Blessing Day

We have had some event filled weeks here in Fremont. Best of all we have been enjoying Parker and his wonderful little personality that adds to our family.

The Grandparents from the Seely and Hartley families came for the blessing. It's so great to have enough space now to welcome visitors. My parents drove in and had a day at our house then on friday we picked up Darryl's parents from the airport and all went up to Oakland for some Fenton's ice cream (I highly recommend the Leprechan sundae). Then we headed over to the Oakland Temple and saw the beautiful flowers and view. That evening we ate some delicious Thai food and relaxed. Parker never left grandma's arms! Tanner even go ahold of the camera and started snapping some pictures with grandpa and grandma. He's getting pretty good at aiming.
On Saturday we did a bunch of preparation for the blessing and cooked all day. It was fun to have all the help and Tanner loved having the full house.
Sunday was beautiful. We had several friends and a lot of family come for Parker's blessing. Darryl did a wonderful job with his blessing. Parker was happy and awake through first part of the meeting and looked precious in his very special blessing outfit made by my friend Heather Murphy. The weather in the afternoon was beautiful and breezy, but still warm enough to sit outside for lunch. We had a great time visiting with family, neighbors and friends. It has been great to have so much support.
My mom stayed for the week to help me with all of the long nights. We tried several different tactics to help me get more sleep and some worked better than others. My favorite was when mom took Tanner and helped him play hard so I could nap with Parker. This little one is such a great sleeper. He will already sleep for 4-5 hours at a time and if he gets bored with looking around, he will just fall asleep wherever he is. Our only concern is Tanner trying to climb over him or give him hugs and kisses while he's trying to nap. Tanner's favorite activity with Nana was reading. She is a great story teller and every book comes alive when she's reading.
I went back to teaching my dance class in April. Dance is pure therapy for me. I enjoyed every minute and its fun to be able to bend over again! The studio is preparing for the year end Recital. my dancers opted out of doing a Hip Hop dance this year so I'm not too stressed about the whole event. It's nice to be able to just be supportive of the dancers and other teachers.
Darryl had drill last weekend. His unit made some leadership changes and he is slotted to become a Captain by the end of the year. This will probably mean a change in units and possibly a move to a Battalion position. Unfortunately one of the other units in the Battalion is a unit of interest for a deployment to Afgahanistan in 2011. We will see what happens in the coming year and hopefully Darryl will get to stay state side for the next few years.
While he was away Tanner and I had fun with a bunch of kids. The Westons were moving and doing some painting and repair on their old place. Their 3 kids came over and one other neighbor while all the parents did some painting. Having a house full of kids meant we needed some fun activities to pass the time. We did some fun spring projects. We dyed easter eggs and made nests with playdough and twigs, then we made "rock a bye birdies" from the dyed eggs and old egg cartons then hung them in the trees. We also had a pic nic in the back yard. It was a fun but exausting day. In the background I caught a few minutes of General Conference.
On Sunday Tanner had me laughing. He made it through about 20 minutes of General Conference. We have to stream in on the internet, so he doesn't really get why he was supposed to sit and listen to the computer. He got so stir crazy that by early afternoon we got out and went for a walk to our neighbors home. They have a big garden and all kinds of bird feeders. Tanner had a blast helping them to pick things from the garden, do some watering and watch the birds. He was having so much fun he forgot to use the bathroom and had an accident. Instead of coming in to take care of changing or cleaning up, he just took off his pants and went right back to his activities. We all had a good laugh. Tanner says lots of funny stuff. He likes to bless his "flamily" in his prayers and always wants a "opsicle" for a treat.
We are all doing well and we are excited for some fun upcoming events. More details to come.