THE IN-LAWS, AN EARLY BIRTHDAY AND MOTHER'S DAY

Well, the weather has been beautiful so far this past week. Ryan and I have enjoyed going on walks. It is so nice to be able to walk with him. It is very peaceful. I definitely enjoy his company.

Things have slowed down again for the business. We are hoping that it picks up soon. We have been riding quite the rollercoaster lately. Thank goodness it mainly goes up hill.

It was a really nice 8 days having my parents here. I haven’t seen them in a year and a half, so their surprise visit was quite welcome. We went to Lava Hot Springs in Idaho the day after they got here. It was wonderful. It is one of my favorite places to go (mainly in the winter so you can roll in the snow after taking a dip in the hot waters). Natural springs are piped in. I guess it is somewhere around 3 million gallons of water per day get cycled into a nearby stream to keep the water pure. I got quite sunburned on my thighs and shoulders with little hints of redness in other places. Luckily Aloe Vera was on hand so it didn’t last long. Aloe Vera is a necessity when you are a red head. My aunt Annette told me she puts castor oil on sunburns, and it actually helps red heads to tan!! I must try this!!!

I baked and cooked my parents lots of yummy things. The end of their visit came seemingly so soon that I was frustrated that I wasn’t able to cook them everything I wanted to. We were able to go to an El Salvadorian restaurant in downtown Provo that my mom has wanted to go to for 3 years. She served her mission in El Salvador. Beans, rice, crema, home/hand-made thick fresh tortillas and fried plantains……mmmmmmmm…mmmmmm!!!!!!!!! I could definitely eat that every week. We also went to see the movie Iron Man. I really liked it and of course my hubby and dad did as well. My mom was sweet to humor us and go. I think she enjoyed it overall. We also celebrated Ryan’s birthday early. I made Grandma Boothe’s peanut butter caramel and vanilla ice cream goodness….but I used pretzels instead of graham crackers. It is Grandma Boothe’s recipe right???....What is it called?? Well, it is gone none the less. :) Ryan was quite shocked and didn’t know what was going on when we sang him happy birthday as he came in the kitchen…candles and all. It was pretty funny! I wish I had a camera capturing it…haha.

Oh, so I am on a frozen blueberry kick right now….oh goodness I just can’t get enough of those wonderful little berries!!!

Well, that is it for me for now.

Happy Mother's Day! I hope that all of you wonderful mothers were treated well and were surrounded by those who love you. All the women in our congregation were given a big fat chocolate bar instead of flowers this year. I think that it went over quite well.
I also enjoyed my in-laws' visit. They were wonderful guests. We also got a chance to see several of Becca's aunts, cousins and her uncle Phil, all of which was a lot of fun. We ate a lot of good food, watched some good movies, played fun games and enjoyed each other's company. People in church today commented about how they liked my father-in-law Walter who was quite outgoing last Sunday.

I was going to erase my language blog a few weeks ago because I thought that not very many people read it. Before deleting it I thought that it might be a good idea to find out if people read it or not based on something other than the number of people who comment on what I write so I found a way to get some simple statistics. The result was surprising. In just under a week my blog has received the visit of over ninety people from Canada, England, Ireland, Spain, Sweden, Australia, China, Korea, Japan, Brazil, France, Belgium, Italy and fourteen different states of the USA! Needless to say, I have felt more encouraged to write.

We are still going to the gym regularly and I'm still studying Chinese and volunteering at the MTC. Work is good. We were so extremely busy last month that even a "normally" busy month will seem slow but I'm still hoping to keep busy. Once I got done with an enormous project that I was working on for the Los Banos Unified School District I got a bunch of things to do from a variety of our other clients. We'll see.