Our 1 year old!

It's hard to believe that Jack has finally turned 1. His birthday was on March 27th. But since Easter was on Sunday, we celebrated his birthday on Easter and had a big family get together. The kids did get some cute Easter clothes as you can see in this picture.

Rather than doing a birthday cake, we like using our cupcake tree. Jack was about ready to dive right into it.

As we've done with each of our kids on their 1st birthday, we stripped down Jack to his diaper and let him go to town on his birthday "cupcake". He didn't get as dirty as Brooklyn and Isaac did, but he did love that cupcake (at least what he was able to get into his mouth). It's always such a treat to see what has fallen down onto the seat.

Here's a picture of Brooklyn on her 1st birthday. Can you tell Brooklyn and Jack are related?

We needed to do something on Jack's actual birthday, so we decided to go to Tucano's in Provo, a Brazilian grill where they serve the best grilled pineapple in the world not to mention a plethora of meat.

And finally, what is a birthday for Jack without Jumpin' Jacks in Springville. He was scared to death of this slide at first but now loves it, faceplant and all. Jack's a good boy. We're lucky to have him in our family.

Who's snoring?

Within the past couple of months, we've noticed that Isaac has been snoring a lot more than before. He's worse than I am which is saying a lot. We had Brooklyn in for a doctor's appt. a few weeks back and had the doctor take a quick look at Isaac's tonsils and the doctor simply stated "Wow! Those are huge tonsils!" So Isaac saw a nose, throat and ear doctor this afternoon and there was no question by the doctor at all. He needs his tonsils and adenoids removed. The doctor said that his tonsils are so big that they are almost fused together. We've noticed lately that Isaac when he speaks sounds much more like he's talking through mucus in his throat. No wonder he's snoring when he sleeps.

Anyway, the surgery is a simple one that only takes about 30 minutes, but it does require that he go completely under and they have to give him a breathing tube. He's scheduled to have it done next Wednesday morning (April 2nd). Recovery is about a week and then the snoring should be gone and he should be able to sleep much better. He's pretty excited for his all liquid diet filled with smoothies, Gatorade and Popsicles. We'll report more after the surgery.

They say that this problem is hereditary. Maybe if I get my tonsils removed, I'll stop snoring too?

Snowbird Tunnel

Tami works a few hours a week and at her Christmas work party this year she won 4 free full day ski lift passes to Snowbird. I had never been to Snowbird before, so I was pretty excited. The snow is incredible this year. They have a 150" base right now at Snowbird. The weather was in the 50's. Nothing like Spring skiing in Utah. They just finished a brand new tunnel towards the top of the mountain that takes you to the backside of the resort called Mineral Basin. The tunnel is pretty cool. You ride a little conveyor belt and it takes you right through. At the deepest point you are about 200' below ground. They had good music playing throughout. Check out the pictures and video clip. It was a fun day and we're excited that we get to go again this season with the other 2 passes.

Here's a view just before going through the tunnel.

You can see how far from the ridge the tunnel opening is in this picture.

Here we are going through the tunnel itself with a video clip as well.

This is the other side of the tunnel. Only goes one way. To get back over to the other side you have to take the ski lift to the top.

This was the view we got as we came out of the tunnel. I love Utah mountains!

Another view of the mountains from the top.You can read all about the tunnel and facts by going to Snowbird's website.

Google Street View

I'm telling you . . . Google never ceases to amaze me. You may have heard of the new "Street View" feature available in some cities on Google Maps. Well, they have pretty much done all of Spanish Fork and a lot of cities in Utah County. They use a car with a 360-degree camera mounted on top and then they just drive around. They must have been through our neighborhood sometime late last summer. Our garage was open when they went by our house:


View Larger Map

Use your mouse to click and drag to look around. You can zoom in and out and if you try to look straight down, you can see the hood of the car. If you go to the East on this road, you'll actually see a kid riding his bike. Pretty crazy technology. Here's what the car looks like with the camera mounted on the roof. If you happen to see one of these driving by, be sure to smile really big and then you too can be immortalized on by Google.

Donuts and Dads

This past Thursday night I had the privilege of attending my first Donuts and Dads night at the Elementary School where Brooklyn goes to Kindergarten. They have done it the past few years. Basically they figure that Dad's are not as involved in their children's lives as the mom's (go figure) and so at 6:30 we showed up in her classroom with all the other dad's and their kids. Earlier that day in class the kids were all given books that they were to bring with them to the activity that evening. Brooklyn and I sat down and read her book together. She did all the reading of course (she's quite the little reader . . . in fact she just finished reading The Cat in the Hat tonight. That's a long book for kids to read). We read for an 1/2 hour and then they invite everyone to the gym to eat donuts. Brooklyn was so excited to bring me to school. It really was a fun evening. It was good to see so many old friends too. We've been in 3 different wards since we moved to the ward about 2 years ago and it was amazing how many people I knew. And as a bonus, Brooklyn got to keep her book.