Crystal Lake, Illinois

We made it here to Crystal Lake (Northwest of Chicago). For those of you who don't know, Brent has an internship here this summer with Centegra Health System. We are excited for this opportunity, and hope it opens doors for us in the future. We have been here since May 16, and have already had 2 sets of visitors. Both were my cousins, and we didn't do much (because we don't really know what to do for fun here... yet). We have enjoyed staying here! So, if anyone is up for a trip close to Chicago, please come play with us we would love to have you!

The joy of being a daddy :)

After church, Leila and Ben were really wired and goofy, so I put them on top of the car while we unloaded church stuff. They absolutely loved it and, of course, had to endure daddy's tickling. Hope you enjoy some of what we caught on camera!

Easter

We had a great Easter this year... a little crazy, but it was fun!
The week started out dying Easter eggs with Jordan, Chelsea, and kids and they had a ball doing so!
Leila and Ben both loved looking for Easter eggs... well, Ben loved to eat what was in the eggs Leila liked looking for them! We had a little hunt on Saturday and enjoyed the nice weather.


Sunday, the kids found their baskets full of goodies and we STARTED to have a relaxing morning until our neighbor called to tell us about flooding going on in the neighborhood and to quickly get things filled with water.



It was quite a morning! Sunday after Conference we had a big dinner with all our friends in our neighborhood. It was good food and GREAT company!! Thanks everyone for coming! :)


I absolutely LOVED that Conference was over Easter weekend. It added such a different, powerful spirit. Our family was indeed edified from our church leaders and feel there is much we can continue to work on in our home and with ourselves.

Princess Party!

For Leila's birthday she also wanted to have a princess party with neighborhood friends. Everyone came in their best princess/prince attire!

Here are the King and Queen getting ready for guests to arrive (thanks for being such a good sport Brent!):
Here is the most handsome Prince... who just woke up from his nap:

We played pin the tiara on the poster, and went hunting for the princess' treasures, we then had a royal ball with music and dancing. We had a great time and Leila tells me she wants it to be her birthday party everyday! She really enjoyed being the PRINCESS! Thanks to everyone who came!

#3!!

That's right Leila is 3 years old now!! We had a great day! We woke up and made pink, heart shaped waffles and she wanted a pink plate, pink fork, and pink cup!! She is a PINK girl.

She wanted to open presents right away, so we had to talk her into opening one at a time to last throughout the day. This first video is her VERY first present of the day and she was so excited about it.

We don't have a video of her riding it, because she got a little discouraged that she couldn't just get on and go--we need to practice a little bit more!

Later that day we headed to Wentzville and St. Charles to visit a mission friend of Brent's. We went to a few parks had a picnic and just enjoyed the day OUTSIDE!! It got up to 75 degrees and it was a BEAUTIFUL day!


This is a picture of Leila showing me how "happy" she was that it was her birthday! She was so funny and hyper most the day until nap time came around and then she was a wreck until she had a few minutes of down time.


After St. Charles we came home and decided to have a BBQ for dinner. We invited Jordan, Chelsea, and family over and had hamburgers and hot dogs. It was a GREAT dinner and made us excited for summer!
After Jordan and Chelsea left we finished opening presents. Leila received a lot of "princess" items and, as most of you know, she loves to sing and dance. So, we put on some music and here was the result...

What a beautiful dancer and a beautiful girl!! We love you Leila!! We hope you had a GREAT BIRTHDAY!