Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day after from Elk Grove. I had a lovely day off! Darryl got up to make waffles for breakfast. Then he helped get the boys out the door for church. He took Parker for all the meetings and then came home to make dinner for us and a great single mom in our ward with 4 boys under age 10. Our house was complete mayhem in the afternoon with 6 boys running around. We introduced "fat brothers" as a way to keep them happily playing together. Fat brothers is a game I used to play with my brothers when I was a kid. My dad would get out his old T-shirts and we would put them on over our clothes and stuff them with pillows. Then we would run into each other like sumo wrestlers. Usually the game ended in an injury, but it would last for a good long time being fun and we would definitely be exhausted after a good round. The boys on Sunday had a great time. It helped the littler boys have a more even playing field with the older bigger boys. The whole day was an event!
In recent days we have had some very fun times. We are settling into life here and making some great new friends.
Darryl was recently given a new position with the National Guard. He will be accepting a command position with a unit in San Lorenzo, CA as a Captain. He will be leading approx. 120 people for the next 2 years. His unit is a supply unit that is similar to the unit he served in Iraq with in 2007-08. It's a great opportunity for leadership and he is looking forward to being the man to make the decisions. His full time job in Sacramento is going very well. It is wonderfully steady and we are all enjoying having him home regularly.
I have been adjusting to our new area and so much space at home. We built a garden box out of scrap wood from the shed, and moved a bunch of dirt from a mound in the front yard to fill the box. Tanner and I had fun planting our garden this week. We are looking forward to having a bunch of great vegetables again this year. Its also been fun to meet so many new people. Last weekend as a mother's day gift, Darryl gave me a girls night out. Suzette (a new friend) and I went out to dinner and window shopping then ate Gelato and walked all around some great shops. We had so much fun and chatted the night away.
Tanner and I found a fun recipe for snake pizzas, so we made 2 that could crawl across our pans. He even helped with a color stripes across the top.
Tanner is a social butterfly. He practically lives at our neighbor's house (they have twins age 5). We signed him up for pee wee basketball. This area has a wonderful public sports program and Tanner was able to learn basketball for 5 weeks and get the fundamentals. He had fun but didn't really find his niche. Last week he started pee wee soccer and he's liking that quite a lot. We also signed him up for gymnastics at a great local gym and he LOVES it. I only have to ask him once to get into the car to go to the gym . It's also a sport that doesn't require shoes so he is in heaven. Tanner is anti-shoes these days and he will take off any type of shoe whenever he can. I'm sure he will have great summer feet this year.
Parker is doing his best to keep up with Tanner. His latest trick is running with arms flailing. It's funny to watch. It reminds us of how Pheobe runs on "Friends" with complete abandon. Parker's favorite activity is to drive the shopping cart with Tanner at Safeway. Parker loves birds. We made a few simple bird feeders for our back yard and every morning he checks for the birds to come eat breakfast. Recently we went to a cute little zoo called Micke Grove Zoo where we fed the Lorikeets. One of the birds landed right on Parker's head and he loved it.