Aunt Kathy

Word is that aunt Kathy is feeling a little better today. She will be at the hospital a few more days and then will be in a care center for as long as her insurance will permit.

Aunt Kathy

Aunt Kathy took a very bad spill while skiing at Deer Valley today. She dislocated and broke both her left shoulder and right wrist. They set the wrist tonight and plan to do a shoulder replacement tomorrow. I'll keep you posted as to how she is doing.
Dad

Easter Spider

The easter spider made its annual appearance this year. For the first time ever the kids were able to wind up their own strings. As you can see we had Aunt Kristie in town. The kids were pretty excited and walked into our room at 5:00 AM. We promplty sent them back to bed!The eggs have been found. Now it is time to find the clues!
The Easter bunny came by and hid the eggs during soccer. Here the kids are showing off their finds to their Aunt!

We didn't take any pictures on Easter Sunday. We were pretty tired. Katie sang in the Ward choir during the Easter program. I was singing (quietly) so I didn't get to watch but she enjoyed doing it.

Tornado Town

Crystal and I went to downtown Atlanta to be tornado tourists on Monday. It was fascinating to see the high rise damage. The restaurant we ate at was right in the path of the tornado and according to the greeter they didn't close at all since the tornado.

Above you can see the CNN building and the Omni Hotel. You can see all the windows out in the CNN building but it is harder to distinguish the damage on the Omni hotel. The Olympic pillars in the foreground were damaged in the tornado. If you look toward the back of the plaza you can see a replica of the torch from the Olympics. The pillar in the foreground had a similar replica before the tornado!
Here is a close up shot of the CNN building. You can see a few of the windows that are broken out and have not yet been boarded up.

Here are a couple of the high rises damaged. It kind of looks like a mouth with teeth knocked out.

The was taken right outside of the restaurant we ate at. You can see the building across the street with its windows boarded up and the tall cylindrical high rise in the back ground which has a lot of windows out.

This was the most "tornado" like damage that we saw. The white building was an unused building, the brick building in the middle ground is a club of some sort and then again the high rise in the background.

I can't remember what this building is but I thought that it was an amazing demonstration of the damage up close as so many of its windows were damaged.

Have your cake ...

And eat it too. I am a bit behind the times on this. This cake was our St. Patricks day dessert. Crystal made a perfect angel food cake and of course we had to put the evidence on the blog after all of the earlier joking! The cake was of course enjoyed with green whipped cream. Thanks to mom for creating such a fun tradition and thanks to crystal for carrying it on!

Welcome to your 40th year

Happy 39th birthday to my little twin brother and welcome to your 40th year. This next two weeks will be the last two weeks while we are both in our 30's!! I hope you enjoy your 40th year of life as much as I have enjoyed mine.
We have had a lot of fun being so close in age, always having someone to play with where ever we went. I can appreciate that a lot more watching Zach and Gregg growing up, being a twin is more fun.





Maybe the best part of being twins like us, is that we each get our own birthday with everyone paying attention to just us!!

A visit to Baltimore

Business took me north of the Mason Dixon line this week. The difference between Virginia and Maryland is funny to me. The states are so close together but there is no doubt that Maryland is a Yankee state. I haven't heard any soft southern drawls up here.
The highlight of the trip was a visit to Deb's house. I have never been inside a rowhouse before and wondered what it would be like to live in one. She has a beautiful home and a fun view from the roof! The house has a lot of stairs so it pays to be in good shape when you make a visit! We sat down to a great dinner of Scallops and real Idaho baked potatoes. Growing up in the middle of potato land made me take them for granted but I love it when I can get one now. It was fun to visit with Deb and see where she is at now.

Video of our day at the beach

Here is a little video to go with Debby's post of our day at the beach.

our day at the beach

After we sent Josh off to Cali we went to the beach in North Carolina. Auntie Kristi came too. The water was COLD, but that didn't stop Clay, E and Joe from going right in. Jaylin stayed warm and dry snuggling up with her mommy.

Joshua's School of Infantry Graduation

Josh graduated from SOI on March 14, 2008. He is currently stationed at Camp Pendelton in sunny San Diego... probably off to Iraq in the fall. We were glad to have an opportunity to spend a few hours with Josh prior to him becoming a Californian.

Be safe Josh. We miss you .....

Happy Easter Everybunny

We celebrated Easter with a trip to the first anual Patterson Park Easter festival, which is where we had our bunny faces painted. After we laughed at Punch and Judy, we took part in an 80 year old Baltimore tradition: Duckpin bowling. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duckpin_bowling you'd think that with smaller pins it would be easier to knock them down, but it was pretty tough! In the picture above you can see who the two leaders were - they are arguing over which of them is #1. Jon beat E ... this time.

Three cute little bunnies

Mom got in on the bunny act too. After we bowled we grabbed some seriously good Baltimore grub at the Sip & Bite. We'd been bunnies for so long that we didn't think a thing about sitting down to eat with our paint on, but we probably looked pretty silly.