Saturday: We started the week’s vacation by attending Ryan Theule’s wedding to Beth Kennedy. The ceremony was in Capistrano Beach and was directly on the way to our resort in Carlsbad. As we got on the freeway after the reception, Toby said that she would need to stop to use a restroom in about 15 minutes (why hadn’t she gone before we left?). Well, 15 minutes would have put us right in the middle of Camp Pendleton, so we had to get off the freeway right after we got on. We arrived at The Carlsbad Inn and checked into our room with no problems. We left almost immediately to have dinner with Doug and Gina Morse in San Marcos. Doug did a great job of finding a bunch of restaurants in the middle between his home of Escondido and Carlsbad. It was great to see them and they were off to Hawaii on Sunday. Max had seen the pool and so it was necessary for us to swim right away. After about 10 minutes in the pool with a bunch of older boys, Max was swimming exceedingly well. He was putting his face in the water and swimming the width of the pool without problems. The pool is nicely heated. They also have a jacuzzi that the kids can use. It was about 15 degrees warmer than the pool, but that was not very warm. It felt warm for about 2 minutes when entering after being in the main pool, but I quickly began shivering. At 9 pm the kids went to bed on the sofa bed with many dire warnings about not touching each other. It seems to have worked because they slept the whole night through.

OH MY STARS! Lucy can be soooo hysterical sometimes. She pointed to my arm and asked, “that a bumpy or a finkle?” I had forgotten that I explained the difference between those random bumps on the back of my arms (bumpies), and my freckles (now deemed finkles, I guess). Funny! 🙂

We went to the SB Fair last week – and saw a professional (actor?) cowboy guy do a bunch of lasso rope tricks. So Max has a small rope that he’s been ‘lassoing’ around the front yard. It’s very, very funny to watch – he’s really just yanking it around his body as fast as he can. So today, the kids were playing in the front yard, I’m working in the office and can hear the happy noises, so I’m not paying attention to what the game is. Then they both come inside, and Lucy has the rope tied very tightly around her neck, with like 16 different nots, and he’s been pulling her around, I guess like some cow. OH MY GOODNESS. It was very hard not to run and get the camera, but I’m sure the severity of the situation would have been lost. I untied her (despite her objections – “but I like it!”) and said, “You do not ever tie any living thing around it’s neck with a rope, okay?” Crazyness.

Yes, I realize it was 2 weeks ago. This is pretty quick for me! We praise our Lord for the blessings of family and friends, and especially for His gift of new life.

Dyeing eggs with our good buds the Norbys

Max’s creation

A trip upstairs to do some painting

Easter Day smiles

Easter Bonnets

Cousins Nathan and Lucy – both about to turn 3

Hi there Ya-Ya!

Oooh – look at our loot

Max is very excited to be going to Legoland in a few weeks. To prepare for the vast amounts of Legos he wants to buy, he has been collecting cans and bottles and recycling them after smashing the cans. We generally go once a month after church to the recycling station. Today, we went off schedule because we won’t have any other opportunity before vacation. We got there right after the station re-opened after lunch. We were behind a bunch of other people who all had multiple huge bags of cans and bottles. Being a small station, everyone queues up and goes one at a time. It took us about an hour of waiting for all the gigantic loads to go in front of us. Where other people were loading up multiple 50 gallon trash cans with cans and bottles, Max only filled the bottom 6 inches of the can with his aluminum cans. It was pretty funny. We came out of there with a chit for $4.67, which we then cashed at the local Albertsons. I gotta figure out a way to get my hourly rate up.