watching in Vegas. That's another thing I could do for hours. There was the woman dressed all in really shiny, skintight gold clothing with white fur trim; the large number of gorgeous women accompanied by their very wealthy, and slightly less attractive, sugar daddies; the wannabe movie stars who wore their sunglasses indoors; the young man who was so excited about graduating from college that he got completely drunk and passed out for most of the Beatles show; the number of senior citizen women with cigarettes and fanny packs who never moved away from their slot machines; and of course, all of the guys who were dressed to hit the clubs. Loved it!

I am looking forward to our girls' trip next year, but Vegas will be tough to beat.