I'm Back!!!

Well, I only intended it to be a day or so between posts...but I guess that didn't happen. So once again I'm almost 2 months behind in writing...and I don't know that I'll ever catch up. So I thought I'd just hit the highlights of February and maybe March today-depending on how long winded I decide to be-and then 'turn over a new leaf' and move on like I didn't miss anything. Hopefully I've got my life enough under control now that I can blog regularly again. (I know, famous last words)

So February... My sister Calista came to visit us for the first couple weeks of February. We had a great time. I was able to go out and do things some by this time, and almost every morning we went somewhere 'fun'. We went to the mall, we went to different parks, we went shopping, we looked for apartments. It was a great time. Karen absolutely LOVED Calista, thought she was the greatest person ever-except maybe mommy or Kitara. While Calsita was here we worked on her wedding announcements, and got all 300 or so that she brought fininshed. One afternoon we took a tour of Lowe's Motor Speedway, up the road a couple of miles in Concord, NC. It was cool to ride around the racetrack in the big 12 passenger vans and see all the stands and pits and everything. (If you're wondering what it looks like, just turn on Cars; the track at the beginnig is a very accurate copy of LMS.) We took lots of pictures of the girls with Calista's fancy camera. We watched lots of different movies. In general we had a great time, and I think Calista had a good time skipping classes-even though she had a ton of stuff to do when she got back to Provo. While she was here I narrowed our apartment search to the last 2 places; both are in the ward and a mile or less from where we live now. Last week we signed a contract with one of them so we'll be moving about a half mile the last week in July.

The week after Calsita left and the week before Joe's parents came to visit was crazy; like after my mom left I had a few days to get used to being on my own and then had to get ready for more visitors. Joe's parents came the last couple days of February and stayed for almost a week. We had a great time while they were here too. The Saturday they were here we went to the Carolina Raptor Center. For those of you who are thinking dinosaurs, think again. These are raptors as in birds-of-prey instead of the raptors like Utah Raptors or something like that. They had all kinds of owl, hawks, and even a few bald eagles (one of which was nesting-really cool to see). Karen loved seeing the birds and trying to say all the different names; "barn owl" was not hard, but "screech owl", "bard owl", and "bald eagle" were more difficult. Sunday, March 2, was Rachel's blessing day. She wore the same dress Karen wore, but it was a little bit too big (although still adorable. I just realized those pictures haven't been transferred to the computer yet-I'll have to do that soon so I can put them up). There were quite a few people in the circle for the blessing, 6 or 7 besides him and Grandpa Allen. It was a nice blessing but it was very hard to hear because the sound system was going in and out (it was mostly out during the blessing); I also had Karen fussing on my lap which made it even more distracting. Thankfully Joe's mom took good notes and we have basically what was said to put in her baby book. Monday the 3rd we went hiking with Karen for the first time since she was really little. She really loved it! I think she fell down about a hundred times, but she had a great time running down the trail with her grandpa. Actually she just loved doing anything with grandpa. The two of them are quite 'ADD' and they wore each other out nicely while grandpa was here; I think he was glad to go home and rest ;)

Well, I think that's enough for now. I wish I could write more about that time, but if I write too much no one will read it and I'll never get caught up. So I'll stop for now and write some more tomorrow, hopefully. I'll also try to put more pictures up soon.