March

March is my favorite month. Any guesses as to why? That's right it's my birthday month!!!! :) Even though I have to wait til the end of the month, I still love the whole month. My kids are excited because my birthday starts off the birthdays in our family. (Mine in March, Karen in May, Neils and Michael in June. We get very busy in June.) Plus we also get to plan something fun to do as a family that we normally don't do like go to a movie in the theater or out to some fun activity. This year we will be doing a movie since Neils had knee surgery on Friday and might not be up to bowling or mini golf.

Speaking of which, I get to tell the story of Neils and his knee. When he was 15 he dislocated his knee when playing basketball. He had surgery and never did anything else about it. About 3 years ago he fell out of bed when turning over in his sleep and dislocated it again. We had to call an ambulance and go to the emergency room for them to put it back in. Despite my concerns, he never went to the doctor after the trip to the ER. About a month or two ago, Neils had a prompting that he should get his knee checked out. He finally went to the doctor and had a cat scan of his knee. They found out that his knee cap was floating freely in his knee with nothing to connect it to anything else. The doctor said he needed surgery. Well, Friday was the day. They had to take a ligament from a donor and place it in his knee and then screw this ligament to the knee cap and the bones of his legs. Quite a surgery. We were both nervous, but trusted in the Lord to bless him and direct the doctor. Everything went well with the surgery and was home that afternoon. Thankfully we had wonderful people to watch the kids during all this.

They put a cast type splint on his leg from his ankle to the top of his leg and wrapped it from top to bottom as you can see in the picture. He's been on the couch most of the weekend with short trips to the bathroom or around the room to exercise it a little. He's actually feeling much better now and excited to get to the doctor on Tuesday to get into a hinged brace rather than this full leg cast. Then he will start physical therapy to speed the healing. He'll be off work for a week and then hopefully back to as normal as he can be. Neils says he feels like a pirate as he limps around like a peg leg, just needs the eye patch.

Happy Flowers

My sister has been doing a happiness blog. She takes a picture every day of something that makes her happy. It's rubbed off a little as I've been noticing things that make me happy in my life. It has been fun. The thing recently that can make me smile every time I look at them are my flowers.

Neils bought them for me and every time I look at them I smile. There are several reasons these flowers make me smile. First is that it is a sign of spring. It's been winter for so long (it seems) and everything is dead that it's nice to have something green and growing to look at. Another is the miracle of life. When we bought these flowers, they were not much more than buds with a tinge of color on them. Within a day the color got brighter and some of the buds started to open. Each night as it got dark, the flowers would close their petals and almost looked like buds again. But the next morning they would be even fuller blooms than the day before. It amazes me! Another thing is the colors, the colors are even prettier than the picture and perfect pastels for spring. It's hard not to smile at pink and purple flowers. Another thing that makes me happy is that my sweet husband made a special effort to buy me flowers and I can't help but smile to think of his thoughtfulness in doing that for me. Amazing that such a simple thing as flowers can have so many reasons to make me smile :)

Lego Star Wars Fever

For Christmas we got the Lego Star Wars Wii game. We love it and have been playing it ever since. The kids really love it and have learned how to play it too. Since the kids love it so much we decided that it was time to show them the real Star Wars movies. We started with Episode I and the kids loved it. They kept commenting on how it looked or didn't look like the Wii game and they were so excited. We loved hearing their comments and their enjoyment of the movie. Michael loves Jango Fett and was disappointed to find that he wasn't in the first movie. Neils told him that Jango is in the second movie and Michael has been begging us ever since to watch it.

A while ago, as we were going through boxes after our move, Neils found a lego Star Wars figure that he had gotten when he was younger. The kids liked it but didn't really know what it was. When we played the game, the kids remembered that they have one of the guys and immediately went and found QuiGon Jinn. Michael has been playing with it ever since. I did a little looking on line and found a couple of Lego storm troopers for him and Karen as well. Karen also found a little Minnie Mouse figure that is dressed up as Queen Amidala. They are discovering and loving everything Star Wars lately. Karen even came home the other day with a Star Wars book from her school library. Neils is in heaven that his kids are becoming Star Wars geeks like we are. We are so proud!

Here is Michael with his toys and the game.

Homemade fun

Michael loves cars. He always seems to have a car close by and he is vrooming them all over the house on a daily basis. One morning I came out to the living room and found this:

The piano had become his parking lot. I had a good laugh and thought how creative he was to do this. Of course later I made him clean it up, but it was really cute.

On Sunday the kids got really excited for Valentine's Day and decided to dress in pink and red. Karen of course in pink and Michael in red. Michael thought Karen was so beautiful that he just had to take a picture. He did a pretty good job.

He then had to have Karen take his picture. This was his pose, it made me laugh.

The kids got me in the mood for Valentine's Day and I thought "why wait?" so I made this to celebrate. The kids loved helping and were very excited for this cake, and I thought it turned out pretty good.
Karen said that it turned out so well that she wants me to make her wedding cake for her. I was honored and then told her about my wedding cake and that her grandma made it for us. She was very excited about that and wanted to know what it looked like, so we dug out the wedding album and showed her. She declared it beautiful and said that now she wants grandma to make her wedding cake for her. I am happily willing to let that happen since I don't think I could ever do that well.

From our family to yours.... Happy Valentine's Day!

New Member of the Family

We did it! We found a new car! It's so exciting we can hardly contain it, so we decided to share with you all. We found a Toyota Camry Hybrid for an astounding price at the LDS Church Office Bldg Fleet Sales dept. (www.lds.org/fleetsales) We just couldn't pass up such a great deal that we snapped it up as quickly as we could.

Here's a picture of the newest member of our family :)

Hopefully with the Neils driving to and from work every day in this, it will help us save money on our gasoline bill.