Easterish

I'd start out by wishing everyone a happy Easter but I'm so ridiculously late posting our pictures I won't bother. I'll just say that I hope everyone had a nice Easter.

The weekend before Easter, our Sunday school class had a big egg hunt/get-together at a couple's house. They have a BEAUTIFUL place! It's an older house on a few acres but it has a pond in their backyard (rumor has it fish were in there but as usual the Reynolds boys didn't see or catch squat)! We all had a great time.

Kevin was initially too cool to hunt for eggs but once they got underway he couldn't resist. The lack of a basket didn't bother him one bit. His coolness went out the window as he carried the eggs he found in his shirt.

This shot of Cameron is blurry not for lack of focus but because he was a blur running around the yard looking for eggs. That and maybe the camera was a little bit out of focus but mostly because he's fast.

Cade must be pokey because he's in good focus. But he still managed to get a lot of eggs.

The day after the egg hunt, we drove to Kansas to attend Dana's grandmother's funeral. Hopefully, the next time we go that way it'll be for happier reasons. With that said, it was nice to see everyone again.

Ok, so we left Kansas on Monday afternoon and drove 1/2 way home (6 hours) and finished the drive on Tuesday. The reason for the rush wasn't that I was anxious to get back to work but because Larry and Galena were driving in the opposite direction to NM and had a head start on us. Make sense? It will when I explain that they had an early morning flight out of Albuquerque on Tuesday morning to fly to AL to visit us. We had to hurry to get back so they wouldn't beat us to our house. We beat 'em but only by about 3 hours. They got into Albuquerque at something like 2 a.m. and had ~4 hours of sleep before they had to get to the airport. I didn't dare complain about being tired in front of them.

So Dana and her master planning and entertaining skills had the week all planned out to show them around our new stomping grounds. She was even kind enough to schedule a mostly-do-nothing day to give them a chance to rest. Nice girl, that Dana.

One of the things they did was go to the zoo in Nashville. I can't tell for sure in this picture, but it looks to me like Cade is trying to stretch his neck like the giraffe.

Cade, Larry and Galena

Cade appears to be brushing the goat's chin. Goats like that, you know, I guess.

They also went to the Rainforest Cafe while they were in Nashville. Everytime we go somewhere new, we look to see if they have one of these restaurants. Someday we'll make it to all of them. Oh, and I have no idea what Cade's doing here but he's in the Rainforest so the picture works.

And then it was Easter! Well, first it was the day before Easter. That's when we dyed our eggs.

Most of our pictures were backlit too bad to bother sharing. I took this picture of Cade on Easter morning putting the finishing touches (stickers) on our eggs. Look at the concentration on that cute little face!

And then it was really Easter!

The Easter Bunny must have been feeling a little violent this year as he brought Kevin and Cameron Airsoft guns - basically BB guns that shoot plastic bbs. You'd think a bunny of all things would stay away from those things! Cade got a new game for his handheld video game. Of course chocolate and sugary things filled the empty spaces in their baskets.

Target practice for Boy 1 and Boy 2 .

Our own Easter Egg hunt was fun. Dana and hid eggs all over the place. When this was taken they had found all the easy ones and were walking around together trying to find the rest.

And between the camouflage eggs and weeds in the yard, it was no surprise they had a hard time finding some of them. Can you spot the egg in this picture?

What good is an Easter Sunday without a family picture while everyone looks presentable? Too bad the backyard was hadn't greened up yet.

With Easter over, it meant our Saturdays will now be consumed by soccer. Kevin and Cameron are on the same team while Cade is playing with the 5-6 year olds.

Kevin and Cameron's team name is "Predators". Cade's team's name is "Frenzy".

I'm not entirely sure what's going on here. Cade appears to be trying to boss his teammate around and she appears to be having none of that. You'd never guess he's a year younger than most of his teammates, would you? He's a big little dude! Actually, at 4-1/2 he's the same height as Kevin was at 5 and Kevin wasn't lacking in height at that age either. We won't mention Cameron's height here.

If you couldn't find the egg, here it is.

Still behind on pictures so this post will almost get us caught up.


I'll start with one picture I meant to include last time. The intermission at the Supercross race consisted of a freestyle show. If you've never seen people backflipping a motorcycle in person, it's pretty neat. This guy is doing a nac-nac (kicks one leg over to the other side of the motorcycle) backflip.

On to slightly more current news. The boys decided at nearly the last minute to participate in our church's AWANA Grand Prix (pinewood derby). They designed their cars and I helped with the power tools. Then I showed them how to sand the wheels and polish the axles and let them have at it.

Before the race.





Kevin built a tank and named it, appropriately enough, "Tank". I refused to be one of those pee wee dads and let/made him do almost all the work himself. Um, the only problem is that Tank didn't quite look the same come race time but more on that in a minute.





Cameron named his car "Kar". Geez, my boys are original.







Kevin got 3rd place in his age group! Cameron's car was quick out of the gate but didn't quite make the top 3. I think he would have done better if we had brought his car up in weight. See that bandage on my hand? Funny story on that. I'll start with a disclaimer. The following images are graphic so proceed at your own queasiness if that's even a word.



Here's my re-enactment of the incident leading up to the bandaged hand. Kevin's car was overweight so we needed to drill some holes in it. I was in a bit of a hurry and complained to Kevin that I couldn't put the car down because I'd either screw up the wheels or break the barrel. So I drilled it like any good ol' Alabamian would do and held it in my hand. See where this is going?

"See boys, this is not the way you'd normally do this but since I'm aware of how stupid this is I couldn't possibly drill a hole in my hand. It's all about awareness and I have it in spades."

At the precise moment I decided not to go any deeper because I was afraid I'd poke a 3/8" hole in the top of Tank, I poked a 3/8" hole in the top of Tank. And in my hand. I show it going all the way through my hand in this reenactment because it's more dramatic and makes for better ratings.



This actually happened in the parking lot at church. So we drove home to get Dana and with one hand, I popped the turret off Tank and sent the boys back to church with Dana while I went to the ER. The people at the race helped Kevin ADD weight to Tank since it was now underweight. How insulting. The nurse in the ER made it hurt a million times worse when she scrubbed it and darn near made me pass out. I'm tough like that. She told me she can't stitch hamburger meat so she wrapped it up and sent me on my way with a warning not to be stupid anymore like the guy that was in a day before with a nail stuck in his thigh.


Then I discovered the joys of living in a small town. Despite my telling Dana to keep it on the DL, almost everyone at church already knew what happened by the time she arrived. Part of the reason was that someone in the ER overheard me talking about it and called someone at the race and that person blabbed and so on. My ego hurt a lot worse than my hand. For the record, I stuck my hand right between my index and middle finger. No damage to anything but skin and fat.



Moving on.

Dana has taken up an exercise routine led by some hottie in a little black outfit. Now that I noticed her on the TV, I think I might start this routine too. It's no wonder why Cade likes to do it too. I think he's running in place here. Dana says he's actually pretty good at doing several of the exercises without stopping.

Soccer season is upon us. This was right before Cade's first practice. He's wearing the cleats Cameron wore when he started at 6 yrs. old. I'm proud to report that Cade is NOT the worst player on the team even though he is the youngest. We thought the minimum age was 4 so he got excited about getting to play. On signup day, we found out the minimum age is 5. When they saw how sad he was, they said he can play if we just acknowledge he's underage and we think it's ok. So we signed him up and now I'm "coaching" a pack of 5 and 6 year olds in addition to the 9-12 year olds. That's what you call a glutton for punishment.

I'll post some pictures of the boys with their uniforms when I get around to getting them downloaded. Cade's team got whooped in their first game but Kevin and Cameron's team cruised to a 7-0 win in theirs. Kevin scored 4 and 3 of those were BEAUTIFUL shots from fairly far back. Boy, they were pretty. We celebrated the boys' efforts by overdosing on sugar and ruining our lunch with a cookie/ice cream sandwich at Nestle Toll House after the games.