Great Music Video

Update: Due to problems getting permission to use the second part of the song, Jon Schmidt had to remove the video from YouTube (for the time being). He and Steven Nelson recorded a new song - Love Story meets Love Story, which isn't quite as good but it is still good. The video has been updated to the new version (and someone else's upload of the original).

We found a wonderfully delightful music video by Jon Schmidt and Steven Sharp Nelson: Love Story meets Viva La Vida. If your internet and computer can handle it, watch the video in high definition. Anwyn and Lily love singing along with the "woahs" during the Viva La Vida part of the arrangement.

Also, you can listen to streams of all of Jon Schmidt's music on his website.

Bats and Alligators!

On Friday evening we went to campus to watch the bats fly out from the bat house. It houses about 100,000 bats. We got there a little early so we went to look for alligators first. We saw 3 different ones - 1 was quite small and the others were a little larger.

Anwyn wants to say: dygyduychguvhiub Dad Mom Anwyn Lily

Lurking in the lake.

Watching the alligators.

Another alligator.

Watching the sunset.

The little brown specks are the bats flying around the tree.

A video of the bats flying.

Here is a little alligator as well as some turtles.

Nursery Bound and Springtime Photos

Lily is 18 months old and started nursery today! She didn't have any problems at all, and only cried when I came to pick her up and took her away from the bubbles. She is growing up so fast.

Anwyn has been pretty excited for Lily to start nursery. On the way home from church last week she was telling Lily what nursery is like (playing with toys, snacks, etc), and said "maybe you'll even get to do bubbles like I did!"

Lily is slowly getting a few more words. She says Ma, Da (for Dad or dog), No, Bir (bird), Mo (more), and her versions of cheese and shoes which we understand. She also does great dog, monkey and fish sounds, and is coming along with the other animals. She likes to point to body parts when we ask "Where is your nose?", etc. One of her favorite songs is "If you're happy and you know it" because she smiles and claps along.

Here is what Anwyn wants to say today:
Dad;mom;anwyn;lily

Anwyn saw this picture of Lily and said "Lily is saying, 'Now I shall make a proclamation' ".
(She learned that phrase from the Naked Mole Rat book)

The identical frowns in this picture just make us laugh. Neither one was in the mood for pictures at this point.

Easter Week Excitement

We enjoyed some nice Easter celebrations this past week.

Saturday the girls and I met up with some friends at an Easter Egg Hunt hosted by a Methodist church. It was a pretty fun event with a petting zoo, hayride, playground, and of course, egg hunting.
Anwyn filled her basket and kept saying "I was so fast. Look how many eggs I have."

Sunday we dyed eggs, had a delicious ham dinner, and hid some eggs for Anwyn and Lily to find in our home. Lily got the ones that were left in plain sight on the floor, while Anwyn was required to search a little bit for the harder-to-see eggs.


Of course, through all of our activities we kept talking to Anwyn about the Savior and what Easter is really all about. This powerful video from Elder Holland's recent General Conference talk helped us keep our Easter activities in the proper perspective.

General Conference Weekend

Yesterday I told Anwyn that I needed to get ready soon to go to the Priesthood Session of General Conference.

She said, "I wish I was a boy."

I replied, "Why do you want to be a boy? Being a girl is great!"

"I want to be a boy so I can go to the Priesthood Session of Conference when I grow up," Anwyn replied. "If I was a boy I could go to school for a long time until it is time for me to get a job."

I said, "You can go to school for a long time too if you're a girl. Also, if you're a girl you get to be a mommy."

Anwyn said, "But moms are always so busy!"

They certainly are!

Then today between the morning and afternoon sessions we called my parents. Kristi and Lily were napping but Anwyn and I were awake. My mom asked if Anwyn wanted to take a nap. She replied, "No, I'm not tired. Daddy doesn't need a nap either since he took one during General Conference!" I guess Anwyn spilled the beans about my 10 minute nap. :)

Conference "Picnic"

We enjoyed watching Conference from home. It's nice to have fast internet access so we can stream full-screen high definition video from the church (we watched the stream from the church instead of BYUTV). We had one minor 2-second hiccup once; other than that we had no other delays or stutters or drops in quality. It was quite pleasant. We simply plugged the laptop into the TV and watched Conference.

Anwyn did well sitting through Conference. She colored, drew pictures, and listened for key words during a few talks in order to get M&Ms or Skittles. One of the key words was "temples" (others were words like "mother" or "father" or "Jesus Christ" or "faith"), which turned out to be the wrong (or right) word to have during Elder Gary E. Stevenson's talk this afternoon. He talked about temples and said the word over and over. Anwyn was thrilled, "He just said 'temple' again!" We were hoping that since his talk was shorter than the apostles' talks, she wouldn't get quite as much candy. We were mistaken. Oh well, sometimes you just can't win!

Lily was her usual rambunctious self. Even so, we managed to catch much of Conference. We're looking forward to reading the talks starting on Thursday. I'm looking forward to listening to the General Conference podcast on my travels to and from campus over the coming weeks. Most of the audio of the talks has already been posted. All the music is also available for download (http://lds.org/library/display/0,4945,8261-1-4795-1,00.html). We are grateful for the opportunity to listen to prophets and apostles.

Validation - a film

I'm going to have to post another YouTube video. In case you haven't seen this great little movie, I'm posting it here for your viewing pleasure. It's such a happy film.