Is Andrew a Streeter or what?! It has been 100 degrees for the past 4 days so we have been playing out back in the sprinklers to cool off, but Andrew didn't like the feeling of a wet swimsuit so this is how he ran around, naked!

Dallin is pretending his butterfly net is a hobby horse and riding around the backyard. He caught a spider in this container and wanted me to take a pic. Notice his hair is a little shorter, I finally took the clippers to it myself to save some money. Did I do alright Steph? I haven't been able to bring myself to do Andrew's yet.

Well it is one hour away from being May 15th which is my 9th wedding anniversary, but there is nothing and no one to celebrate with. Jared and I remain separated by much more than just miles which makes me sad in a way that cannot be put into words. It seems so unfair that I am in this situation and so immature of me to have this attitude. It is what it is and I need to deal with it, but how do you deal with it is what I want to know. Some days I think I do pretty good at pretending to be dealing with it, but I just try not to think about it. The boys and I are still planning on heading to Utah once school finishes for Dallin at the end of June. How the boys and I and all our stuff will get there is still to be determined. I hope to get a job and start saving for a place the boys and I can call home rather than the free loading off my parents we have been and will continue to do for the next few months.
There are so many times I ask myself where it (my marriage) all went wrong. What if I had done this? Why couldn't I be more like that? My bishop has advised me that it is counter productive to think this way, I just wish I could tell my brain and heart to stop. Today I read "A Matter of a Few Degrees" by Elder Uchtdorf from the priesthood session of last conference and it was amazing. It seems to me that is what happened. Our relationship some how got a few degrees off course and when we returned to our starting point we were 500 miles apart. Yesterday I read "Daughters of God" by Elder Ballard. This made me laugh and gave me hope. I want to do the best for my kids and be a good example to them and raise them in the gospel to be righteous young men and fathers. I want their measure of success to be great husbands to their wives and be the best fathers and providers for their children that they can be. I hope I am doing that, I feel like I fall short of the mark most days. I am trying more and more to "treasure the doing a little more and the getting it done a little less" as Elder Ballard put it. That is hard for a person who treasures efficiency. Well I had better get to bed since a day full of treasures lies ahead for me.

I thought I would write a little about the boys because Andrew asked me today " Mom where's my tail?" It made me laugh so much I really wanted to share it with everyone. Andrew is always saying funny things and I rarely write them down so I thought I would at least put them in the blog. Dallin lately is really showing an interest in baseball and now he wants to spend the afternoons in the backyard with me pitching balls to him to practice batting. He can also throw the ball up in the air himself and hit it, but he really prefers to have me pitch it to him. I will try to get some pics of him doing this in the next couple of days and post them.

This is our new favorite park in Woodland. It is called Ferns park and the boys love it. There is so much to do. These pics only show a small portion of it. It is like tree house and castle rolled into one with towers and stairs and leading up and down and all over.


Andrew fell asleep in this giant swing one afternoon so I just let him take a nap in it.
In addition to all the great toys to play on there is a water play area with rings that spray water and fountains that randomly spray water out similar to the fountains at Gateway in SLC. Dallin plays in the water for hours, but Andrew wants nothing to do with it.

Here are more pics from Day Out with Thomas. Here is Andrew enjoying the view from the train.
Andrew is in the green car at the end. This is one of the rides set up at the event. Andrew did not like it at all and jumped out after only going around once.

Andrew is modeling his new Thomas PJ's grandma gave him and showing off his special train Grandma bought him at the event. It is a water tanker train that says Day Out with Thomas 2008 and you can't get it in stores so he was pretty excited.

Andrew didn't want to blow out the candles on his cupcake so Dallin and I did it for him. I thought this was such a cute pic of him. Notice his Percy tattoo on his arm, he loved it and even added more "tattoos" to his arms with rubber stamps they had out in the art area.

Day Out with Thomas!
Andrew's birthday gift from Grandma Pennington was tickets to Day Out with Thomas and he was so excited. There were all sorts of train activities with the highlight being a train ride on Thomas the Tank Engine.
Here we are with a giant Percy train. Percy is Andrew's favorite so he was a little disappointed we couldn't ride on this.

Here are the boys on the train. They are covered train cars with big openings on both sides (no windows) and the boys could stand up and look out and wave to the cars we passed. They had a blast. Notice Andrew is wearing his Thomas shirt of course.