March

Our month in March has been a good one. The sun has been out more, only a few gloomy droomy days. Still rain, it's no wonder there is so much green and flowers here. It is plenty wet.

Sean has been asking about watermelon for a loooong time so I finally got some the other day at Costco. He loves watermelon and could eat it with every meal. Here he is with his pile of watermelon that he devoured.

He's pretty cute this kid. He's loving his once a week school group and he has a really good friend named Colin. They hang out a lot. Sean says that Colin is like Abe, (his best bud in CO). We like Colin and we're happy when he comes over to our house.

Here is Adam eating his watermelon naked. Why not? Mostly I'm loving this picture because of his very cute bottom. My kids come out and get chubby chubby and have these cute little bottoms but they go away with age. Liam now has a skinny little bum but this cute little Adam has quite the cute little body.

Don't you people agree with me? Plus you can't really post these kind of pics once the kid passes age 2 so we gotta take advantage of these cute pics.

Here is Liam. The kids all got dressed up in the costumes and then came down to show me. Liam loves to climb on the counter and work the ipod. He turns it to his favorite pirate music and then blasts it in the house. He reminds me of his father sometimes. Michael also loves to blast music, his is a bit different than pirate music though.

These boys are so cute. They mostly play very well together and they are both so good with Adam and helping him out. Sometimes we forget that Adam is only 1 because he sometimes acts like he is 4,5,6.

Here is Adam sitting on the kitchen counter helping me as usual. Adam is still one happy kid. He cracks us all up. He too loves to sing, dance and play.

Here is Michael, family to follow. Since we live here in Norfolk by ourselves our family pics are often split up. The kids were over it by this pic so Michael got to stand alone. Notice our CO flag that still hangs in front of our house. That was on our house when Michael first drove me here. I sure love Michael. I miss him and can't wait for this school thing to be over so he can be back in our life. I guess this picture is kind of fitting because he is often alone studying and studying while me and the boys live life. Thank you Michael for setting up our financial future.

Here is the rest of us. We're off to church. I am the primary chorister and Michael is a teacher for the Young Men. The kids like the big primary and church is lovely. Gladys Knight recently came and rocked out in our Stake center. I wish we could have a bit more of that action in our church. Like Galdys said, sometimes we just need to say "Amen" or "Thank the Lord Jesus" out loud. And sometimes we need to sing with a bit more passion. Her fireside was good and I was thankful for the opportunity to go.

My very cute boys. Sure love these guys. They are my favorite little peeps.

This is the flower bouquet that Liam arranged for me. Like I said, with all the rain there are all kinds of spontaneous flowers and rose trees that grow here. It is very beautiful. We have tons of theses yellow flowers in our back yard and then we have a beautiful rose tree in our front yard. Liam put rocks on the bottom, then water and then flowers. He is so sweet.

We sometimes go to the dollar tree and find "treasure". We found kites for a dollar so we each picked one and flew kites. We took them to the ocean and also flew them in the front yard. They worked quite well for being so cheap. Thank goodness for the dollar tree.

Adam is kind of cute in this pic. Sean and Liam were very good kite fliers and then Adam just dragged his kite behind them thinking he was just like them.Do you people see how big Liam is? He is one long skinny boy. He is one considerate cute boy. He is a good mix of Michael and I. Hopefully he got both of our good traits and none of our bad traits. He really is a pleasure to have around. He loves school, he LOVES art and doing projects and he is quite the artist.

Here is little Adam. He loves shoes and he loves to put on everyone and anyone's shoes. Here he is looking out as Liam leaves for school wishing he could go and wearing Sean's shoes. He loves to watch as either Liam or Michael leave for school. He says bye over and over.

So Michael had a week off in March and on the Monday night of his break he came into the living room and handed me papers with my flight info and hotel info for a trip to New York. He said he would watch the kids and I should go there and have fun and have a little break. I was a bit shocked but it was a done deal so I started to pack. I got a hold of Janet Zamboni who is living in Manhattan for a year and hooked up with her. She was very helpful and we had a lot of fun hanging out. It was my first time to New York and this place is HUGE and I love it. I'm ready to go back already.

I got in Tues around noon and caught a cab to my hotel which faced the West side of Central Park. I met up with Janet shortly after. We went to the Gershwin Theater to check out how much tickets were for Wicked. I've never seen it but I've only heard good things. We found out they were sold out that night but had a ticket for $250 the next night. I had heard about the lottery so we stuck around for that. We each filled out a ticket and waited to see if they would call our names. Janet had another show that she was scheduled to go to and she was just helping me out. There were about 300 people there and 26 tickets were given out at $26.25 per ticket for the front row. We waited and waited and the second to last name called was Janet Zamboni. It was quite lucky but maybe meant to be. So I got my ticket and then we had a few hours to kill before the show so she took me to a Cuban restaurant. I had fish with a mango sauce and yummy flavored rice and black bean soup. It was yummy. We also had mango drinks. She bought me dinner and said Happy bday. It was sooo soo nice. Then we went to our separate shows. Wicked was indeed wicked. I got to see it on Broadway at the Gershwin Theater. Wow.This is my hotel. I went for some strolls in Central Park. On Wens we met up for the St. Patrick's Day parade on 5th Ave. That was fun. Then we went to the village and had some New York pizza and then Janet bought us tickets for an off Broadway show called Our Town. It was a really fun night.

On Thursday we met up and went to the building that houses the chapel and the temple. It is right off Columbus circle really in the middle of all the action. Prime spot, and just a ten minute walk from Janet's place. We went to a religion class they have for R.S. sisters. That was fun, lots of talent and education there. I liked that a lot. After the class we went to a session at the temple. After that I did some shopping on Madison Ave and 5th Ave. I found this one store that had lots of clothes. It seemed like everything there was different from everything else and it had all come off a sewing machine of some talented person. The prices were amazing. I bought some really pretty skirts for 15 to 20 each. I found a cute shoe store and bought some shoes but I'm glad I didn't save too much time for shopping because that could have been financially bad. Janet kept me very bust with lots of New York fun.

If you haven't been here, you should try to go. It is HUGE. Michael is my most favorite husband. He sure is spontaneous, adventurous, and you just never know what he's got up his sleeve. He and the boys stayed home and got the yard cleaned up, he planted some nice spring flowers and he dug a fire pit in the backyard. They all roasted mellows and hot dogs while I was gone. I came home to a clean house and worn out kids. Thank you to my Michael who always thinks of me before himself and knew that I would have a blast in New York. Next time I go it will be with him. I can't wait.

Anyway, thanks for reading this long post. Sorry if it was too long. One day these blogs will hopefully be used as records of our lives.

This week I get to go to CO. Liam's spring break is coming and we will be visiting everyone for Easter and other fun things. We're excited. Michael will stay here and continue to expand his mind with anesthesia facts that will help him to be a good anesthetist one day. He has some pretty hard tests coming up and is grateful that we will be busy in CO while he is gone learning. So far that kid has gotten straight A's and has already been in the OR intabating patients while teachers tell him that he does a good job pretending like he's not nervous. Good job Michael. One day this will all be worth it.

Ok, have a nice day.

Valentines Day Surprises.

Our first surprise came in the mail and was from our lovely Denver Lyssa. We love her and her family. Liam and Sean are always so excited to get a package in the mail. Thanks so much Lyssa for the chocolates and gum. We love you.

Here is Sean decorating his sticker activity that came in the Valentine package. Cute.

Here is Adam also happy but he is happy because he is eating yogurt, one of his favorite snacks.

Later we decided to head to Washington DC to play for a few days. We made the reservation when the storm came so I tried to cancel but they wouldn't let me so we went up there and there were no problems. Once again, the people here just aren't used to much snow. We got a hotel that had a lovely pool so we did a lot of swimming. It was fun.

My sleepy Liam after some fun swimming and adventures.

Sleepy Sean. We watched movies and ate out and played at the mall. We also went to the Museum of Nature and Science. We explored that for an entire day and that was lots of fun.

Here is the George Washington Monument. You can see the snow here. It was a storm but nothing to get too scared about.

D.C. looked very pretty with all the snow. There were people out cross country skiing and walking around and playing in the snow. It was lots of fun. We met my cousin Megan and her son Owen and explored together. We had lots of fun.

When we got home we celebrated Owen's second birthday. My cousin Megan has been living in Mexico for nine months and she made us some delicious authentic Mexican food. It was yummy.

Here we all are eating cake and opening presents. My kids always love having a party.

Megan got a transformer pinata and the kids loved breaking that open.

My strong little Adam going at is with his bat. He is my cute little man.

My lovely husband got me some beautiful flowers for Valentines Day. He arranged them himself. Sometimes he studies at home. Here he is watching his VCU video lectures. He is getting smarter by the week. Good job toodle loo.

The flowers a few days later when they bloomed. I have always loved star gazers. Michael has always been a good flower man.

A few days later another package came from Grandma and Grandpa. Here are Liam and Sean with lots of smile. Opening.............Oh man, remote control cars. Pure coolness. The boys were super excited. There was even one for Mr. Adam.I kind of love this picture bc this really is the face that Adam makes when we tell him to say cheese. This looks a bit scary but this is his cheese smile. Picture this along with him saying "eeeeee." He's really cute. It's good that we have these little people in our lives to crack us up and keep us laughing. Here is Liam driving his car. Not only did Grandma send remote control cars, which were actually found by Grampa at Lowe's, thank you so much but there was also other treats. She sent girl scout cookies, yummmmmm. She sent wonderful books to keep our library collection growing. Thanks to her, we have MANY good books that she has purchased for us. We got various other treats and the package was so nice and so much fun. Thanks to Grandma and Grandpa St. John for the wonderful package

Adam and Sean always playing and coming up with new adventures while Liam is at school.We also gave Adam a hair cut this month. He made it the longest of all the boys. He comes from my hair genes, he doesn't have much. Liam and Sean both got their first haircuts much earlier than twenty months of age. However, Adam had one piece of hair that was a bit out of control. See following..And so we cut it. We just did the old buzz job. He liked the feeling and was a good sport. Before..

After...

His hair makes him look a lot tougher now. Before he would act tough but he had cute curls and a "baby" hairdo. Now he is pulling off his tough act much better. He used to be known as "Tuffy" when little Ryan lived with us last summer, bc he always thought he was so much more tough than him.This is a pic of Sean and his little pre pre k class that a few of us switch doing in the ward. It is fun and the kids are cute. This week was the letter Q so we made queens out of toilet paper rolls. It was fun.

This is a pic of Michael and the boys. One night he was pretending to intabate all of our children. Michael is always thinking about school. When he is home he brings his school brain home. Then he does interesting anesthesia things on us. It is fun having a medical person for a husband. At least I know he will always be able to take care of all of us, and possibly anesthetize us. Good good.

Adam is not so sure.

Liam is making a terrified face. The others think it is quite interesting. Oh my lovely husband.

Well anyhoo, that's just a little bit of what we've been up to. My little sis Allyssa just had a baby boy and Twila just called me and told me she had her little Walt and I'm feeling all those crazy baby feelings again. Oh man, sometimes I wonder when those feelings go away. For now I'm glad I have them because I want a few more little St John people in my life. I love these boys and we have lots of fun playing. Liam had a lovely report card so I told him he could get a reward at Target so he picked Mouse Trap. We've been playing some Mouse trap around here.

The sun seems to never ever come out here. It is so sad. I just want to go outside with some sunshine. I miss all my people and I'm excited for the Warners and their new addition. I'm also excited for Allyssa and Brian and their new baby Jack. Congratulations to you both and thanks again to all the lovely people who sent us packages. We LOVED them. OK, until next post.