William loves Kate (what's currently written on my Magnadoodle sign in the kitchen)

I have been so FED UP with all this royal wedding nonsense. I mean, its been on the news nonstop. From speculation on what designer will make her dress to interviewing the bloody shopkeeper from her home town! I had had ENOUGH! To the point of going on rants at the TV, demanding, "What makes them think they're so special?!" Give me a friggin' break. (I still planned on watching the affair... I'm not from Mars... I just was tired of the pre-event hoopla)

And then I turned on the TV at 7am this morning and saw Will and Kate standing outside Westminster Abby and every girly particle of me melted! I watched, entranced, as he escorted her to the Cindrella-esk coach to go to Buckingham Palace. She positively radiated in her gorgeous lace gown as she {pageant waved} to the thousands of adoring fans. And the kiss on the balacony! Travis groaned and mocked as I swooned. Oh to be a princess!! And drip in jewels and beauty. And wear those fabulous hats!! Why don't we wear hats like that??!! I would LOVE a big, tilted hat that made it difficult to get through a doorway. Sigh.

I didn't know my heart could change so instantaneously. Travis wondered where his real wife went. He had previously had an ally in his British disgust.

To celebrate I wanted to have tea and crumpets, but when I googled crumpets they appeared to be just homemade English muffins. Not that exciting. And I've never had a good herbal tea, so hot chocolate and scones it was! Pinkies up! :) 

His One True Love

Ok, I know he loves me, but soccer takes a close second. VERY close second. And whattaya know... they WON the championship game last night! I think it may have been the shining moment of his life thus far. I just wish I could have seen the game. 10:30pm doesn't lend itself much to being a family affair. But it sure would be fun to get an "I {heart} Travis shirt", bring my Pommie Pom Poms, video camera, and scream my heart out for him. Who doesn't love a scene? :) Yes, I think it's a plan. I just hope I don't get bumped to {second} afterward.

Davy Love

Well I guess I couldn't let David leave on a mission without doing a post about it! My family had an open house Sunday night after his farewell talk and I guess it was quite the shin dig. I love these pictures of my Davy Love. Poor guy can't escape his childhood nickname, even though he's such a {cool kid} now.

I hear this picture captures most of what David did all night... enjoy his harem of girls. You'd think he was Mick Jagger with all the groupies always following him around. I can understand... it's hard not to love this kid.

I got home late from a baby shower Tuesday night, then Trav took off to his soccer game and I forgot my cell phone in the car, so it wasn't until a quarter til midnight that I could call home and find out when he was being set apart. Of course when I call, it's 15 minutes before they need to be at the stake center. So Marcie whipped out her lap top and everyone poured into her room so we could say our last, rushed goodbyes.

Marcie is so cute, she took our picture while we Skyped. Weston was quite the hit of the show. And even though we only talked for 3 minutes, I still managed to get emotional as I said goodbye and that I loved him and would miss him. To that, David quipped, "Wish I could say the same!" And when I tried to give him some advice he joked, " Hey, don't tell me how to live my life!" Oh David, try not to be so sentimental... you're too in touch with your feelings. Reminds me of a certain older sister you have. :)

Here is the gang after he was set apart.

 His plane left at 5am this morning. Since that made it 8am here, Marcie text me pictures of him leaving.

 After he left, they went to the roof and somehow found his plane and watched him take off. I talked to my mom later that day and she was having a rough time. I mean, it's the end of an era! (FRIENDS quote, anyone? :)  Maybe it's best I wasn't around... I would have been a crying mess. David is pretty stoic and unemotional and probably doesn't remember much of me in his life growing up, but boy was he a big part of MY life! I was 9 when he was born and I felt like I took care of him a lot. In some ways, I feel like he's actually my first child. And because of that, I will always have a special place in my heart for David, different than I have for any of my other siblings. Watching my parents send off their second son on a mission doesn't make me particularly excited to do it myself in 17 years. But it's for a good cause, right? :) Right. But I certainly will miss him.

EaSteR

A few Easter festivities...

My rabid bunny. :)

Collin made these {bunny ears} at the Family Room a couple weeks ago and was quite obsessed with them for a while.

 We went and saw HOP as a family last Saturday evening. Collin did pretty good- with a steady stream of snacks and candy.

 Weston's first movie!

I'm pretty sure I enjoyed it the most of anyone. It was delightful! But I'm sure you knew that given my fondness for personification. Plus it had a rockin' soundtrack. My favorite part was the end when the chick's body would dance involuntarily to the beat of the drum. Those that have seen it know what I'm talking about, right??!! Hysterical!

 The Reester Bunny came! Collin's first basket of goodies. It was much enhanced by the Easter package that Grandma Paula sent. He was thrilled with all the balls, snakes, and dinosaurs. Thanks, Paula! (And yes, another shot of one of his {faces}.

 When we got home from church we heard some scuffling at the back door and opened it to find two Easter baskets left by the "Easter Bunny" aka our next door neighbors. It was so sweet. Collin's basket was shaped like a basketball (which he LOVED and still won't let me put it away) and they both were filled with outfits, candy and little toys like a bubble maker. We lucked out with our neighbors for sure!

 We kind of started a tradition our first year of having a big Easter dinner at our house. I don't know why I sign myself up for these things because it always turns into a lot of work, but of course I'm grateful afterward for the good time. We hauled our beastly kitchen table downstairs and put the 3 extra inserts into it. This year we squeezed 15 adults around it! I'm also getting a soft spot in my heart for the missionaries now that my brother is one, so I invited both sets of Elders from our ward over. We had had them over for dinner earlier in the week and when I asked what their Easter plans were, they said they didn't have any and commented that holidays on the mission were actually kind of depressing. Sad!! So I had to fix that! I'm really glad I invited them. They thanked me a million times and were so excited to be there.

If you look in the middle of the table you can see the sad, little place cards I made. They kept falling over and were buggers to put together!

Here's a close up of one. They are made out of Q-tips so it's a cheap craft but I wouldn't recommend it!

 After dinner we dyed and decorated our eggs for the Egg Bash later.

 Here is the aftermath of dinner. I made the pinwheel banner as an Easter decoration and that's a craft I'd recommend! Cheap, easy, and cute! You can find the tutorial HERE.

Can't forget the lamb butter!! Someone asked if I made this. Haha, no I have not taken up butter carving YET. :) You can buy them at Wegmans during Easter. I love that the flag on it's back says Alleluia. The only problem is that when I pulled it out I thought it looked weird, then realized it didn't have EARS! What the?!

 I made this Yummy Berry Trifle for dessert and it's a seriously sinful indulgence. I got the recipe from Crescent and it's super easy so I thought I'd share:

1 c whipping cream (whipped)

3 (8oz) pkgs cream cheese (softened)

1 c sour cream

2 c powdered sugar

1 tsp vanilla extract

1 tsp almond extract

*Mix together above ingredients

1 large angel food cake (broken into pieces)

*Stir into above mixture

2 bags frozen berries (I combined raspberries and blueberries)

*In a trifle or glass bowl, layer 1/2 of the white mixture, then one bag of berries, then the remaining 1/2 of white mixture, then the last bag of berries.

I would recommend putting it together about 2-3 hours before serving so the berries have time to thaw a bit. It makes a lot but doesn't last well past a day so make sure you have enough people to eat it all!

(This is super rich and I love it... but I think next time I'm going to try substituting 1 pkg cream cheese for a container of cool whip and see how that goes. Maybe then I won't feel like I'm directly adding cottage cheese to my thighs)

 Ok, back to Easter... next we went outside for an egg hunt! Collin's first egg hunt and he did great. We have had untold amounts of rain the past couple weeks [our basement carpet is getting wet!! :( ] but the yard wasn't too bad. I didn't get a shot of all the kids with their baskets, but Megan did, so when I get that from her I'll add it in. In this picture you can see the Carter's little girl, Kadence, aka, Collin's first love. He adores Kadence. On Monday I was trying to coerce him into getting his shoes on so we could head to a birthday party and he wouldn't cooperate until I said Kadence would be there. I had previously listed a bunch of other friend's names, hoping to get him to cooperate, but it wasn't until I mentioned Kadence that he was excited to go. This is how it's been for a couple of weeks. He will randomly say her name and expect to get to play with her. She is the the calmest, most docile little girl, so I guess it's true... opposites do attract! :)

 Here are the missionaries chillin' during the egg hunt. They did help hide the eggs though!

 On to the Egg Bash. Super embarrassing.... I was running around like a chicken with it's head cut off Sunday afternoon, and I guess I didn't boil the eggs long enough. Some of them hit too hard and cracked open, oozing nasty, half-cooked {eggness} all over! Sick. I won't make that mistake again. Glad we had the sheet underneath or my carpet would have got it!

 Ryan was the winner! Funny, cuz all he had written on his egg was {Winning Egg} when he decorated it.

Elder Bryson was a close second place. The missionaries LOVED this game. I had told them about it earlier in the week at dinner and I guess they boiled like 2 dozen eggs and had a competition with their district later in the week. They all went on and on about how cool it was and how they were going to make it a tradition in their families too. It was cute.

Other events on Easter Sunday included my younger brother David, giving his farewell talk in church. (He actually left this morning! Shed a tear!) I was so sad I didn't get to be there to hear it, so my AMAZING cousin, Leah, took time out of her crazy Easter Sunday and went to the church in the Young Women's room and held her cell phone up to the speaker so I could listen!! She is the best! Her poor arm was probably dead afterward. It made my day to be able to hear his talk. I was in tears afterward. I can't believe my little, chubby cheeked brother is all grown up and going on a mission! We only got to Skpe for about 3 minutes last night before he was set apart and according to Travis's observations... he was "trippin'" :) I can't imagine how it must feel to know you are hours away from spending 2 years in a 3rd world country. Be good to him, Honduras!

 The day after Easter brought sugar guilt accompanies by the realization that we had not partaken of the Reester Bunny! Collin loved it. And no, we did not let him eat the whole thing.

 Here's Weston in his Easter duds! He had his 2 month appt. a couple weeks ago and weighed in at 10 lbs. 13 oz.

 I cannot resist these scrumptious cheeks! He's looking pretty chunky in this pic. He's such a love. I really can't get enough of him!



Abuse

Please don't call CPS on me. I promise I don't beat my child.

Last Thursday night I left the house for all of 10 min. and came home to a nice, clean slice on Collin's head. Apparently the entertainment center fought back.

Last Saturday night he was running around with some friends and crashed into the stair rail. He was so hysterical, his body was writhing in contortions. It was sad to watch. Then 5 min. later (with some frozen cranberries as an ice pack) he was back to running around.

So here are injury #1 and #2.

 Then yesterday at my WIC appt. he was running and tripped, slamming his face on a wooden, kiddie table. Again, in so much pain, he couldn't even keep still. ALL the workers came pouring into the waiting room (I'm sure expecting abuse) and calmed his crying with a cute, little butterfly ice pack. His left cheek was rosy red with a bruise in the middle, but it's harder to see in the picture. 

 I had to include this one because this is a {face} he throws our way often. But usually with a squintier eye. It's pretty cute.

 At least no stitches or broken bones. Although I have a feeling all I have to do is wait. Apparently Travis had a perpetual black eye as a toddler, from falling so much. So I blame his father.

What am I going to do with this guy?

Tonga Part Dos

Other people on the trip posted their pictures on Photobucket, so now I have some more of Trav's trip to share. And here I thought I had put Tonga behind me! :)

One of the Saturdays they took a boat out to one of the smaller islands (Doug walked around the whole thing in 20 min.) to go snorkling. Here's the crew on the three hour tour. ♫ A three hour tour. ♫

 This is Trav with Dr. Gambacorta, the professor who went with them. They took this picture to display the {darkest} person against the {whitest}. Go Trav. :)

 A non-blurry one of him working! :)

 Don't mind creeper Chris inbetween :)

 Most of the group plus some clinic workers.

 Playing "Ninja".

 These are the {blowholes}. Chris is in the background being crazy/dangerous. Where the water sprays up is where it is hitting the ledge of rock.

 Had to display the 'staches. So sexy. Why did he ever shave it off ? :)

Creed looks like a Mexican, for reals. Tengo hambre, hombre?!

 These men ate the whole thang!

 Remember the story about Trav getting called up on stage to dance at the show? Well here is the lady that {leid} him. Ooo la la!

 Supposedly the only three branch palm tree in the world.

Side note: I've shared that Travis went to Tonga with a few non-LDS people and I get the strangest looks. Then they ask where Tonga is because they've never heard of it. ????? This strikes me as odd. So is it just well known to us because of missionaries? I'm guessing so.