Abundant Recompense Copy

Nate's cousin Jessie brought these slippers back from Guatemala for Addison last year. He has gotten more compliments on them than any other article of clothing he's ever worn. And they keep his tootsies nice and warm every morning while he eats breakfast in his jammies. And I think he looks quite dashing in them. This one's for you Jess!

Addison is really into trains these days. One of his favorite parts of the day is picking up Daddy from the Frontrunner station every afternoon because he gets to see trains...oh, and Daddy too. So in a stroke of genius, Nate decided it'd be fun to have a train extravaganza on Saturday. We started it off right by taking Daddy's train up to Ogden, which is the end of the line for Frontrunner, so there were tons of trains and buses there. The view from inside the train! I think Addison would've been content for at least a week just sitting on the curb watching them all go by. But we got to go inside the train station too, and look in the gift shop (filled with trains). The very best part was outside the museum/gift shop place. They had five engines all lined up on different tracks with several cars attached to each of them and we got to climb up in them and play! It was so fun, and I think Add was pretty much in heaven. After we finished, we hopped back on Frontrunner and he...

This past Monday we started off the gardening season right (if you don't count the weed-tomatoes) by planting two peach trees! Addison did a great job of playing with earthworms and filling the holes. He kept counting to three and throwing in handfuls of dirt. And our spiritual little boy decided that the hole was a great place to pray.

We are so excited to have a garden this year. We went to the nursery a few months ago and bought tons of vegetable seeds and have been diligently weeding and shoveling gravel out of our prospective garden spot since then in anticipation of planting in May. Several weeks ago we started our tomato seeds inside for a family night activity. We used dirt from right next to where we're planting our garden. Within a week all our cups had little sprouts in them. Lots of little sprouts. Some of which were weeds just like the kind I'd been yanking out of that very dirt pile outside. So I pulled up the familiar-looking ones and let the others grow. I'm getting nervous now. I've helped grow many a tomato plant in my life, but never from seeds. And I'm afraid that I might've uprooted the tomatoes instead of the weeds. One tip-off is that we planted 2 seeds in each cup and some of them have 3 or 4 plants. Yikes. Since I have no idea what tomato seedlings should look like duri...

22 weeks Ah the joys of pregnancy. . . having an excuse to take a nap every chance you get, eating anything you want, little kicks and nudges from inside. It almost makes me forget the 60 trips to the bathroom a day, the fact that I wet my pants every time I sneeze, exhaustion even after a nap, and being more emotional than I've been since about age 15. And maternity pants. Oh how I loathe them. Nothing is more grumpifying than trying to do any common household task with a toddler that does not want you to be doing it. Except doing it while your pants are falling down. Thanks to a brainstorming session with my mom, however, we've come up with a brilliant solution and it only cost $6.44 and a trip to the old man section of WalMart. If you wear them underneath your shirt and avoid spandex-like fabric, which I generally do, no one can even tell. That being said, the pregnancy has really been fine. No morning sickness to speak of, just tired a lot, especially during the first trime...

This is Addison's first encounter with play-doh.

In an awesome turn of events that we can attribute to the Church History Department's move to their new building, our Easter weekend was three wonderful days long. (Nate worked from home on Friday - home in St. George.) It was such a nice break to get away from home for a little while and hang around with Nate's family. On Friday we went on a fun hike with Abbey. Since then my shoes have been mysteriously manufacturing red sand every night while I'm asleep. I have a new pile to dump out each morning. Nate's big brother Aaron turned the big 3-0. Yikes! To celebrate and help him feel young again we had a Burger King party. Addison dyed his first Easter eggs. And we gave him an Easter basket on Sunday morning. I like this picture because he's smiling and sucking his thumb at the same time. And we got to play and have a delicious Easter dinner outside in 70 degree weather. Here's Add and all his cousins.

Editing is the kind of work that doesn't get noticed unless it's done wrong. For instance, notice anything out of the ordinary from the front page of Monday's Daily Universe (BYU's student-run newspaper)? Hint: click to enlarge and read the center caption. Can you say bad day for some poor editor out there? Upon realizing that those are apostles, not apostates, BYU rushed to pull all 18,500 copies from the newsstand and reprint the issue, a first for the university. According to Google, 236 news organizations have run the story of "BYU's ungodly typo," including the Boston Herald, FOX, CBS, and Newsweek. I feel sorry for those Daily Universe guys, but what a HILARIOUS example for editing teachers to use for decades to come. Read the newspaper's mea culpa here , and the AP story here .

Here are a few from the last month or so for all Add's fans.

This weekend was awesome. We spent Friday night and Saturday in Provo with Shauna, Doug, and Beck for our church's general conference. We watched both sessions, ate ourselves sick (way too many fruit snacks), got introduced to the tv show House, and just had a general chill session. And then we drove home and still had another day before Nate had to go back to work. And Sunday was at least 60 degrees. Honestly, does it get any better than that? Add taught Uncle Doug how to play Mario Kart In between sessions we had a blast with a bag of moldy bread and BYU's duck pond. BIG ANNOUNCEMENT: Sunday marked 20 weeks of being pregnant. AKA halfway to the finish line!

Here are three reasons why I have an awesome son: 1. He doesn't cry every time I leave the room. By "cry" I mean whine with no tears. 2. He doesn't follow me around every waking second yanking on my pants (which don't stay up that great anyway because they're maternity pants) and whining to be picked up. 3. He doesn't cry (same meaning as in #1) if other children move or make noise. Can you tell I'm babysitting?