Spring, with all it’s crazy swings in weather, has arrived in central Texas. Our daffodils are blooming and it’s getting to the point where we have started running our ceiling fans again during the day.

Eliza has been her usual chipper self this week. She is a girly girl and likes to twirl around and around in the family room. She is getting supper close to being able to jump!. She has started to interact with James more now that we’re leaving him on the floor. She’s only kicked him in the head a few times but she’s learning to be careful with him. She’s started to be a bit more picky in her eating. We have to make sure that we feed her small pieces of the meal and don’t load her plate up all at once. She usually does great with her vegetables but then has trouble with the main course. We went to some friends house this week for pi day. They have a big dog. Eliza loved the dog. She chased it around the back yard and was fearless when it came up and licked her on the hands. She also had a great time playing on their slide. She had to wait her turn with the other kids that were there and she did a good job. She did really well going to nursery today. She actually was asking me about it after Sacrament Meeting was finished and she didn’t cry at all.

James is a sweetheart of course. He is a super calm kid. He’ll just sit there and be perfectly content. . . until he isn’t anymore. When he wants something he lets you know real fast but for the most part he’s happy. He likes to watch everything that Eliza does.

 

We dragged both of the kids out shopping this Saturday. We don’t usually do that. Lately I’ve just been doing the grocery shopping but we decided to try it. We were at WalMart getting stuff for our camp trip and Eliza was in the cart basket and James was in his carseat. I felt like we were lugging around a huge cart! She liked riding in the cart but we had to keep reminding her to not open things. She really wanted a doughnut at the grocery store so we let her pick one out.

We’ve gotten several donations of kids clothes from people in our ward this week. Sarah has had to sort it all out and wash it. Sarah also made a yummy chocolate chip cookie pie for pi day.

Sarah and I finally got to go on a real date this week. It’s been a long time since we got out together and it was fun. We went for dinner to celebrate her graduation from BYU. She graduated a long time ago now but we just hadn’t gotten around to going out to celebrate. We went to dinner and then came home and crashed.

We’re planning a trip to Utah in April and  perhaps the largest part of that preparation has been shopping for a new car. We only have one car currently, our little Mitsubishi, and are needing something bigger to get us comfortably to Utah. We don’t think we can make it for the three weeks that we’re planning on being there in our little car. We test drove a few Mazda5’s last week but they were way too small for me to drive. We found a Honda Pilot this week that we think will work. It is a 2007 and only has 67,000 miles on it. We haven’t been able to go look at it yet because the air bag inflator is on recall and they won’t let us drive it until it is fixed. They don’t even know how long it’s going to take because the part is back-ordered. It may be done this week. . . it may be done next month. We just have to wait. One salesman is being super pushy (and I think a bit dishonest) and keeps on telling us that it’s going to be ready “tomorrow” but the other guy keeps saying that they don’t know. Used car sales people. . . bleh.

I took a whirlwind trip to Utah this week for a work event at BYU. Every spring we do an event called NI Leaders where we talk with select engineering and computer science students about how to be a leader, how to get hired, and how to drive innovation. I had invited a distinguished engineer that has mentored me at NI to come and speak about innovation. He had accepted and so I hosted him this week. I got to take him around Temple Square and have lunch there. He had lots of questions, mostly about minutia, but it was a fun trip. I flew in at noon on Thursday and left at 7:00 in the morning on Friday. Talk about a quick trip. I did get to stop by the house for a few minutes but mostly it was just a crazy trip.