Happy Birthday, Maggie Moo!

I will finish posting pictures of Maggie's birthday soon, but here's just a little teaser of how grown-up she now looks!!!   I love her so much!

Maggie has been excited for her birthday for weeks and would walk around singing her own version of the Birthday Song: "Happy Maggie!  Happy Maggie!"  So cute.

I love to see the Temple...

 A few weeks ago we went on a little outing to see the tulips at the temple near our house.  They were beautiful.  I love teaching my kids about the temple and letting them touch the temple.  I didn't actually get a picture of the temple--just the flowers--but it was lovely.

Ha ha!  Somehow the perspective in this picture makes me look like twice as big as Alan!!

Mother's Day

We had a lovely Mother's Day.  Alan made me delicious Monkey Rolls for breakfast (we got to enjoy breakfast with three of Alan's sisters who had slept over.)  Then we went off to church, and then after church we went up to Alan's parents house where Alan and some of his siblings made Navajo Tacos for dinner.  (It also happened to be Alan's mom's birthday on Mother's Day!)  Then we got to enjoy the lovely chocolate cake that Alan had made with his Aunt Annette's delicious homemade chocolate/sour cream frosting!  YUM!

Jared made me a cute decoration in preschool for Mother's Day:  It is a block of wood with his picture on one side and a love note on the other side.

The message says, "I love you Mom, Love Jared" although the "love" is crammed in a corner and he wrote his name backwards (not intentionally, I think. He just ran out of room.)  Now Jared thinks it's funny to write his name backwards and tells me all the time that I have three kids: Jared, Maggie, and Deraj.  :)  I love this and will keep it forever.

Alan's Bday

OK, so I'm way behind on uploading pictures.  We have a newer laptop we've been using, but we haven't transferred our picture program from the old laptop to the new one yet.  So, I have to find time to get on our old (SLOW) computer to upload pictures.

I regret that this is the only picture I have of Alan's birthday last month.  Wow.  I know, I'm lame.  We had a fun day, though!  Alan loved the presents we gave him, I made one of his favorite treats, and we also had parties with my family and his family (on different days).

On Alan's actual birthday, we hosted a dinner group from our ward over and had Cafe Rio-style pork salads and I made a Tres Leches for him.  The next day was Saturday, and we went out to lunch to Tucanos with my parents (using his birthday coupon!) and then had his family over for our 3rd annual fondue party.  It was super fun.

I love Alan so much!  He is my hero and my true love.

Audition Dreams

I don't usually remember my dreams--maybe only once every few weeks.  (Alan, however, remembers his dreams almost daily, and he'll have like two or three every night!)

At least once a month I have some sort of "audition dream," which usually means one of two things: (1) I dream that I am an adult auditioning for The Nutcracker, when suddenly I realize that I am super out of shape and haven't even been dancing for over a decade or I'll realize that I have kids and wonder who will babysit them during all my performances (I used to dance in a local performance of The Nutcracker when I was in elementary school); or (2), I dream that I am about to be a senior in high school auditioning for the high school dance company after having taken a year off from it, and I'm totally scared that I won't make it back in again. (By the way, that never happened.  I was in my high school dance company as a sophomore, but for several reasons I decided not to try out again.  I chose to try out for choir instead, which was one of the best decisions I made in high school.)  It's so weird that these to dreams are recurring--I wonder if I have some sort of insecurity about my dancing days???

Anyway, last night I had a dream I was auditioning for my high school drill team, something that I did in real life only once (at the end of my ninth grade year--I didn't even make the first cut!  Ha ha!).  Anyway, it was so real--I was dancing all night long and can still remember the sequence right now.

I think it's funny that all of my "audition dreams" have to do with dancing and not singing.  I have done so many auditions for high school and college choirs, not to mention high school musicals and choir competitions.  It's weird, but it's been giving me something to think about all morning.