March Madness!!

GO CATS!!!!

We had a wonderful March with a visit from the Utah Bay family and Matt (for a weekend) and a fun basketball tournament in the mix!!

We hang our UK flag proudly during March Madness and cheer on our CATS with lots of intensity!

Laura and Tom and Spencer came to visit us at the end of March!  Tom stayed for a long weekend and Laura and Spencer stayed for the rest of the week.  We had such an amazing time during their visit.

A fun trip to the Phoenix Zoo on Saturday!!  The kids had so much fun playing with Spencer.  He is such an adorable little guy and my kids just followed him around.

Matt had a conference in New Mexico and decided to come down to Arizona for a little visit while Laura and Tom were in town.  While they were all here, we gathered together on Sunday to celebrate Sharron's birthday.  And with Matt's birthday around the corner, we sang to him as well!

Hanging out on the patio.  Just chillin'.  Like cousins do.

Tom and Laura and Grpa did a temple session on Tuesday morning while Matt and I watched the kiddos.

One of my favorite things to see.  Love it when Emma reads to Grant.  Love that he is all cuddled up on her shoulder.  Everything about this melts my heart.  I really hope they can stay good friends through their life.  That would make my heart so happy.

A visit to the Mesa Children's Museum!!

Emma getting to play at Delaney's house for her birthday!!  They were so excited to play together for the whole day!!!

Lots of fun park time!!

Spencer playing the Atari car game

The boys were taking naps!  So the girls got their crafts on!!

EASTER time baby!!!

And we enjoyed a group Suzuki recital right before I had to take Laura and Spencer to the airpot.

Little Glen flew to Utah for his Spring Break and had a 4 hour layover in Phoenix!!  Yahoo!!!  We were sad that he didn't stay in Arizona longer, but were happy to see him for a few minutes.  We ate breakfast together and got to play a bit before we had to take Emma to school!

Enjoying the BEAUTIFUL Arizona winter weather at the park!!  Love this sweet smile of hers!!

Emma and I all decked out and ready to cheer on the CATS during the Final Game of the NCAA Tournament.  Unfortunately, it wasn't enough to help them win the Championship.  Those darn UCONN Huskies beat us, but we got so close and it was really fun to cheer them on.  They had a string of really incredible games and you just gotta love the CATS.  Emma made the rainbow loom bracelets all by herself!

Another fun visit was a quick trip by Courtney!  She came into town for General Conference weekend.  It was short and sweet but we had a great time!  Most of GGCC together again!!  Hooray!! Here we are celebrating at Liberty Market after Kentucky's game win.  One of the employees at the Liberty Market was a Kentucky fan and when he saw Greg and I in our Kentucky t-shirts, he gave us his employee discount for the dinner and brought us two free pieces of cake just because we shared a basketball team love in common!!!  Love it.

One of Emma's bracelets she made!  So cute!!

Saying Goodbye. :(

Zac Lorenzen received an awesome job offer in Washington State. So with much dismay and sadness, we had to say goodbye to our dear friends.

I honestly can not imagine life without JJ. I had a few good cries (which is unlike me) over her departure. She is in every memory and every moment of my life here in Arizona, since 2000. She is just like a sister to me and we have spent all major holidays together and so many laughs and tears and everything in between. We will DESPERATELY miss them and their sweet boys. But, we are happy for them and this new adventure closer to family!

Our Houston Spring Break!

We enjoyed a WONDERFUL Spring Break to Houston, Texas to visit Jamie, Gina, Anna and Blue.

It was a great trip and the kids LOVED playing together. We could have stay at the house the whole time and the kids would have been perfectly content. Of course, Jamie and Gina have an INCREDIBLE home, so that doesn't hurt! :)

Alas, we did not stay at home the whole time! We partied it up, like we always do when we are with these amazing people!

The kids and I flew to Houston without Greg on Tuesday and then he joined us Thursday evening.  The main purpose of the trip was the celebrate Jamie's 40th birthday!  But, of course, we are always up for a great trip to Texas for no reason at all. :)

I'd just like to take a moment to mention that I am SO HAPPY that I can travel now with both kids and actually enjoy myself.  They turn on their movie, I read my back, we land at our destination.  It's been so awesome.  I thought I would never enjoy traveling again, once I started traveling with babies.  But, alas we have finally arrived!

Gina and I took the kids to the Houston Children's Museum, which is one of the best museums in the country.  This place is GINORMOUS.  We could have spent days there and never covered all of the things to do.  The kids had a great time.  Unfortunately, Emma had gotten up super early to play with her cousins and I had not gotten much sleep… which is a toxic combo.  We both desperately need our sleep to be kind, well functioning humans.  So she was behaving horribly and talking back to perfect strangers and screaming and taking things from other kids and I got super frustrated.  I wish I could have enjoyed it more.  But, we survived and the museum was really incredible!!

Grant got himself soaking wet while playing outside with the super fun water system and of course I had not brought an extra outfit for him.  So he sported his sister's pink sweatshirt all day.  haha.

Enjoying some outdoor trampoline jumping with the sprinklers!

Had a great time at this park that hosts a bunch of alligators!!  We were so close to them and the kids were really excited!  Emma told everyone about this experience when we got home.  I think it was one of her favorite spots to visit.  Houston has so many great things to do!!

Jamie's 40th Birthday party!!  So many friends.  So much food!  So much fun!  We had a great time meeting some of Jamie and Gina's friends.  We spent a lot of the evening have a Jamie Trivia game where we took turns asking Jamie questions about himself.  Some included his favorite songs and teams scored extra points if they got up to sing the song.  Of course, this was no problem for any of us!

Anna taking a little nap on Emma en route to the Natural History Museum!

The Houston Natural History museum is really breathtaking.  So many amazing exhibits!!  Grant was just enthralled with all of the dino skeletons.  He just kept running from dinosaur to dinosaur saying, "WOW, WOW, WOW".  "Mom, look at this one!!"  It was so fun to see his little eyes light up at everything.

The magna carta was on display while we were there!  Of course we were too cheap to pay the extra money to see it… but we got a cool picture with this sign, so that counts, right??

Eating some AMAZING beignets!!

Grant was freezing in the airport and we had packed all of his sweatshirts (that were already on the plane) - so we ended up buying him a Houston sweatshirt at the airport.  As if we really need this in Arizona!!! :/

Thanks Jamie and Gina for an amazing week!!!  So fun to spend time with our family!!

Here are some of our favorite memories -

Scarlet fever gift - Emma ended up with a random rash when we arrived there.  And we joked all week that she was going to pass along this scarlet fever to her cousins.  Grant and Blue ended up getting it while we were there, and I'm sure Anna had at least part of it.  Viral rashes are awesome like that.  Luckily, there were really no side effects, just red splotches everywhere.

Angel in love with Jamie - The waiter we had at Jamie's favorite Chinese restaurant is named Angel.  He was quite friendly with Jamie while we were there.  So Gina and I teased him that Angel wanted to date him.

Gina's new title - S&M coordinator - While we were there, Gina got hired on as Jamie's assistant.  Her title is the Sales and Marketing Coordinator.  But, of course, we shortened it for a good laugh.

Jamie twerking in primary - Jamie is the chorister in the ward and was getting some pretty great dance moves going during some of his songs! 

Emma crawling on walk back to house - The dads took the kids on a walk on Sunday so that Gina and I could take naps.  It was probably not even a mile walk, but by the end the kids were all exhausted.  Emma claimed that she was so tired, she couldn't even walk and ended up crawling part of the way home. HA!

Smash burger -  took Gina and the kids to experience their first Smashburger! YUM!!

I have a lot of liquid today - Jamie liked to call his beverages "liquid" while we were there.  He turned down a drink at one point because he had "too much liquid" today.  

Grant said at one point, "my daddy has crack too" and  Blue said  - yeah, I saw it.

Jamie and Gina were telling us a story about while they were engaged.  Gina had been in a horrible accident and was in the hospital and didn't call Jamie to tell him about it.  Jamie said, why didn't you?  And Gina replied, "It didn't even cross my mind".  haha.  We were all laughing so hard.  Engaged and he didn't even cross her mind.  Good thing they have an amazing marriage and that incident is long in the past!  ha!