like a worm becomes a butterfly...

Happy 2nd Birthday Amelia!

Happy Easter

We have loved our time in Ohio. We love our neighborhood and we LOVE Spring. It has been so nice to have things be green and sunny again. This Easter was very nice and the girls had the prettiest dresses I've ever seen. Grandma Muse helped us out of course. They had it all, fancy dresses, sweaters with bows, hats, gloves, purses and new sparkle shoes with pink tights. They loved feeling beautiful. Yikes, it was really hard to keep them reverent during our 1pm church. You can dress them up....

But they are still my kids!

Pie Day Part II

The real reason I loved Pie Day.
If you can't tell, these are a few of my favorite "Brothers" at church. If I participated in a pie eating contest then, I could win a chance to throw a pie at one of these guys! After eating 5 pieces of pie from the other delicious pies brought by the wonderful members of our ward, I decided to go for the contest.

Who wouldn't want to throw a pie in this face?! He thought he was so cool, being the MC of the Marble Cliff Pie-newood derby 2009.
So, maybe he is so cool....

So I did it.
We still don't know if Rebecca (Left) or Brother Simmons (a sweet old guy that just got home from his grandpa mission) who smashed my face in the pie. I do know Brother Simmons (the sweet grandpa RM) was whispering trash talk in my ear as I was doing my best to eat pie with my face.

I didn't win BUT I did get to throw a pie at Ben. If you review the picture above, he has the MOST pie in his face!
Here the girls follow the example of their mother.

"Pie"newood Derby 3.14 2009

So am I the only one that never celebrated "Pie" day? March 14th is every nerdy math teachers' favorite day of the year. Apparently our Activities committee is made of nerdy Math teachers. But Pie day is my new favorite day. Just look at all those pies! We also had to tie in our other favorite ward activity and have a Pinewood Derby. There were some super fun cars!

The kids and dads had the night of their lives.

Best Valentine's Day Ever!

Some friend's had us over for a Valentine's Party. It was more fun than I've had in a long time. When we got there Ben had to carve our initials into a tree on the wall and then we had our picture in front of it. We played some cute games and then the women and the men separated. The ladies made Valentin's cards and the guys drew pictures of our fist dates. We had to guess which one's were ours and tell our story. Later there was a surprise poem read. Our 'dates' had written us love poems the night before and then had to read them in front of everyone. Most were really short and sweet and the guys were shyly smiling. So cute! Ben's was so long and so awkward. People asked him several times to stop reading. I have not laughed so hard in a long time. He prefaced it with "The Office is our favorite show." I think he meant to have Dwight's voice in people's minds but it came out a little different as tears streamed down our faces from laughing so hard. After almost every line break we laughed and laughed. I don't know if it reads the same in the Internet as it did at the party but here goes:


My Halo, Your Halo

In the sun glow
I can see your halo
Not the video game
Although you do maliciously hunt me
With your fantastic love
...but unlike that game, you really don't kill me,
just everything up until that point.

It is in the afternoon,
Autumn
6pm
And the sun is behind you
Setting
You have golden dark hair
As you roll around
In a field of tall grass
You have a blanket
With many cheeses
You beacon forth
With your fork
And we embrace
We are making out
...what those small little letters say
On all those cheeses.

You are unpredictably coy
As you toy
With my feet
Which are tired
From the hike
And scavenger hunt
You made me do
Before I could meet you
In this, secret/sacred place
That I've never been before
Is this heaven?

I am the scavenger
Hunt
ing
Like in Halo
The video game
My scopes
Are on your lips
But I spy you in my scope
not from a tall building
Or from an abandoned coal mine
Like the one Pat worked at briefly.
but millimeters from those
Frail, quivering, soft, wild, huggable lips
That whisper
"Surrender,
You sweaty hunter
With muscular feet and wheezing breath"
And I say,
"No you surrender
Because my scope is really close to your lips
And you couldn't possibly hurt me
With those puny arms"
But you can,
And I don't tell you this,
you do have muscular arms, but only in metaphor
Instead of arms, its your heart
And it is really good at beating to get all the blood around in your body
And I see your pulse going super fast on that rather large vain on your neck and on your forehead

I slowly drop my controller, which I brought with me pretending it was a gun with a long distance scope
And I move
Closer
And closer
Now closer
And your raspberry lips
Caresses my breath
Like Castellano cheese
That I just ate while you
Slipped off my socks

Game over
I need a code to continue
but you do
Continue
Without a code,
You hold
my perfect body, in your mind.
and I hold your perfect body in my mind too.



Yeah Best Valentine's Day ever! Then at the end of the party we were given our pictures in a frame with a magnet on the back so we could put it on the fridge. We look at it and remember the best day of our married lives. Well, maybe one of the best.

Columbus Freeze and BYU Freeze

The first snow started out lots of fun. We played for a while.

The Cuteness of Amelia's first snow was in full force.

Then we had an ice storm with more snow on top. This tree fell down in our neighbor's yard. Fox news even had a news crew there last night.

But Best of All, Grandma Muse came to visit for a few days. Her flight got snowed out and she got to stay for an extra day. We had so much fun. We were so glad she was there for the storm. There were two freezes. The ice storm and the "official BYU job freeze." We found out for sure there would be no BYU this coming year. That's right, a "hiring freeze" really means there will be no hires. My best friend Cathie was very excited to hear the news. There are some benefits to staying in Columbus one more year. But it was sure hard to send my mommy away knowing I wouldn't see her this summer. We love you Teresa!