One last post...

Rod's Easter masterpiece- Bunny pancakes! Rod was amazing while I was gone, getting the girls to their pre-arranged houses while he was at work, and even arranging things so I could come home to a beautifully spotless house. He even cooked EVERY meal on Sunday!! WITHOUT being asked!! I was truly impressed! (And, for those that don't know, he's actually quite a good cook).

Easter was lots of fun, the girls searched for their baskets in the morning (since church isn't until 11 am) and we did an Easter egg hunt in the afternoon, after church (I got home from my trip the night before). Also, a side note, who's seen Enchanted? We watched it last night and I thought it was way cute!

Pacific Grove, California

Pacific Grove is basically part of Monterey, California. We rented a little house (I'm talking little) which was amazing in it's details and features. It was built in 1900 and was, I thought, incredible. We even found a newspaper from 1926 in a drawer. We went to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, went shopping, and enjoyed this little shops of this quaint seaside town:

At dinner the first night, at a place called Max's grill. Delicious!

Emily, the marine biologist, and Kate


Mom & Alex (Brooke's adorable, sweet, and constantly happy 7 month old) Years from now he'll realize how lucky he was to be the only child to ever come on a girls' trip!

Presenting.. some tide pools! Emily gave us the scoop on marine life, and even found a starfish to point out to us

We all took turns hiking around with Alex- he was a real trooper!

The view- within a 5 minute walk of our house.

In front of our rental

Kate, modeling the vintage bathtub!
And Kate presenting the vintage oven! Way cool, by the way. We even baked cookies in it. Yes, we were afraid we'd blow ourselves up, but thankfully, it really did work!

In front of our rental. A lot of the homes were painted victorian colors to bring out there historical-ness. It made for one beautiful and unique neighborhood.

Goats!! Not in Pacific Grove, but down the hill from my parent's house. Those crazy Californians, instead of wasting millions of dollars fighting brush fires every season (not to mention millions of gallons of water), now they employ goats to eat the weeds and brush to prevent fires and for weed control. And man, these goats chow down- we couldn't believe how much they had cleaned out in a short time. I thought it was a way cool and earth-friendly way to take care of a potentially devasting problem. When I was a kid, I remember a grass fire on this same street, but the other side. We lived in a house on the street at the time, and I remember my dad spraying the fire from the backyard with a hose, and the firefighters going in and out of our home. Actually, very cool to a 10-year old.

Posting Catch-up!

Since I last posted, we've celebrated Caitlin's birthday, had my dad out for a visit (he had a convention here for work and stayed a few days extra to hang out with us), I went on a fun girls' trip, and we've celebrated Easter. But before I post any of those pictures, I'm going to make you all look at my garden that I built. There's a gate that opens to access it, and I divided it into 4 sections with the pavers, so I can just step on the pavers and still get to all my plants. There's a lot of plants at different stages, so some are still very small and you can't see them in the picture. The tomato plants I took pictures of (I have a total of 10 tomato plants!) are my Italian Cherry Tomatoes from Italy that my mom got me (she got me a packet of the seeds).They are doing great! The whole yard around my garden is a work in progress, although I have laid a rock path, built a fire pit, and planted a Sunflower forest! Kinda high hopes for a desert-dweller, but my yard vision is slowly, but surely, becoming reality...

Fun with Mom & Crystal

Mom & Crystal came out for a visit the end of February. The last time Crystal came out was when Kaylee was born, so it was really fun to have her here. She & Jenna really got along well -- Jenna would read books to Crystal almost every night. As always, Mom was a big help as well as great company. The kids all LOVED having Grandma & Crystal here. We sure wish we lived closer!!

Here are a couple of pictures we took. (I never seem to take enough pictures, sometimes I even forget completely -- my excuse will be that I'm too busy enjoying the company to think about pulling out the camera.) :-)

wierd comments

Hey guys! I enabled an option for people who comment to do word verification, so hopefully we won't get anymore of these spam comments. I don't think we (the blog authors) have to do it to comment, just other people. It's just one of those "type in the word" things to cut down on spam. Let me know if anyone of your friends comments and it doesn't work or anything like that. Thanks!

Bair Family Actor's Guild

Our children absolutely LOVE to dress up and put on shows for us, and of course, it's always better when you have a captive audience (in this case Scott's boss, Tom). Jenna even had narrator lines for me to read this time. Here are a couple of pictures and (hopefully) a video.

Family Reunion

OK - Question to Rod & Carrie and Leticia & Scott: If the whole family doesn't make it out to UT in June are you still going to go? So far Will's not going, and Cosette's undecided. I'm trying to make it, but if I go are ya'll gonna go or would you rather come to VA so you can see everyone?

Visiting in Vegas

In January, I got to go out to Vegas for a conference with Scott. Rod & Carrie brought dinner out one night and we got to hang out for a while in the hotel (it was a NICE hotel!). Thanks for coming out and for dinner, Rod & Carrie. It was really fun to see you and your girls!! (Let me know if you want me to email you any of these pictures.)

Playing in the Snow

When Jodee's family came up shortly after Christmas, we took a trip up to Mt. Hood to play in the snow. Everyone loved sledding down the hill. Talia was a crazy baby and just couldn't get enough -- she wanted to be on every sled that went down, and wanted to walk down the hill by herself as well!

Christmas in Oregon

Sorry we've been missing in action from the Blog for awhile, but I will try to catch up here as quickly as I can. Here are some pix from Christmas in Oregon. I wanted to edit some of the pictures (lighten them, change clothing colors, etc.) but if I keep waiting to do that, I may never get anything posted. (If I ever do get around to the editing, I'll update the pictures later.)

Christmas Choirs -- Jenna & Kaylee were both in their school Christmas choir. Jenna did a duet of "Silent Night" and Kaylee had a solo in a Jewish dreidle song. They both did a terrific job!! They also sang in the stake Christmas children's choir. They really enjoy singing. Right now, they are both taking guitar classes after school -- I think it's fun for them to have the opportunity to try lots of different things.

Christmas Morning -- I don't know if anything can compare to the excitement of Christmas morning!! The children had so much fun opening presents and playing with their toys. Thank you to everyone for all the wonderful gifts. We are truly blessed to have such a wonderful family!

Lynnea Walking

OK - I know I sent you all the YouTube video of Lynnea walking, but I'm going to post it here too. Enjoy!!!

We're public!

Okay, guys, I totally agree with you. So now anyone can see our blog. We can change it back at any time if we want to, so if you don't like it or whatever just speak up! Also, congrats to Lynnea for learning to walk!! Good luck Tiff!!