Super Mega Blog Update!

So I’ve kind of gotten behind with my blogging, but I’m catching up now.
Read ahead about the following...

Spring Break
April Fool’s
Conference Weekend
Dave’s Birthday
Easter
and…
Wicked!

WICKED!

Waiting in anticipation for Wicked. We had dinner at the Blue Iguana restaurant (which was delicious), next door to the theatre.


On April 14, we finally went to see Wicked at the Capitol Theatre! Dave stood in line the beginning of December to get tickets (it was my birthday/Christmas present), and it seemed like we waited a long time. Here’s my unofficial review…

Wicked truly was a spectacle! I have to tell you, I was a little skeptical going in, thinking maybe this musical was just a craze, and probably overrated. But it deserves all of the praise it receives!
The music was great! There was good variety and style. I’m totally a music nerd because I was counting in my mind the syncopated rhythms and listening for the pitches and range. The lyrics were fun and uplifting. They had some good messages throughout. I have to say my favorite song was “Gravity”.

The performers were amazing, though it was not the original cast, they were very good compared to what I’ve heard on the sound track.

The settings were breathtaking! The props and stage backgrounds and the costumes were all beautiful! Here’s the dragon above the stage I took a picture of. It did blow out smoke, but Dave thought it would’ve been cool if breathed fire into the audience.

It was actually a lot more humorous than I was expecting. It was witty and fun.
The only thing I didn’t like were the monkeys…they were a little freaky! Dave thought they were cool, but I was kind of scared!

I LOVED Wicked, and want to see it again someday. It was worth every penny we spent! We give it two thumbs up!

Happy Easter!

Easter was great this year! Here are a few of the activities and traditions we enjoy...

Decorating for Easter. Emma has a fun time helping to decorate now. “I like to decorate for the Holidays!” she exclaimed. She would put a decoration somewhere and say “that looks good there!”

Emma just had to put these bunny ears on herself and Cal!

Baking for Easter. We always bake some fun things. Emma loved this carrot because it was so huge, and ended up eating it instead of using it in our cooking.

The Stoddard/Richens family Easter picnic and egg hunt is always the day before Easter.
Daddy pushing Emma on the swings.

Egg hunting! We always have an egg hunt, in which the youngest go first. Emma is the youngest kid, so she got to go first. She really got into the whole egg hunting thing this year. When we got our Easter decorations out, we had many egg hunts in our house, I’d put little toys and tootsie rolls and pennies in her eggs, hide them, and Emma would find them. She asked to do that a lot. We did have to throw away the Easter grass, though. It was getting tracked all over the house for days and was driving me nuts!

I think Emma looks so grown-up in this picture. This is also what happens when Daddy is in charge of doing Emma’s hair! He he! Good job, babe! This pic was taken when we were playing baseball.

Some bunny is not happy! Our cute little Easter bunny!

Emma with her Easter basket. She got a big thing of bubbles, a gum ball machine, some fruit slices, and some marshmallow bunnies. She was pretty excited about the gum ball machine! The Easter bunny also hid eggs with little dress-up jewelry inside.


Cal got some new binkies (he can’t get enough of those things), and some toys. No peeps for you this year, little buddy!

The Ryerse Easter egg hunt is a big deal. We all dye 12 eggs (we each get a dozen, which is a ton!) and then Grandpa goes and hides them all. Some are easy to find, but some are really hard. Many years there will be a few eggs that will take us forever to find!

Here’s Callahan with Grandpa, apparently enjoying the egg hunt.

Emma looking for eggs in her Easter dress. I thought it turned out pretty cute, though it looked more like a moo-moo.

The egg dying and the chocolate bunnies are fun, but the real reason for Easter is the Savior. I love this doctrine taught by Joseph Smith: “The fundamental principles of our religion are the testimony of the Apostles and Prophets, concerning Jesus Christ, that He died, was buried, and rose again the third day, and ascended into heaven; and all other things which pertain to our religion are only appendages to it.” Not only all other things in our religion are appendages to it, everything in our lives. We depend on the Savior and His Atoning sacrifice, and everything else is centered around that. I am grateful for his life, death, and resurrection and what it means for us all!

"If You Give a Dave a Donut" - Happy Birthday to you!

Dave turned 27 on April 6, and it was great! The party actually started on Friday, when we celebrated his birthday with the Ryerse fam. We had pizza for dinner, and then we went bowling.

Happy birthday, hon! What's that face for?

"Oh my goodness!"

Dave, Brian, Julie, and Dad Ryerse Bowling Cuties
After bowling, we got home to sing “Happy Birthday”, which is quite the event with the family, and eat ice cream and cake (I thought the motorcycle cake we made turned out really well and looked a great deal like his bike. When I saw the cake pan last year at Bakers C & C, I just had to get it!). Emma told Dave a few days before his birthday that we were going to do a “motorcycle bike” cake for him. She’s not very good at keeping secrets, we have to be careful what we tell her now, he he! We thought it was pretty funny. But he loved the cake, so I’m glad!

On Monday, Dave took some vacation time, so we got to spend the entire day together. Emma and I woke up early and made homemade donuts for Daddy…mmmm…they are so good! We got the idea to do a little book, “If You Give a Dave a Donut” patterend after the “If you give a ______ a ________” books. Emma loves those books and we just kind of got the idea from that. We made a little book for him, and wrote in the text for the book, but left the pages blank to put the pictures we took of our activities throughout the day to use as the illustrations. Here’s part of our little story, with a few pictures. I came up with some of the ideas, but Emma actually helped fill in lots of the ideas for the story.


“If you give a Dave a donut, he’s going to ask for a glass of chocolate milk. When you give him the chocolate milk, he’ll probably ask for a straw…and a napkin. Then he’ll want to look in the mirror to make sure he doesn’t have a chocolate ‘milkstache’. When Dave looks in the mirror, he might notice he’s loosing some hairs. So he’ll probably ask for some Rogaine. When he’s finished applying the Rogaine, he’ll want to take a bubble bath, because the foam reminds him of bubbles. When he gets done, he’ll probably want to get dressed. You’ll have to get out his shirt and pants, socks and shoes. He’ll put on his clothes and go comb his hair. Looking into the mirror again, Dave decides he looks nice, but needs a new outfit. So, you go shopping for one. Driving in the car makes Dave feel like a race-car driver and he gets so excited he’ll want to race. So, he’ll ask to drive a race car. All of this driving reminds him that he’s hungry. So, you’ll go to a restaurant for lunch. Being at the restaurant with remind him that it’s his birthday. And he’ll probably want some birthday cake. So you’ll get some for him. You’ll sing happy birthday and eat cake. And chances are if he eats the cake, he’s going to want a glass of chocolate milk to go with it. ”

Easter Sunday, we celebrated Easter/Dave’s birthday with my family. Here’s the cake my mom made for him. She joked that the bunnies looked like rats, the marshmallow crème decorating clay she used kind of spread out. I thought it was cute.

Conference Weekend

I always love Conference and the Spirit that I feel. I can say I feel “full” now after that feast, but it leaves me hungry for more. I really loved all of President Monson’s talks. What a blessing it is to have him to “guide us in these latter days”. I appreciated all of the messages of hope and optimism, despite that attitude many have that we live in “dooms day”. It is a great time to be alive, and we are blessed to be living in the situations we are, though things can be difficult at times. As President Monson said “The future is as bright as your faith.”

This year, we tried to get Emma involved a little in conference. So I set up on our table by the TV a bunch of objects that would likely be discussed. We had the scriptures, a Primary Children’s Songbook, a fishing pole and fish, temple, Christ statue, picture of our family, keys (for Priesthood keys), an angel, a treasure box, a flash light, fruit, statue of Joseph Smith, Daddy’s missionary pictures, and a Book of Mormon. We had a little bowl of jelly beans, and any time Emma heard any of the key words that were represented by objects on the table, she got to eat a jelly bean. She really got into it, especially the first session. Of course, after 8 hours of conference, a 2-year-olds attention span heads south. She even picked out some of her own words, so it was great! She has a Cabbage Patch doll named Merilee, and during one of the talks, the General Authority said “we should do everything merilly…” Emma got excited and said “Mom! He said ‘Merilee!’”

On Saturday night, we always go out to dinner with the girls, while the guys go to Priesthood. We chose to go to the new Iggy’s (random, I know, and not quite the girly place we usually go) in Centerville. It was really good food, and we had fun. Emma and Tayla loved the ice-cream they got at the end of the meal. We usually go shopping, but Dave’s Grandma Lilly, who lives with Dave’s parents was taken to the hospital earlier that day. She had a staff infection, urinary tract infection, dehydration, and more. She wouldn’t eat at all that week because she couldn’t swallow and couldn’t move and had lots of problems. It was sad. So Sue (Dave’s mom) had to get back to the hospital. So we just played together, and waited for the guys to get home from Priesthood and dinner.

Sunday, my exended side of the family always gets together for a lunch in between sessions, which was at my great Aunt Lois' house. That's a tradition I enjoy and hope to carry on. Then we watch the afternoon session of conference together. Emma had a fun time playing with my young cousins. Here she is with Natalie (you can see Dave on the couch in the background).

Callahan's first conference, eating his hand. He's getting some teeth in and always wants to chew on something. And Emma, "listening" to conference.

My little April Fools Prank

On April Fools, I decided to play a little joke on Dave. I purchased a little pregnancy test from the dollar store the day before, and I colored in the red lines with a marker to make it appear to indicate positive results. I woke up and acted upset and kind of grumpy all day on purpose. When Dave called, I had to try so hard to be mad at him. He kept asking me what was wrong, but I said “nothing”, and wouldn’t say more. I really had a smile on my face all day, but tried to act moody. It was pretty hard! When he got home from school, I apologized for being so emotional lately, but told him there was a good reason for it, and threw the pregnancy test in the box at him, and told him that this was the reason I was having such a rough day. Dave opened it, looked at it, and got a puzzled look on his face for a few seconds, but we both just busted up laughing. I guess I’m not a very good liar! I had to leave to the other room because I was almost laughing. I couldn’t take pretending to be mad all day. Dave said he believed it for maybe two seconds, but then he remembered it was April Fool’s. He wondered why I was so sad that day, and he said he kept thinking to himself that day over and over “What? What did I do?” He was relieved that there really was nothing wrong, and it was all a cover for my little joke! And I had the last laugh.

Our new toy and Spring Break!

With some of our tax rebate money we got back, we decided to purchase a 2001 Honda EX Four Wheeler. It's always been Dave's dream to have a four wheeler, and he found an amazing deal on it, so we got it. Dave's been begging to get one and has always wanted one. He always tells me his sob stories about even from the time he was in elementary school, he'd look up at the Bountiful mountains and day dream about go-carting and riding bikes and four wheelers. He thinks off-roading is a great family activity, and so he thought it would be a great investment, so we went for it. Here it is being loaded up.

Emma was very excited about our four wheeler, especially that it was yellow. She's taking after her daddy, she always has loved riding on four wheelers/snowmobiles/motorcycles. Here she is on a little pink four wheeler she fell in love with at Newgate Motorsports. "We should get this for Emma!" she said. Maybe in a few years, honey! The next picture is of her at the Off Road Expo sitting on a little Kawasaki, which kind of looks like Dave's, only a miniature version. She loves making sound effects while she's sitting on them.

Here are a few pictures of Emma and her cousin Tayla on the four wheeler. Dave gives them rides around the yard at Grandma and Grandpa Ryerse's house, where we store our four wheeler. They have so much fun!

For Spring Break in March, we headed to Knolls, in west central Utah. It was about 30 minutes west of Wendover. We were going to camp there overnight, but the overnight lows were going to be freezing, and since we were bringing the kids, we decided to stay at the luxurious Motel 6 in Wendover. No, it wasn't too bad, it was pretty nice for what we paid. So we went and checked things out in Knolls on Friday night, rode a little bit, then went to explore the city of Wendover. It wasn't very big, but bigger than I thought. We went to eat dinner at Burger King (Emma picked it out, she wanted fries), and then hung out in the hotel room that night. Saturday, we drove back to Knolls. It's kind of like the Dunes, only the terrain is kind of different. We had a great time riding! Emma rode a lot, probably more than me. Dave goes really slow when he's riding with her, and Emma had a grin on her face the whole time! And so did Dave! He looked like a little boy on Christmas morning!

Here's yours truly riding it. It isn't automatic, and I'm not so great with manual transmissions and the whole shifting thing, so I am practicing. It's a fun machine, but I have a ways to go when it comes to driving it proficiently.

We bought a bunch of beach toys to play in the sand with. We made sand castles, dug holes (Emma's favorite), hid things to find, wrote in the sand, and more. Emma had a lot of fun. She wanted to wear her helmet all day, even while just playing in the sand!

This is Cal chilling under our canopy. He slept most of the day, but enjoyed listening to the sounds of dirt bikes.

Here is a picture of Emma playing in the sand, and me riding in the background. Knolls was a fun place, and we hope to go back there soon!