You're looking kinda green...

We had planned a nice family dinner for Friday night. Late in the afternoon, we got a call to meet with one of the members of the Bishopric. So, we had a slightly hurried dinner, after which we found ourselves in the Bishop's office. Shortly after our arrival, Brother Easton extended a call to Brian to be the new gospel doctrine teacher. No sooner were the words, "gospel doctrine teacher" out of his mouth, Lucas vomited all over the Bishop's office. For.real. So we're all on our hands and knees cleaning up the mess and talking about what a daunting task it will be to take over for the current teacher. For background, she's been teaching that class for 3 1/2 years, and is pretty much legendary. People are always raving about her lessons. Not that I'd know, I have been in various Primary callings the whole time.

As we're discussing this, Brother Easton asks Brian how he's feeling about things. Brian responds with something like, "I think I might do what Lucas just did. "

Brian was sustained today. So today during testimony meeting Brian got up and mentioned what big shoes he has to fill, and when he sat down our RS President slipped him this note:


All craziness aside, I think Brian will do a great job, and this will be a great calling for him. And really, he doesn't have to fill anyone's shoes, he just has to bring his own strengths to the calling - and I know he will. And for the record, Lucas just had the one episode and that was it. I think dinner was a bit rich for his little tummy. Crazy timing, though - it's the only time he's thrown up in his 9 1/2 months!

Writing relatives

My 17-year-old cousin Kellie O'Neill just had a book published (kind of makes you feel like a slacker, doesn't it?). It's called Burned, and it's available on Amazon. It's supposed to be available at Barnes and Noble too, but it's not there yet. I just wanted to help out my cousin by spreading the word! I haven't read it yet, but if you know anyone looking for a new young adult fiction read, suggest Burned! I believe she wrote a series of 3, and this is the first. Just click on the link if you want to read a synopsis of the book.

Brian actually has some well-known writers in his family. Irish poet Padraic Columb
is Brian's great-grandmother's cousin. And, David E. Kelley (writer of a bunch of shows including Picket Fences, Chicago Hope, The Practice, Ally McBeal, Boston Public and Boston Legal, and married to actress Michelle Pfeiffer) is Brian's 2nd cousin once removed. Brian's grandfather and David E.'s dad were first cousins.

There are definitely writing genes floating around in our families!

Easter 2008

Happy Easter! What a marathon day. Brian got in late last night, and I don't know if the kids were more excited this morning about seeing daddy for the first time in a week, or finding their Easter baskets. It didn't take long for the sugar overload to kick in. Especially Isabel, my candy girl. Every time I turned around she was getting into something sweet.

When I was growing up, we always hid a carrot for the Easter bunny, and in the morning we would find our baskets where we each hid a carrot. I forgot to buy carrots, so my kids hid ramekins with frozen peas and carrots in them. Bunnies like all veggies, right? Oh, and our Easter bunny is quite smitten with the children's outdoor spring stuff section at Target. :) (watering cans, bug houses, and the like).


I had saved dying Easter eggs and decorating Easter cookies for this morning so we could all do it together. Every once in awhile 1:00 church is a good thing. After doing eggs and cookies, we all watched "Finding Faith in Jesus Christ" and talked about the reason we celebrate Easter.

My three children all dressed up. Thanks, mom, for making Isabel's dress!





After church we went to Brian's grandmother's (Nanna) for Easter dinner. Hope everyone had a great Easter!

Horton Hears a Who

Brian is home tomorrow! We've done great on our own this week, but miss daddy and are looking forward to him coming home. He's had a good week in Tucson. And, many of you have asked, and we are all over the influenza. As soon as I got over it, the kids took turns coming down with fevers for days, but never had much more than that.

My friend Judi offered to watch the kids today so I could have some time to myself, but I asked if she'd instead watch Lucas so I could take Connor and Isabel to Horton Hears a Who. It was really entertaining, we all enjoyed the movie. The kids did great and sat quietly through the whole movie.
A funny note from the movie: my tiny 22-pound Isabel wasn't heavy enough to keep her chair down; it kept folding up on her, so she had to sit on the edge of the chair throughout the movie. Towards the end, she must have gotten tired of this and ended up in my lap.

They loved the fish tank in the theater as much as the movie:

Connor for some reason could not remember the name of the movie. When I was putting him to bed tonight, he said out of the blue, "thanks for taking me to, what's the name of that movie again?" I said, "Horton Hears a Who." He said, "thanks for taking me to Horton Hears a Who. You're a nice mom. You're so good to me." How sweet is he??? Love him.

One last random note. Isabel had a good hair day - it's so long, and curls so nicely at the end. What a doll - love her too!

Crawling

Lucas started really crawling within the last few days - naturally, since Brian's been in Tucson since Sunday! He was doing one or two crawl motions before and then would lie down, but now he can cover a lot of ground. Little crawlers are SO CUTE! But it's amazing already how much more stuff he is getting into. He, of course, is thrilled with his newly discovered freedom.

And BTW, that would be Connor making the lovely background noise. And Lucas is eating the goldfish that bribed him to crawl to me when what he really wanted was lunch. :)

Soccer

Connor is in his first soccer league, and had his first practice tonight. It went pretty well, although it got pretty cold. He has a couple of practices and then they start games in two weeks. I think the coach was great and did some creative games to teach the basics. Connor said he liked it (through chattering teeth). Hopefully next week will be warmer!

It's not easy being green

I simply wanted to put my kids in green shirts and snap a St. Patrick's Day picture. Clearly it was too much to ask today. At first, Isabel was doing this:

So I got a cute one of my Irish boys:
Then Isabel finally happied up, and Lucas went downhill:I sure gave it a good effort! Anyways... Brian is half Irish, and I am a quarter Irish, so I *think* that makes my kids 6/16 Irish. Did I do the math correctly? That has never been my strong subject. Anyways, with my mom being an O'Neill, and Brian's mom being a Kelley, we've got lots of Irish blood.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!