It’s Good Friday.  The day we observe the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.  A sad day, really.  I’m feeling altogether blue today. I much prefer the Easter celebration of His resurrection.

We painted Easter eggs last night.  We had to do it pretty late, due to Zach working.  This morning we took Easter pictures.  It’s supposed to get progressively colder through the weekend.  The only problem is, Gabby (who is making her own skirt for Easter) didn’t finish until around 11:00 AM, and by that time, there is NO shade around my house.  It was a struggle to find something.

Tomorrow is insanely busy (the Easter Bunny visits a day early here, we like to focus on the religious aspect of Easter on Sunday) as we will do our egg hunt and search for baskets in the early AM.  Then we’ll go to the church egg hunt.  I need to remember to bring a salad for a funeral too.  An hour after that is the community egg hunt, but I don’t know that we’ll attend.  It’s likely to be a zoo.  And I don’t like zoos!  After that Mark takes the kids to his mom’s house where we’ll spend the night.  I am staying back because Zach works until 11:30 PM. (Getting us to grandma’s at 1:00 AM!)

Sunday morning I am going to my old church branch to see my friend’s son blessed.  Little Izaiah is a cutie! Then Easter dinner and hopefully some time to chat with Mark’s brother and his family while they are in town.  I’m tired reading about it.  On the other hand, that means 6 HOURS of alone time.  I never get that much alone time unless I stay up until 3 in the morning to procure it! One of the things I will do is edit all the Easter pictures I took.  Which is why you don’t see any of them here…It’ll keep me nice and busy!

I hope everyone has a happy Easter!

To pick a room you see a basic map that shows if a bed is empty, on hold, or taken.  If you click on a taken bed, you can see some facts about the person who has taken it.  What type of music they like, what time they go to bed, and if they consider themselves neat.  I wish they’d thrown in what their major is, and if they plan to eschew the honor code and start smoking, looking at porn on their computer, or bringing girls into their room, but hey, you can’t get everything. After Zach registered, we were able to see the names of the other guys signed up so far (there is one bed empty, the one in Zach’s room) and of course I googled their names to see what I could find.  Not much, as it turns out.  Zach then googled his name, which led him to this website, and a dorky picture of him when he was 11 and desperately needed a haircut, ha ha!  (So hey, if those kids googled Zach’s name and find this, I say, “Hi!  I’m his really cool mom!)

This all has me remembering signing up for dorms.  I don’t remember much of the process.  Certainly you didn’t see a roommate profile picture.  I signed up for a survey through some PhD candidates that got me into a bigger dorm room.  I imagine everyone else had a first pick, second pick, etc.  and hoped for the best.  Kind of what I’m doing for my Zach, now!

This is Zach’s apartment.  We went to Google Earth and tried to find one where it had a more pleasant view.  In this case, it seems a tree is right there.  And a gorgeous mountain to the west.

This is a picture of Brendan I took at his deployment ceremony last year.  Welcome home, baby brother!

It was a low-key day around here.  Not only did it fall on Sunday, where we try to be a bit more reverent, but on General Conference Sunday.  So we skipped much of the usual joking until our annual April Fool’s Day dinner, which we’ll never skip!  (Mark and I are going to be 90-year old empty-nesters drinking water off the table, I promise!) Where we break down a meal into parts: (This year was: chicken, corn, roll, mandarin oranges, Jello, baked potato, butter, salt, pepper, sour cream, water, plate, cup, fork, spoon, napkin, brownie.)  We then write the parts on pieces of paper, and draw 4 pieces out per course.  What we draw is what we get for that course.  And ONLY what we get.

Here’s a few of the pics from April Fool’s Day.  More, and a few extra just because it was a gorgeous day, will be on Facebook HERE (link to be added after my Lenten Hiatus!)

Finally I am all caught up with the organizing part.  I have made separate folders for the photos I want to print (I’ve taken close to 15 THOUSAND pictures in the last 2.5 years, so I have to be selective.)  Unfortunately, for Kamea’s first year album (which holds 400 pics, and I’m not going over) I have almost 900 pics.  Apparently I get to be selective by half again.  The problem is I took such fantastic shots of my pregnancy, labor, her baby blessing, etc. that I want to include them all.

For the other albums of just regular stuff,  I have “narrowed” it down to about 1400 pics to put into albums.  Since I want to get that down to about 400 pics per year (or one album), that’s almost half as well.  CRAP.

I think the solution is going to be that I am going to have to take all the event pictures and turn them into a photobook.  Bite the bullet, join the millennium, as it were.  Wish me luck!

Gabby recently had a band concert, and it was wonderful.  It was the All City concert.  In years past, they have packed parents into the gym and I was miserable, as it was a LOT of parents (grandparents, siblings, uncles, BFF’s etc.) due to it including grades 4-11.  Thank goodness the fire marshall put his foot down and required tickets, with fire codes being observed.  I didn’t leave the event harried, squished, or overheated, and I could enjoy the music.  Yay! She did a fabulous job, as did all the choirs.

I also took this fabulous picture of Kamea today.  Sometimes you just get a good one.  I’ve always said she has “smiling eyes” (hey!!! “When Irish eyes are smiling”…looks like she got a bit of the Irish in her too!) because they crinkle up when she smiles.  They are so expressive when she pouts, frowns, laughs, anything.  She’ll never make a good poker player…you can read her eyes!

Anyway, I digress.  Recently I read an interesting poll taken at a parenting website.  The poll question was, “Do you think your baby is cuter than other babies” (or something like that.)  97% of people answered, “yes” to the question.  (This was no small sampling, almost 36,000 people answered the poll.)  This is where the “Et Tu, Jen” part comes in.  I didn’t take part in the poll, but did ask myself that question.  I’ll admit, I am a little bit vain when it comes to my children.  I happen to think they are the most beautiful children.  On the other hand, the word beautiful means so much more to me than outward appearance.  It has to, because I am at best average and yet Mark thinks I am the most beautiful person he knows.  (Or perhaps his eye prescription needs a re-check!)

So when I look at my kids, I do see beauty.  But I’m not sure what the poll question means?  Does it mean I think my child is cuter than ALL other children?  Hmm.  I remember that after I birthed a child I thought he/she was the most beautiful, cutest thing in the world.  In hindsight, I obviously missed the swelling and the bruises, ha ha! Except for maybe Dylan.  That child came out pretty, and he’s still pretty to this day.  :-)  I have a friend who has gorgeous children.  They should be modeling, I tell ya’! But I don’t love them (it’s an online friend and I’ve never met the kids) and so while when I see them I think “Wow, they are so cute!” my heart doesn’t melt into a big puddle of goo like it does when I see MY kids.  I think that’s the key to 97% of people being able to answer the question with a “yes” when statistically that should be impossible…the heart plays a very big role in subjectivity.

But like I did mention above, I am a little vain, perhaps even prideful when it comes to my kids, so even when trying to be objective  I do think they are seriously cute.  I can’t say that I would be able to say I my children are cuter then ALL other children if that was the intent of the poll, but I can say that when I look at them my heart skips a beat and swells with love and happiness, and I get teary with how beautiful they are to me.  Hopefully every momma in the world feels the same.  If the poll is any indication, I think we’re getting there!

That being said, my camera has been laying still for a while, but the light was pretty today, so I got pictures of Kamea.  (And why Kamea?  It’s not because I think she’s any cuter than the others.  She’s the only who doesn’t roll her eyes and pout when I get out the camera, though that too seems to be changing!)

Zach took my scale away (mom-ordered!) so I don’t know how much weight I’ve lost.  But I have brought out my spring clothes (since it’ll been in the 60’s and 70’s this week) and the ones that I had to leave unbuckled are loose, and the ones that didn’t fit over my hips are sliding over with ease.  When I step on that scale (I am doing it on March 23rd, the day Gabby and I are going to see The Hunger Games and go eat somewhere lovely) I need to keep those things in mind if the numbers turn out to be less than stellar.  I can’t remember if I wrote here that I could put my wedding ring on again for the first time since pregnant with Reese (that milestone happened in January) but now it too is loose. (Mark hasn’t been wearing his either, but that’s because it’s broken.  I know I should fix it, but someday I’d really like to exchange mine (or keep it for one of the kids?) and get something more “me” (platinum and Tanzanite or watermelon tourmaline or pairaba tourmaline) and it makes sense to get hims something that matches. (I don’t think he identifies with a stone so much!) Of course, that could be years away!

My other update is that Zach made his decisions on his dilemmas.  First, he accepted BYU and we’ll (Mark and I and maybe a child or two) be driving him out in August, and secondly, he got the job in town and put in his two week notice at McDonald’s.  I’ve warned Zach that no matter HOW much I cry, I am only 49% sad.  51% of me is happy, proud, excited, joyful, for him.  And that number will rise as I get used to this season of life…his and mine. So now I get to research what fun places I can go see out west!