Free At Last!

One of the members of our family has hit a major milestone.  Can you guess who?  Nope- you're wrong.  It's Richard!  Richard is officially done with classes forever!!!!! We never thought this day would come :) It feels like such a big weight off our shoulders even though there is still work to be done. He now has a year to get through a gigantic reading list and take his exam and then at least another year (hopefully that's all....here's to optimistic thinking, right?) to write his dissertation. And then he will be done forever! It feels like that day is coming so fast. Even though he will still be working incredibly hard, his schedule is flexible now and we won't have any more super long days, eating dinner with the kids by myself all week long. I couldn't be more happy! (Ok, maybe I'll be a little more happy when we actually get a job, but one step at a time!) Congrats Richard- I am so proud of you and how hard you work. OSU better recognize how lucky they are to have you!

Everyday Wonder

Since Richard has been gone A LOT more this semester than ever before, it has been a whole new life for us the last couple months.  A life filled with many more movies, trips to the library and stores, last second dinners thrown together (we may not eat waffles again for a while...) and a lot of tears and me losing my sanity.  HOWEVER, one good thing that has come of Richard being gone so much is that I have been filming my kids doing a lot more everyday things.  This has been SO FUN for us to watch!  Sometimes when we see these things every day, they become much less magical so it's been great to go back and watch the videos with Richard and see just how adorable and fun my children really are...when I'm not yelling at them and losing my mind.  (Sorry for all the negativity, like I said, it's been a ROUGH semester!!)  Anyway, here are just a few examples of the cute things I have caught on camera to show Richard just in the last couple weeks.  No offense to your children, but I really think I have the best!  :)

Conference Visit

I invited Holly to come join us for General Conference weekend but didn't really think she would take us up on it.  I was VERY happily surprised when she accepted and came to party with us for four whole days! You'd think with two extra kids and a husband who had to be gone for half of it, we wouldn't hear one word of Conference but the kids did SO good.  In fact, I'm pretty sure I heard way more of Conference this time than I did in October.  Go figure. Of course the kids had plenty of fighting moments and we pretty much have to keep Emery and Kaylee in separate corners...but for the most part our kids actually got along!  Wahoo- gotta love when cousins actually have fun together. We did all the usual stuff (pet store, zoo, playground) but it is always way more fun when you have someone to do it with you!  Kenna basically looked like this the entire time we were at the zoo and the pet store- she LOVES animals!!

I was a little afraid for this puppy's life because she was loving it a little too much...but it was so cute to see how happy it made her!

Thanks for an awesome weekend Hol!!!!!!

Easter Fun

Our Easter started a week early this year with an AWESOME Easter egg hunt at a church here in Columbus.  They know how to put on an event!!  They had a petting zoo, the Easter bunny, face painting, tractor rides, really cute crafts for the kids, a show put on by the teenagers from the church, nachos, popcorn, cotton candy, hot dogs, and for anyone who signed up for the hunt a string backpack and beach ball!  Not to mention the egg hunt was GIGANTIC and Kaylee had to finally stop getting eggs when her bucket was overflowing. All of the crafts and stickers, etc mentioned Christ and we even used a sticker set we got from them to teach our kids about the Resurrection for our Easter FHE so it was really nice that even though they had all of this fun stuff they made sure to make it about Christ as well. We met up with some friends there and had more fun than just about any other event we've been to here.  We love Columbus!

It was fantastic and everyone was super nice and friendly. We will definitely be headed back next year!