Family Vacation: Part 2

We arrived in Anaheim on Saturday evening.  We had dinner in Downtown Disney and went swimming in our hotel pool.  We stay at the Anaheim Desert Inn and Suites because it's right across the road from Disneyland.  And it's pretty cheap if you book your room a couple of months in advance.

On Sunday morning, we went to church in Anaheim.  Then we went for a drive.  What started out as a little sightseeing became an all-day project.  We're still not sure how that happened, but LA is a lot bigger than it looks on a map.  First, we drove to the LDS Redlands Temple.  It's in a beautiful, classy neighborhood. 

 

Wayne thought it would be fun to drive to see the "Hollywood" sign.  What's up with my family and signs?  Anyway, we went.  But I don't recommend it.  The kids were pretty scared of some of the neighborhoods we drove through.  I guess that's what we get for putting our fate in the hands of our GPS.  At least we made it to the sign.  Ta da!  Here it is:

After that, we needed some more spirituality, so we drove to the Los Angeles Temple.  The grounds are open for visitors to walk through, and it was all gorgeous.  Especially with that cute family perched on those rocks.

We were worn out when we made it back to the hotel.  We ate dinner and went to bed.  And no, Eric, I didn't bring any Disneyland stew.  But I did have some microwave dinners that were pretty tasty.

Family Vacation: Part 1

We had so much fun last week! We started off our vacation with a drive down to Vegas to see my brother Eric and his family.  It is always fun to see them, and it's a nice way to break up the long drive to California. 

For some reason, my boys always want to have a rock concert with their cousin Jordy when we visit.

We also drove out to Hoover Dam with them.  It was incredible.

We walked right out onto the dam.  There's a road that goes over it--that's how people currently get from Vegas to Arizona.  The tiny walls along the walkway did little to inspire my confidence.  We kept a tight grip on the kids: the busy road on one side and a sheer drop down the other--not my favorite place to walk with kids.  But you can tell that they thought it was pretty cool.  And Daniel, of course, stopped to read every sign.

This sign was worth reading:

As we were driving up to the dam, Wayne told us the story about his great grandpa who worked on the Hoover Dam.  His great grandpa loved this dog that followed the workers around, and when the dog died, the workers buried him near the dam.  This sign is attached to the rock above where the dog is buried.  So, that's an interesting bit of family history.

That's all for this post, but I will have more from the other parts of our trip.

A Whole New Profile

We don't really expect that a birth mom is going to waltz into LDS Family Services one day, spot our profile,  and fall in love with us.  Which is why we put so much effort into finding a birth mom on our own.  In spite of Wayne saying that we will be using our pass along cards as coasters for the rest of our lives, we have given out hundreds of them.  We also have our online profile at www.itsaboutlove.org.  We have our family and friends looking out for us and helping us make connections to potential birth moms.  Thanks to all of you for your help and support!  We aren't just wishing and hoping that someday we will adopt.  We are planning, praying, and working toward that goal. 

Our latest addition to our finding tools is a profile at Parent Profiles.  We've had it up for a few days so far, and it gets a lot more attention than the one at LDSFS.  One reason is that there are less than 250 couples on there, and only a handful are from Utah.  We actually got an email from a potential birth mom within a few hours of our profile being published.  It was very exciting, but she is having a boy.  Too bad for us.

One cool part about our new profile is a section called our "journal."  One thing that they suggest is putting in entries from other people who know us.  So, if you want to write something nice about us, then you can be part of our profile, too.  Just email us a paragraph or two, and we will put it on there.  You can even include a picture of yourself!  Or I just might have to dig one up. . .  

Easter Celebrations

So, how did we celebrate Easter?  Well, first we went to a candy hunt at my parents' house  on the week before Easter.  We (the adults) pretty much littered the yard with candy and let the kids go to town.  Then we went to an Easter egg hunt in our neighborhood (at my brother Brian's house) on the Saturday morning before Easter.  Everybody brought a dozen plastic eggs filled with toys and candy for each of the kids.  And finally, we went to Wayne's parents' house on Sunday for an Easter egg hunt for actual dyed eggs.  The Easter bunny never even makes it to our house, but I don't think the kids really care, considering that their baskets are always overflowing with candy anyway.  

Our Easter celebration wasn't really about all the candy, though.  We got to watch LDS General Conference on t.v.  The kids were actually good.  Daniel watched most of it, and Benjamin colored and played quietly during most of it.  We had some fun conference packets that we printed out for them to work on.  I really enjoyed learning from our Church leaders and hearing their testimonies of Jesus Christ.

Another part of our Easter celebration was a Passover dinner.  On the Thursday before Easter, Wayne and I went to a Passover Seder at BYU with my brother Brandon and his wife Jacqueline.  We also attended it last year.  It was very educational and culturally enlightening.  If you have the opportunity to attend a Passover Seder, I recommend going.  If you are Christian, you can at least appreciate that attending a Passover dinner was one of the last acts of Jesus Christ before his atonement.  You might also understand more about why bread and wine (or water in the LDS church) are used for the sacrament.  And hopefully you will learn more about Jewish history and culture.

What we did for St. Patrick's Day

Yeah, it's kinda late for St. Patrick's Day.  But I say, if Easter isn't here yet, you haven't missed your chance.  So I'm going to tell you what we do at our house for the Day of the Little People.  First, the kids have to Spring Clean their rooms a day or two before.  Then they have to keep them clean because we have a little leprechaun named Lucy who visits our house on St. Patrick's Day.  She hates tripping over clutter.  If the room is pretty much spotless when she visits, then she will leave behind a treasure hunt.  This year she left about 20 clues on "gold coins."  And the prize was a soccer goal!  So here's our hunt: