Escaping Winter

Abby and I recently spent a week down in St. George with my family; we decided that we had had enough of freezing cold Salt Lake!

Look at this! Both of us wearing short sleeved shirts.

One of the bribes my mom used to get me to come down for the visit was to heat and open their pool. One of the days the heater stayed on too long and when we got in it felt like climbing into a bath. The temperature of the water was 98 degrees!

During our stay, we got to help Natalie celebrate her 3rd birthday. Here Abby tries her best to swing at the pinata Aunt Amber made!

Abby also got to help Grandpa Hansen do a little spring planting.

And, of course we had to take a trip to the park to go on the slides!
Thanks to Nana and Grandpa for letting us visit, it was a great trip.

Happy Easter!

As if to prove that our winter of sickness is not yet over, poor Abby came down with a cold the morning of Easter. Despite the fact that her smiles are a little forced, she still managed to look beautiful in her new pink dress.

Maybe all she needed was cousin Natalie to make things better.

Later in the day, doing an Easter egg hunt.

Uncle Kody

Kody is my youngest brother, and he absolutely loves his little nieces and nephew. During our trip to SG, Kody was so great to play with Abby. I guess we can forgive him for breaking the bike as he rode it down this rock.

Runnin' Rich

For the last several months, Rich and his brother, Steve have been training to run in the Canyonlands Half Marathon in Moab, Utah. It was a very scenic race, the first ten miles followed the Colorado River and had sheer red cliffs on the other side.

Steve and Rich crossed the finish line together after just over two hours, not too bad for their first half marathon!

We Moved!

Yep, again! In the six years that we have been married, Rich and I are now trying to get settled into our 6th place. We were fortunate enough to get into faculty housing at the U of U, so far it hasn't been too bad.

And a huge bonus, there is a balcony right off the master bedroom.

These boxes have been stacked in our dining room for about a month now, I wonder if I will ever get rid of them? With a guaranteed move in the next 17-23 months, perhaps I should just keep them there!
More boxes...I decided to turn them into a little tunnel for Abby. Probably just an excuse to delay their removal.
But look, even Rich enjoys a moment in the tunnel.

Faculty housing at the U is located in historic Fort Douglas. The university bought the houses and townhouses from the army just before the 2002 Winter Olympics. Our townhouse was built in 1916 and, thankfully, has since been renovated. It's an interesting area; we live amongst a whole load of undergrads who can get a little noisy on the weekends. But, it's fun. Today, Abby and I took a walk to explore and ended up at a little gazebo (okay, according to the Fort Douglas website it's a bandstand). It was originally built in the late 1800s but burned down and was rebuilt sometime around 1917. We are excited to spend our next little while here.

Poster Girl

A few weeks ago my little sister, who works at Harmon's, asked if she could take some pictures of Abby to help with their frozen foods promotion month. I agreed and now this lovely food shot is hanging in Harmon's for the month of March. I wonder how Abby will feel about this years from now.