Primary Talent Show

Our Primary did a talent show a couple of weeks ago. A kept talking to me about it, so I decided to have her sing for her talent. I was going to have her do a solo, but I was talking to her friend's mom who didn't know what to have her daughter do, so we decided to have them do a duet together. They chose to sing "Once There Was a Snowman" and "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star." A sang the first song by herself because her friend got a little too nervous. We missed taping their conversation between the two songs, but it was really cute. It went something like: A: You need to sing now Friend: No A: Sing with me I don't remember the whole conversation and I wish we had it on tape. They didn't seem to be starting to sing so I went up to see if they wanted to just end, but A wanted to sing, so they finally both decided to sing the second song. They did a good job. I was surprised at how well A does performing in front of people. She has no fear and seems to enjoy it.

Modesto

B had a business trip to Modesto, so we went with him. We spent a lot of time swimming in the hotel pool while we were there. A did a really good job swimming on her back. Here are a couple of videos of her swimming.


B's uncle lives nearby in Sacramento, so we stopped by to see his family for a couple of days before we headed home. A got to be there for their son's birthday party complete with a Thomas the Train jump house, pinata and cupcakes. She was in heaven!

You Guesses It...

Yes, we went to Disneyland a couple more times this month. You probably get tired of all of our Disneyland pictures, but that's when I remember to take my camera, so since I like to have pictures than that is all I have to write about. The first time we went was just A and I while B was on a business trip.


The second time was the morning before dropping B off at the airport for another business trip. He didn't fly out till late afternoon so we went to Disneyland in the morning for a couple of hours.




The third time we all went together after B got home from his business trip.
A took some of the pictures and she is becoming quite the photographer. :)

Easter

For Easter we took A to a couple of the local egg hunts. The first one was at Janss Mall where they let the kids color an Easter bag and then had a paper showing which stores to go to to get an egg. Inside each egg was either candy or else a chance for a shopping spree at ToysRUs. A did not win one of the shopping sprees. The other egg hunt was at the Lakes. They have an area in front of some stores where there is a pond and a playground. They did an egg hunt for different age groups. They would throw the plastic eggs out onto the sand around the playground and then have the kids hunt for the eggs. At the end of each age group the kids would turn their eggs in at the booth for a handful of candy. There was a large group of kids in A's group, so she was only able to get a couple of eggs before they were all gone. She still had a lot of fun. She also got to take a picture with the Easter Bunny.

Family visiting

My parents and brother and his family came out to visit us in March. We spent Monday at Disneyland, Tuesday relaxing and hanging out at our place and Wednesday at Legoland. Disneyland was a little more crowded than we liked, but we were still able to ride a lot of rides that we liked. A always loves to spend time with her cousins and she had a great time with them! We have spent a lot of time at Disneyland, but we love to go when we can. Tuesday, we relaxed and had a barbeque at our place. We also spent some time at the park. Wednesday we enjoyed riding the kid rides at Legoland and the kids had a lot of fun playing in the water. They had a water play area for the kids. We were glad that it was a hot day so they didn't get too cold. We also spent the last hour at the aquarium that they have next to Legoland. That night we stayed in a hotel close to Disneyland instead of driving all the way back and the kids got up and swam the next morning before everyone headed home. It's always sad when everyone heads home and the fun ends, but it's nice to have family come and visit.

Chip

My brother just left on a mission and needed someone to take his dog and so we now have a new dog, Chip. While we were in Big Piney for Christmas, A had a great time taking Chip on a walks and rolling around in the snow with him, so we thought it would be a good companion for her. He is a great dog and has been a lot of fun to have. I'm usually not a big fan of animals, but I've enjoyed having Chip around.

Israel

A couple of weeks ago we went to Israel for a 10 day trip. We decided to try to visit my sister and her family over there before they move this summer. We figured that this would be our only chance for a while, so we got some tickets, left A with B's parents and went.



We had a 9 hour layover in Warsaw, Poland so we went out of the airport and toured around for a few hours. We called a friend who served a mission in Poland to see what he suggested that we see. He said to tour Old Town which was devastated in WWII, but the Polish people have done a lot of work to reconstruct what it used to look like. We enjoyed looking around and visiting a place we've never been.

After stopping in Poland we continued to Israel. We flew LOT Polish Airlines. They were a decent airline, but not our favorite. We arrived in Tel Aviv early in the morning and took a taxi to Jerusalem.
We had a lot of fun visiting with my sister and her family and touring around Jerusalem. We toured Jerusalem for a couple of days and then rented a car to drive to Eilat. B really wanted to scuba dive the Red Sea, so we stopped by Masada, En Gedi and the Dead Sea on our way down to the Red Sea. We camped in Eilat for the night and went scuba diving the next day. The Red Sea is about the temperature of the water in Hawaii, but I still wore a full wet suit. We did two dives. The first dive was to a wreck and we went down about 60 ft. The second dive was more shallow and we went to Moses Rock with was a rock with a lot of nice corral on it to see. We saw a lot of eels, lion fish, and a lot of colorful fish on our dives.
We drove back that night and almost got lost trying to find our way around Jerusalem. What a complicated city and road system. We made it back to a landmark that we knew, called my sister and had them guide us back to their place.
We spent another day in Jerusalem and then the next day was the Jewish Sabbath. We went to church at the Jerusalem center and visited a few more places nearby. The next day we went with everyone to the areas around the Sea of Galilea and then on down the Cesarea by the Mediteranean Sea.
The only drawback of our trip was that our luggage got lost and we finally just had them send it back home when they were ready to deliver it to us the day before we were headed back. It caught up with us a week after we got home.