Memorial

As many of you know, we lost Bryan's mother on March 31st. We received this beautiful palm from some of Bryan's coworkers at the Memorial Service and decided to plant it in the backyard as a dedication to Rachel.

Rachel always had a green thumb and had such beautiful plants. So, we brought a few home with us to enjoy and remind us of her. We planted this one in a pot and keep it on the front porch. The blue pot has some Hen & Chicks that Rachel had. Aren't they cute!

These are some flowers we already had in the front flowerbed. Our new plants really add more beauty to the front yard.

Here is a close-up of the Hen & Chicks.

The past 14 months have been a difficult time for our family. The past few months have been especially hard. Yet as we look at the beautiful plants, and see Spring bloom, we can still feel Rachel's presence. And we look forward to the day we see her again in Heaven.

Bad Mom

I've been blogging for almost a year and have all sorts of pictures of Adi. But, we actually have another pet...a bird named Val. Sorry I'm such a bad mom.

Here are a couple of pictures of Val...he's pretty cool too. He will occasionally say (okay...really just immitate us) "Pretty girl." Bryan says he used to making a sound just like the telephone ringing, but then he got a new phone and Val forgot how to make the old sound. That's a little ironic considering that now Val takes off and flies laps around the living room whenever the phone rings...I guess it startles him.

Spring is Here!

Today was the first full day of Spring, and look what we woke up to! That's right, there was close to 6 inches of snow on the ground this morning.

It took a little time for Adi to adjust to shoulder deep snow in the backyard. But she loves to eat the snow. In fact, she keeps going to the back door as though she has "business" to take care of outside. But when we get out there, all she wants to do is snack on the snow.

Here she is prancing across the backyard when she got her confidence up.

Here is her doghouse and a little table we have in the backyard completely covered in snow. Sorry the picture looks a little blue...it wasn't quite light enough for good pictures.

And here is the table and grill covered in snow. Look at Adi's little pawprints! Aren't they cute!

Trivia Night

Last night Leah attended Trivia Night! Our friend Jean put together a team for the fundraiser event for the library in Aubrey. And if you notice, our team came in 1st place out of the 12 teams! We had so much fun...even if we didn't know the capital of Fiji.

Curling Rocks

We had a fun activity for a date night this evening! The Olympics inspired us to try curling! DFW has a curling club and they had an open house where you could go and try it out. They taught us the basics and let us try our hand at throwing a few "rocks".
As he watches his shot, Bryan yells "Hurry" and "Hard" to his sweepers.

Ok, just kidding. He's really just trying to keep his balance using his broom.

You can see our teacher helping us with some technique to the side. The rock weighs 42 pounds, and the sport gets its name from the way to try to spin and "curl" it to go the way you want. Sort of like trying to put topspin on a tennis ball. You are supposed to roll your hand over to make it go the way you want. I didn't worry about the spin so much...I was just trying not to fall down.

Here I am in "launch position". At this point I am supposed to be remembering to get my butt up, keep my sliding foot from going too far back, not put too much weight on the broom or the rock, and push myself forward really hard without falling down. Needless to say, it is tough. Oh, and the sexy bootie is not authentic footware for a curler. They ran out of the actual teflon coated sliders that you wear on your left foot, so they substituted with hospital booties with a strip of duct tape on the bottom. I'm actually glad...we didn't fall near as much as the neighboring groups who had the real sliders.

This was actually a decent throw. But, my right leg should be extended behind me. U.S. Olympic team 2014...here we come!

Belated Valentine's

These are M&M's with "Leah & Bryan" written on them! How cool! My folks sent them to us for Valentine's day.

And, here is Adi enjoying her Valentine treat from Bryan's folks. It is a Bubble Yum soft chew toy. We've had a couple of close calls with gum (peeling out a whole pack of Big Red from the roof of her mouth when Bill and Lou came to visit) so here is some "gum" she can actually enjoy. She loves it!

Happy New Years...Belated

Okay, so 2010 began almost a month ago. But, yesterday we were at Northpark Mall and this window display was so cool that I had to take a picture and blog it. I don't even remember what store it was...but how cool. I know it is hard to tell, but 2010 is spelled out in...FORTUNE COOKIES! How clever! And at the bottom of the display were tons more fortune cookies still in the wrappers.
And for some reason I payed even more attention to all of the flower displays because I thought they were so interesting. Most of them were some kind of cactus...I guess because it is winter and all. But, they were mostly spineless. Aren't they cool.

Anyway, I know this is kind of a random post, but I thought it was neat.

Oh, we went to see "The Book of Eli." It definitely deserves an R rating, but it was actually really good. It was unusual and kind of slow at first. But, it had some cool twists, so make sure to pay really close attention if you go see it.