Just a quick update

     This week we were busy!  School is getting crazier as we get closer to the end of the year (6 more weeks!) and my family will be coming in town next week so I am catching up on my cleaning.  We also had the house appraised so we can lock in a good interest rate while we can.

     Thursday we went and saw Jeff's brother in "Hello Dolly" at the Scera Theater in Orem.  Every time I see a play I remember all the fun times I had doing shows.  It has been 7 years since I was in a play and I do miss it sometimes.  I always go home singing
after a show and think, "I should try that again some time".  I don't know if I will ever push myself to do it again, but it is fun to get excited about singing and performing again.

Here is a great selfie of us at the temple.

     Saturday Jeff and I took a mini road trip with Jeff's sister.  We went to the Manti Temple.  It was super busy and a beautiful spring day.  I like spending one on one (sort of since there were three of us) time with Jeff's siblings.  I like getting to know them better each time.  We talked a lot about adoption because Mariellen's husband is adopted.  She has asked us lots of questions about what it is like to be on the "waiting" side of the process.  I love just talking with family and always building a better relationship with each person.

I was Fat in Hawaii

The last few months I've been working really hard to lose weight.  Though, I've seen progress on the scale (and more importantly, in my ability to move around and enjoy my life) I wasn't entirely convinced that there were any visible changes.

Then I was looking at pictures of our Hawaii vacation last year.  This is me in the Maui airport about 10 months ago.

Don't get me wrong, I was quite precious.  But I just now noticed my dewlap made of fat.

Here is me right now.  (Well, not exactly, I took the picture like 3 minutes ago.)

I still have plenty to lose, but there's a noticeable difference, amiright?

Naturally, after looking at my reflection in the phone, it was important to try and recreate how I looked in the Hawaii picture.

Perhaps I haven't made any progress after all.

(Side note from Robyn:  I am VERY proud of Jeff for all of his hard work to get his health back in order.  I'm happy to report that I have lost weight too and feel good.  I also have to state that the last picture made me laugh and I love it.)

My Green Thumb

This weekend I finally got around to working on our grow boxes again.  We love fresh veggies and fruits in the summer and we didn't get to grow them last year because we were busy building the boxes and ran out of time to plant.  Well I'm determined to get things planted this year (and hopefully not kill any of it), but first I needed to build a green house top to keep the plants safe from snow.  My dad told me what to buy and how to build it.  I felt very handy and Jeff documented the event.  When I finished one (without the plastic on top so I can still plant later) Jeff proudly proclaimed that I had just built a great covered wagon!  Up until that point I did not realize that is exactly what it looked like.  I just hope this covered wagon grows good crops.  Here are some pictures Jeff documented for posterity.

All the seed packets we want to plant! We are a bit ambitious.

Love my power tools!

Isn't it such a cute covered wagon.

Adoption Pass Along Cards!

I finally finished the  adoption pass along cards!  My sister Megan and I sure learned a lot about Adobe Photoshop.  I'm actually glad because now I can make cute things for my classroom as well.  Here are some of the ones we worked on but we only picked the top two to print.

Festival of Colors

This weekend we had planned to take a little Easter vacation.  My parents had their time share down in St. George and we were going to go down there for some hiking, swimming, fun in the sun and relaxation.

Unfortunately, there was a little mix-up   It turns out they had booked the condo for March 29, 2014.  March 29th was when we planned to go down, but it turns out that the year portion of the date is important.  And since this year is 2013, they weren't gonna let us use the condo.  (How rude!)

We were sad that our plans fell through.  (But, I was more sad for my mom, we were just going to spend the weekend but they were making it a bigger trip.)  Fortunately, there was a silver lining to the cloud of the timeshare mix-up.   I got the opportunity to cross a very important item off my bucket list.

Every year around this time I see all sorts of pictures cropping up on Facebook from the festival of colors that happens at the Hare Krishna Temple.  I've always wanted to attend, but every year we end up making plans on that weekend before realizing that we are once again going to miss it.

Well, this year since our plans fell through, we decided to attend so that we could put our own pictures of our brightly colored selves on Facebook.  Here is the sum of our experience in pictures.

The temple filled with people as we approach

The cloud of colors from people throwing

Robyn and I with the colorful people

Robyn and I with our friend Kayli

Colorful Kissing

Selfie before we get back in the car

Isn't she cute?

It was a great experience.  They had a band playing and people were singing and dancing.  I love to experience other cultures.  I think the celebration of colors and "lovingly coloring each other" is a fabulous form of worship.

One of my favorite parts was when the band was playing Led Zeppelin's Immigrant Song, only they had changed the lyrics to be about Krishna.  It was kind of awesome.

My second favorite part was throwing colors on people who were walking in as we were leaving.  They were blank canvasses, ready to become works of art.