Easter Sunday 2009

We plan to celebrate this most important beautiful day with our loved ones. We will do all those kid-friendly traditions of egg hunts, Easter baskets and lots of candy. Our day will be at it's peak when we eat a great feast with both families.

But we will also take time to remember what Easter Sunday is all about - the atonement and resurrection of Jesus Christ. This video was made by our church especially for this holiday. Take a few moments (4 minutes and 25 seconds) to watch and then share the following video, "Easter Message—None Were with Him," in which Elder Jeffrey R. Holland describes the Savior’s solitary journey to overcome sin and death and testifies of the resulting blessings to all mankind.



Happy Easter to you and your family.

Love,

The Wards

Day 2 Part 2 Spring Break: SLO

One of the best things about this Central Coast Tour is the food! We don't miss any opportunity to dine at our favorite eateries. After getting cleaned up from a fun day at the beach we headed out for dinner. Woodstock's Pizza was our destination. They hand make all their pizza dough. The kids love to watch them flip it around in the air and spin it into a perfect round crust. They have a signature fold for the crust that packs in more sauce so there is no need for dipping. My personal favorite is their dessert pizza. It now comes in 3 different flavors, but the original cinnamon and sugar with frosting is the best. Oh boy, I'm salivating right now just thinking about it. If you've never been there - then get there!

My parents (we found out, had planned their own trip to the coast so we thought it would be fun to get together while there) and Jeremy's parents (who had decided to make a scenic road trip down the coast in their new corvette) met us there and it was fun to hang out with them for dinner.

After dinner we walked down and around the corner to see the vacant restaurant that Kelly has picked out for her own bakery shoppe.* I like to call it Kelly Kupcakes or Kupcakes by Kelly (This is all purely dreaming, but still fun none the less.) It was such a cute place with windows that fold out and open to the street. The display cases were already in place and there was also a bar - not for alcohol, but for a choose-your-own-cupcake counter. You choose the flavor, filling, frosting and toppings. What a great idea! *Kelly is not really opening a cupcake shoppe. We just like fantasizing about our ideal careers after the kids are grown. And opening a shop like this would tickle her fancy!

So after a moment of dreaming about cupcake heaven we hurried back to our cars to get to the drive-in movie. Our kids have never been to the drive-in. All the theaters around home have been closed down for years so this was a fun experience for them. We brought lots of chairs and blankets (and some snacks that we didn't even touch because we were all stuffed from dinner) because it was chilly outside - we were at the coast after all.

The family feature film that night was Monsters vs. Aliens by Dreamworks. We all got a kick out of this show. It had some great lines about Fresno in the very beginning. Jeremy fell back into his high school days and called out, "Go FRES-NO!" for all the movie goers to hear. I think someone else may have echoed his shout out.

The movie itself turned out to be pretty good. I am a Reese Witherspoon fan so it was fun to hear her do a character's voice. It was fun trying to pick out all the other famous voices in the cast too. Jeremy and I got a huge kick out of Stephen Colbert playing the president of the US. He's a riot! And hearing Kiefer Sutherland's southern accent was equally entertaining.

If you have kids and want to be entertained with several funny moments then this movie is for you.

We gave it 4 "Hail Gallaxhar"s out of 5.

After a fun-filled, action-packed, delicious-dining day we headed back to the Hernandez Hotel and slept a solid night's sleep. All except for Baby Lucy, but that's a story for Kelly and Julio to tell...

Day 1 & 2 Spring Break: Avila

We did the Central Coast Tour for our Spring Break trip. (You know how we like to go out of town any chance we get.) Kelly and Julio graciously opened their home to us and let us come stay for 3 nights. The kids have lovingly named it "The Julio Hotel" - which does not seem quite fair because the house does belong to Kelly and Lucy as well. Maybe we should call it the "Hernandez Hotel" instead.

So we began our trip right after General Conference ended. We drove down to Kelly and Julio's house with a plan to do a bonfire on the beach and roast hot dogs for dinner. About 20 minutes down the road ol' Jackson threw up in the car. Oh yeah, you parents out there know exactly what that is like. We cleaned it up as best as we could and continued on down the road. Jeremy and I crossed our fingers and hoped it was just a case of car sickness. It happened again. And again. (And maybe one last time, but I can't be sure.) We called Kelly to let her know we'd be there later than we thought because of all the clean up stops we had to make. So we decided to change our fancy dinner plans. Instead of a bonfire on the beach we opted for a picnic at the park just across the street from the Hernandez Hotel.

After we arrived, unloaded a bit, and set up our "camp" in their living room we headed over to the park for dinner. Jackson tossed his cookies one more time and the rest of the kids had fun running around and releasing some of that pent up energy from traveling in the car. That was about all the fun we had on day one.

Day 2 was more action packed.

We began at Avila Beach. This beach is our favorite for the kids. The waves are small and it is never crowded. This sign greeted us when we walked onto the beach. That's welcoming, right? Jeremy helped the kids build an awesome sand castle. It had a mote and three tunnels - boy, those kids don't know how lucky they are.



Poor Baby Lucy got some sunscreen in her eye and spent most of the day looking like a pirate (argh!) because it swelled up a bit. She didn't complain about it once! Lucy was content just to be there and eat as much sand as she could get away with. And check out her first ever pony tail! Oooh! It's so fun to play dress up! Logan and Lizzie hammed it up for the camera. They were so happy to be at the beach and to have it feel like summer time. They rolled around the warm sand all day. That last picture gives new meaning to "sugar coated sticky buns".



Here's some fun video of all of us on the beach:

Jackson Boy Turns 3 Today

There's our little Jackson boy. The first day of his life. Boy, he sure has come a long way since then! He came rushing in to life, literally- thank heaven's our doctor had quick hands. He's kept us hopping since that very first day he was with us.

Remember all those exciting Jackson stories? Click here and here and here and here to revisit some of the best ones. We look forward to - er, we EXPECT many many more of these stories in his future. He is just that kind of kid. Inquisitive, exploring, Macgyver-ish, and a little on the destructive side. But those are just some of the things that make Jackson who he is.

Jackson is such a sweet heart. He loves to give loves and kisses. He says "thank you, dad" with the cutest little voice that it melts your heart every time. He has the biggest fetish for trains - he LOVES them. He tries so hard to put sentences together, but has a hard time figuring out the words that go in between so it sounds a bit like this, "Mommy, nnuh, trains?" Translation: "Mommy see my trains?"

Today, for his birthday, we celebrated first thing this morning with donuts and presents - trains of course.



Donuts are his favorite!



"Happy to you Jackson!" (That's how he says it. Minus the "birthday" part.)


We love you, Jackson boy. Thanks for all the memories thus far - we look forward to the year we all have ahead of us.

Happily Ever After

There we are folks. On our wedding day. E L E V E N years ago today. Can you see the looks on our faces? That was sheer joy! We were so happy that day, to finally get married after almost 2 years of dating. There are not enough words to describe the feelings we both felt that day. We were surrounded by friends and family who loved us and supported our decision to be sealed for eternity. What a joyful way to begin our new life together!

Happy Anniversary, my sweet.

(From L to R: Robb, Greg, Gordon, Jeremy, Matt and Aaron. That's me, Jennifer, in the white dress.)

Yummy yummy wedding food

Kari and I got to do the food for a friend's wedding last weekend. We were so happy to get the chance to try our hands at a catering gig and jumped at this opportunity. We had so much fun dipping strawberries and trying out new recipes. We tried to make things as easy as possible for ourselves by choosing foods that did not require tons of prep work and chopping. Here was our final menu:

- veggie tray
- quesadillas with 3 dips - guacamole, fresh salsa, and cilantro lime ranch
- sweet and sour meatballs
- lil' smokies
- cucumber sandwiches
- ham and jack cheese paninis on sourdough with honey mustard dipping sauce
- fruit kabobs with a cream cheese dip
chocolate dipped strawberries

We also served 3 different beverages:
- grape punch with floating frozen grapes
- vanilla lemonade
- and water




Check out that fridge! I was shocked at how quickly we filled this empty refrigerator. Those cucumber sandwiches were my personal favorite - so easy and delicious. I think it's the dill sprinkled on top that calls to me.


And this is how we looked by the end of the night. Not too bad, right? And do not fear - we did not do it all alone. We had some cheerful helpers through the night. Kari's daughter Kaleigh was there most of the night, as was my excellent mother-in-law, Karen. Sis. Isenberg and Sis. Champlain were also there. We had a great clean up crew at the end of the evening too. Thanks to my parents, Karen & Doug, Robb, and Sis. Champlain for getting us out the door so quickly. We were on our way in just an hour! It was a happy, hopping, hard working kitchen and a great experience for all of us.

The birthday celebrations continue...

Last night we went out for Jeremy's birthday date night dinner and a movie - his choice. We did the Tacone grill for dinner (mmm! sweet potato fries!) and then the new Nicolas Cage movie "Knowing".

Dinner was tasty, as we knew it would be, because we always order the same thing every time we go. Call us creatures of habit, but hey, we know what we like and we stick with it. If you go to the Tacone Grill you MUST try the sandwich called "The United STEAK of America". It's awesome. I love their dipping sauce bar too. It's full of all those trendy new dips like cilantro lime ranch and mango apricot something or other.

After a most delicious dinner (and milkshake for the birthday boy) we headed over to the movie theater. I found out on the way over that this particular movie had gotten 2 kinds of reviews from critics. GREAT or AWFUL. Our own newspaper gave it an F! That review alone made me nervous for what we were about to commit to for 2 hours.

Now, without giving away too much of the story we will say this: We liked the first 3/4 of the movie just fine. It was full of suspense, mystery, a bit of horror and some seriously good action. (The subway scene was so intense!) The last 15 - 20 minutes were a bit much, but that is what you must expect when watching a sci-fi movie, right?

Our final verdict is: RENTAL. But if you are a die-hard sci-fi/action movie lover then get your fanny to the theater and watch this movie! We are more of an action/comedy bunch around here.

All in all we give it 3 shiny black rocks out of 5.

"Run, run, as fast as you can..."

"You can't catch me,
I'm the Gingerbread Man!"

It was Fairy Tale week at Joy School. That meant that I got to rummage through our book collection to see what fairy tales I had on hand that we could read at story time. Our kids got several Gingerbread Man books for Christmas last year and I that story would be perfect. We could read it, act it out and even do some baking - my favorite! The kids don't mind rolling up their sleeves and frosting cookies either.

Here was the book we read:
and on the back it had a recipe for gingerbread cookies - what a novel idea!
We rolled out some dough,

cut out some gingerbread man shapes,

and then popped those guys into the oven. We waited until they were done to see if they'd jump out of the oven and run out the front door. Luckily they did not because we had all of these lovely decorations to put on top of them!

Those were some happy frosting cookie decorating kids!

And here's how they turned out.

Don't worry, they tasted a lot better than they looked! I make a killer cream cheese frosting.

It was fun to have the house smell a bit like Christmas again. The magic of fairy tales mixed with the aroma of Christmas was a good combination.

"They say it's your birthday!"

"Dah, nuh, nuh, nuh, nuh!"

Well, another year, and another birthday has come again. THIRTY-FOUR years old today. Whew! I remember back when you were only 24 and I thought that was old back then! I was hoping to reminisce on some of those great memories that make YOU special to ME. It's like a non-tangible gift, right?
I know we just talked about this recently, but I do love remembering back to the first time you asked me out. Your pick up line was so genuine, "Are you related to Fred Duran?" you asked. I knew exactly what you were up to just by the look in your eye, but was totally impressed by the personal connection you were trying to make. And that's where our story began...

Since then I've heard ever so many stories about your past. Your family loves to share the good ones over and over and we never tire of hearing them. I bet you can guess their #1 pick - yep, you got it. The one year before Christmas when you were 7 or 8 years old, you decided to unwrap every present you found hidden in the house. Oh, your poor mama - all that time it takes to wrap presents! After you had finished unwrapping (and spoiling every surprise for Christmas) your common sense thunked you in the head and you realized that you were in deep doo doo. That common sense helped you pack up and run away - to the tree house in the back yard. It wasn't until the next morning, after you had been found and scolded for your unwrapping of the presents, that your mama discovered all the meat that had been in the freezer and all the pots and pans from the kitchen had gone missing. She searched high and low until she questioned YOU about the missing items. You'd learned your lesson by now and admitted to taking all that meat and the pots and pans up to the tree house - a kid had to eat if he was running away on his own, of course.

Oh boy, it's stories like these that give me a small glimpse into the future that we will experience with our own children. And Jackson already has us running in circles!

I do love all those stories. They make you who you are today - my most excellent husband and father to our children. You love to camp, hike and spend time in the outdoors. (Note his bday present in the last picture.) You love spending time with the kids going for bike rides and jumping on the trampoline. You make me laugh - even after all these years. You still ask me out and take us on dates every weekend. I love all these and so many other things about you. What's the line? "He [YOU] truly is [ARE] the best man I've ever known." You should know that by heart because I say it enough.

So, enjoy your special day. I love you my honey buns.

(A NOTE TO FRIENDS AND FAMILY: please feel free to share your favorite Jeremy story in the comments - he loves hearing stories about himself!)

Let's go fly a kite

The weather has been pleasantly mild these last couple of weeks. A nice breeze even decided to pick up for a couple of days. Grandpa Doug promised some kites to the kids and he delivered! They went out one evening just before the sun went down and got busy flyin' those kites! Grandpa was a good sport about untangling all those strings when they crossed.

The sunset was such a pretty backdrop to this activity.