Spring Break Fun

The first morning of Spring Break we let the kids just sleep and sleep and sleep in.  It was almost noon,  realized it was April Fool's Day and went into action!  We found a couple of quick pranks on the internet and set things up.  We put saran wrap across the doors so when they got up with sleepy eyes they would run into the plastic.  This one didn't actually work.  Maybe it works when your kids wake up and it's still dark outside.  They both saw it before they ran into it.  

 The other joke we played was to switch the bags of cereal in the boxes.  We traded raisin bran for Cap'n Crunch.  David, like a teenager, checked facebook before he ate breakfast and saw all of our well laid plans.    Rookie mistake on our part, too.  Caroline did fall for this one, though.  At least one of them worked!  Usually April Fool's day is on a school day so it was fun for me and Nelson to have some fun together.

 Over the week, we mostly just relaxed, watched movies, read books, sat in the hot tub and really did a lot of nothing.  It was awesome.  We did however leave the house a couple of times for a little adventure.  We went on a hike above the Dixie sign, not sure what this hike is called.  I love to hike in the desert in Spring.  Everything is blooming!  

 The rock formations are so cool!  Caroline climbed up into a little nook.

 SO funny!  These guys love to scare me pretending to fall off the cliff.

 This hike reminds me of Lake Powell in places.  We love to find little places to squeeze through. 

 These two found a few high scary places to explore.  Not me, no thanks, I will just stay at the bottom and take pictures.

 What a fun hike!

 Another day we went to play tennis.  It was perfect weather, such a nice change from the frigid winter we have had this year.

 Nelson thought we needed Wimbledon style ball tending, running back and forth when a ball fell at the net, so funny.

Here I am getting some much needed sun.  I can't tell you how good it felt to bake in the sun! Ah, to be warm again!

We went to the temple and the kids did baptisms for the dead.  I didn't know this but the St. George temple is the oldest working temple in the church.  Cool.

 We had a little craziness also.  It was almost midnight and we decided to have a marco polo game in the dark.  We turned off all of the pool and house lights and played a few rounds.  Guess who was it mostly?  Yeah, not my strong point.  It's actually a little scary swimming in the dark with your eyes closed!

About now it dawned on us that we had an underwater camera and we should be trying it out!  Nelson gave it to me for Christmas and we are just not used to having one and totally forgot!  It turned into one of the favorite pastimes and the week was almost over!  Here are a few of the hundreds of pictures the kids took while experimenting with the camera.  

 What a great week!  It was hard to go home and back to the semi spring/winter we are still having at home.  

I am beginning to see why people love to live in St. George in the winter, it's perfect!

Easter

Here we are coloring Easter eggs late Saturday night before Easter.  I wonder why we never do it earlier?  Well, maybe we did when the kids were tiny.  Katie and Cameron and Cameron's parents, Steve and Gigi Erickson, even joined the party.  We found out that Cameron's dad grew up and was friends with Nelson's cousin Mark in Sunnyvale.  Small world! 

 David was determined to make a black egg.  He soaked his egg over and over again in different colors.  I was surprised it got this dark, wow!  

Do you see the clock?  Yes, that's right...7:10AM.  We actually left a note for the Easter bunny to please not hide the eggs but he ignored us and did it anyway, crazy bunny.

After church, I went to Katie's sacrament meeting to see her Easter program in her ward.  She is the ward choir director and did a wonderful job.  We changed clothes, threw our things in the car and drove to St. George.  Kathy made a delicious Easter dinner for us!  It was so nice to sit outside and enjoy each others company.  After dinner we played games and then headed to the house for our Spring break.  It was such a nice Easter Sunday.

Hari Krishna colors

David, Caroline, Katie and Cameron went to the Hari Krishna Festival of Colors today.

BEFORE:  so nice and clean, white shirts and all....

 AFTER: Oh my goodness!

Yeah, just a little bit of laundry ahead...

OHS Swim Banquet

David and Caroline swam for Orem High this year.  Here they are with Coach Chris and their awards.  Caroline scored points at Region and lettered in Swim.  David got the Freshman swimmer of the year award.  You both rock!

 David makes taking pictures so exciting....

 ...finally a nice picture.

Way to go, guys!  Lots of hours and hard work in the pool pay off!

Tennis???

David's whole life pretty much he has played soccer.  He has always loved soccer but done well at a bunch of other sports as well.  Give him a ball and he's happy.  This year he came upon a dilemma.  His club soccer team no longer had Spring soccer because the boys are old enough to play high school soccer which is in the Spring also.  He has been interested in playing tennis also which is in the Spring.  It gets worse.  Tryouts for both teams were on the same days, same times and he had to choose.  He had been working out over the winter with the soccer team and also had been going to some pre season tennis workouts also.  He came home every day with a different decision about which sport to play, tennis one day, soccer the next.  On the day of tryouts he decided that he was having so much fun playing tennis that he would make a big change in his life and go for a new sport.  I honestly was shocked since he has loved soccer for so long but excited for him to try another sport.  As far as I know, he hasn't regretted his decision.  He has a lot of friends playing tennis also and is having a great time!

Thanks to all of the Pearce's for the great experiences playing with cousins and at tennis camp and also to Aunt Lisa for seeing some talent and encouraging him to play in high school.  He is loving it!

Thanks Holts!!

A HUGE thanks goes out to the Holts for their blogger expertise and resolution to my blogger grief!  I am excited to get back to blogging now that I am a google+ person.  Silly how all this internet stuff works isn't it?  Life has been crazy and it's been so long since I have done this I need to remember how I used to fit this in.  I may be slow getting started again but here's a preview of what I have missed blogging...

Whoa, it worked!

Well, since blogger is cooperating....

Caroline and her Preference group.  The swim girls ask swim boys to this dance, such a fun tradition.  The dance usually falls on the same day as Region swim so the tradition began.  They don't have a day date since they are all at the pool somewhere and then they go to the dance that evening, works out great.

I am having a love-hate, ok, mostly hate relationship with blogger since....well, let's see...my last post was in OCTOBER!  Sorry to drag all of you innocent readers into this mess.  Maybe some of you fellow bloggers can tell me if you have experienced some of the same problems I have.  Every once in a while when I try to upload pictures I get a message saying I am out of space and have reached my 1GB of free storage.  So I click on the little message and it proceeds to tell me I am at 37% capacity or something.  I wonder how 37% capacity is equal to 100% but nevertheless blogger will NOT allow me to add any more pictures...until this very moment when I slipped in under the radar somehow and actually got a picture to upload.  I have stopped even trying to blog because I will spend time choosing pictures, thinking about the story that goes with them, uploading them and then BAM, a big no way from blogger.  From what I have learned from the blogger chat groups is that my problem is not that I have reached maximum storage capacity but that my picture files are individually too large and must be smaller than 2048 pixels on the longest side.  If you look at the file size of most pictures taken on a camera not more than five or ten years old, they are all that big or bigger.  One comment said to either resize each and every picture (what a HUGE pain that would be) or to reroute your upload from an online storage site so the storage is not actually in blogger but somewhere else.  Not sure I really understand all of this or if I believe whoever it is that is responding to these posts requesting help sent out into the internet stratosphere.  

Does anyone have an answer?????  

I really love blogging and cannot seem to figure out how to make this work anymore...well, until just now when it allowed me (shocker) to upload this picture.  I am afraid to try to add another for fear it will remove this one.  

HELP!