Spring Break Away

Spring break started with some fun spray-painting with cousins...and ended with a spontaneous birthday celebration with my mom in Sierra Vista. Some loves of this past week:
*spray-bottles full of paint, half painted children and beautiful weather

*going to Discount Tire with all of my kids to get tires rotated for the manvan...okay you got me, I'm being totally sarcastic here.
*Driving to Lordsburg. I love roadtrips with Rus. He usually drives most of the time and talks my ear off. He may not freely admit it, he may not even realize it, but Rus has the gift of gab. Just don't get him on the topic of conspiracy theories. You'll have to up your "Uh-huh, yeah, right" game. But seriously, we always have great conversations when we drive. He even sings sometimes. (For grumpy Marianne.)
*Leaving Rus in Lordsburg to walk, feed, and water his Dad so his mom could take a quick trip to Alaska. (I know. Personally I didn't know "quick trip" and "Alaska" could be in the same sentence.) Rus' dad was in a motorcycle accident a few weeks ago...I'd add "minor" but his ribs would not agree. He is doing much better but Rus jumped at the chance to hang out with him for the weekend. For all of you familiar with my and Rus's seemingly regular separate vacations I want to state that this is not actually a "love." But it did enable me to visit my mom for her birthday.
*Playing Super Scrabble with my dad, Amy, and her son Luke. The board for Super Scrabble is twice as big. It makes triple word scores look paltry. The corners have quadruple word scores and there are numerous opportunities for double-double word scores and triple-letter-double-word scores. It was awesome. And we only lasted two-and-a-half hours before we called it quits. My dad won, something to do with the word "soliquid" and my uncanny ability to assist him in transforming "quid" to "soliquid" and thus earn 86 points. Amy will happily rake me over the coals in telling the story. She's just mad because she got third place right behind me.
*Making THIS Triple Layer Coconut Custard Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting.

Just saying that makes me salivate. As do the pictures I took of the finished product. Good thing you only turn sixty once, Mom! I have to note that the yummy toasted coconut on the outside is from an actual coconut. I made the grocery list for my dad and he thought it'd be funny to buy me an actual "unsweetened coconut." So we cracked it, skinned it, shredded it, mixed it with some sugar syrup and toasted it. And it was SO worth it! Crunchy, sweet, yummy.
*Hanging out with Amy's family. They stopped at the ostrich farm on the way down - they swear it's awesome - and brought an ostrich egg with them. Amy left me a message on my phone: "We're bringing breakfast!" And she meant it. One ostrich egg equals 24 chicken eggs. Amazing. The egg comes scored on the top; you crack a tiny hole in the top, use a knife to break up the yoke, and then pour it out into a bowl. It took at least ten minutes and was a family event. This picture shows everyone's rapt attention on the egg...but not the egg. Whoops. It is under that knife Luke is holding.

 I love this picture - my mom enjoying five seconds of royal treatment from Joshua and Luke. She is holding the ostrich egg and they are fanning her with ostrich feathers.

We also had a great time doing a spontaneous dance party,  (here are the boys getting their groves on)

going swimming at the Cove, and hiding sixty happy birthday notes for Cutesy all over the house.
*Seeing my mom love on Marianne.

She could not get enough of the bug. And Marianne was super fun too. She was happy and roly-poly and just loved all the attention from my Mom, Grandpa, Mike, Amy's kids, Tyler, Gina...She does know when she's not with Mom now, though, so sometimes she was not the best sport when someone else wanted to hold her.
*Seeing Tyler and Gina. They made a lemon cream pie for my mom. Tyler+Gina+food=yumminess. Next time we'll have to get together for more than just an evening.
*Looking at slides with my Dad. He took a million pictures when he was on his mission and had them put on slides, and then never looked at them. So it was really fun to walk down memory lane with him. He also had pictures from us as kids when we lived in England. Great family pictures. It was so fun.
*On the drive home, Beau's hands got sticky from a ring pop and he was tired and grumpy and wailed over and over, "My hands are going to be sticky forever!" It was hilarious.

And that's a wrap. Good job for making it this far.