Tyler's Dream Date Night

Our Ward was promoting a "fill the temple" night on Tuesday and Wednesday of last week. The Young Women in our ward even volunteered to babysit for free to those couples who wanted to attend the temple.

Of course we wanted to go to the temple and it was even better that Megan, a young woman in our ward, was willing to watch Quincy for free. She did such a good job. Quincy was quiet in his crib when we got home and everything was clean. Megan even brought some toys and books from home, which anyone who was a kid or has them, knows "new" toys are always a hit. Surely we will keep Megan in mind next time we need a babysitter.

It's been a while since we had attended the temple... I won't say how long, but long enough. Tyler and I were very glad to go. We saw a few couples from our ward there... nobody during the session we attended though. I love going to the temple, it's so quiet and peaceful and comforting. I love all the temple workers there who are constantly smiling and reassuring you with kind faces. It often makes me wonder what heaven will be like....

After we finished our session I convinced-- I write this with a huge sarcastic smile because it wasn't convincing at all-- Tyler to go out to dinner with me at a new Brazilian Restaurant here in Boise called:


They have these Brazilian Grills in Utah, but none here... until recently. A month back they had a promotion that if you registered online you got a free $10 gift card. Tyler made sure we were both registered. Not to mention that since we were registered online as members I got a free Birthday Meal Coupon for April.

Tyler was so excited to go, grinning from ear to ear. I was happy that he was happy.... and then we were seated....................

Did I also mention that the whole concept of Tucanos is that it's an all-you-can-eat Grill? They have a flat fee for their salad bar... which is quite affordable. And I'm sure you're thinking, "Big deal an all you can eat salad bar.... that sounds fun!" The salad bar alone has every kind of vegetable AND fruit salad you could dream of (green salads, salsa, marinated cucumbers, fruit salads, watermelon, fresh fruit, hard boiled eggs and all the dressings and toppings to boot). Then there's also a bread part which had different kinds of freshly baked breads. Oh and there's pasta, rice and beans (which is Tyler's favorite because they're cooked authentically Brazilian style) mashed potatoes, fried bananas and such.............................. seriously I could have eaten a whole meal and been completely satisfied with the salad bar.

But the food didn't stop there. They also have an all you can eat meat selection. There are servers who walk around the tables with 12-15 different kinds of fresh meat off the grill. The meats range from bacon wrapped turkey to top sirloin to spicy chicken wings to mango flavored fish to pork tenderloin and such. It was at this point that Tyler seriously looked like he was in heaven. We both ordered the works.... all you can eat meat and salad bar complete with fancy drinks.

When we were first seated our waitress, Nancee, explained how the restaurant worked and then Tyler asked her a question about a specific drink.... which led to her inquiring if he spoke Portuguese. He told her that he did and she said that she didn't speak a word, but would send someone by who did. Later, half way through our meal a waitress came up to Tyler and the two of them had a short conversation about Brazil. I love to watch Tyler speak Portuguese, I think it really throws people to hear and white kid speaking another language so fluently. It also helps that I can understand quite a bit of it.... otherwise I'd be clueless as to what his conversations with strangers were about in another language.

I tried to pace myself, but it was impossible. Everything looked good.... and who could pass up such an opportunity of selection? At the end of our meal Nancee came by to ask if we had saved room for dessert, which of course we hadn't. She showed us a delicious tray of cheesecakes, homemade ice cream, flan, creme brulee, and a chocolate cake. Though it was tempting..... we declined.

The best part was the deal we got for dinner. What would have cost us $50, we only paid $19.00 for! Good thing I had a birthday and we had our $10 gift card!

Both of us had a wonderful night. I'm so thankful for the temple, and for Tucanos..... though it might be a while before we head back. Maybe for Quincy's or Tyler's birthday! :o)

Doing 'manly' activities:

Don't mind Quincy's outfit of shorts, a T-shirt, and frog rain boots. He has been outgrowing his shoes and we had yet to get him a pair of "play shoes" for outside. (Today we actually bought him a pair of sandals... since the weather is a little too warm for rain boots every day.)

Yesterday was a nice day. Tyler decided to pull out his golf clubs from storage and clean off the spider webs. Quincy seemed to like this activity seeing as how he was right by dad's side through the whole process. After they cleaned off the clubs, Tyler and Quincy practiced their putting.

Isn't this a cute picture of father and son?

And despite the poor quality of this one, because I was sitting from a distance, I like it because it looks as if Tyler's telling Quincy how to use the golf club and Quincy's actually listening. Obviously Quincy still needs some practice, perhaps a smaller pair of clubs would help too. :o)

My men at work.

And lastly, here's a picture of Quincy wearing his hand warmers. He thought it was funny to put these on his hands. I'm sure Tyler can't wait for the day that Quincy is actually big enough to go golfing with him. It will surely be a father son activity in the future.

Happy Easter

First, let me apologize for not getting these pictures up earlier. And secondly, I will apologize for the poor quality of the pictures. Unfortunately my camera had low batteries.... so any picture I took was between the camera turning off and on. Yes, Quincy's eyes are closed in half of them, Tyler's head is chopped off, and half of them are delayed behind the actual action moments, BUT you get the idea right?

Saturday morning we headed over to the church for our Ward's Pancake Breakfast/ Easter Egg Hunt. After we ate some pancakes, eggs, and fresh fruit we started the Easter Egg Hunt. Before hunting for the eggs, we colored an Easter egg picture and made an Easter egg bag. Quincy obviously had more fun looking and licking he stickers than actually decorating his bag, but at least I had fun, right? When we finished making our Easter bag we were told that the younger kids ages 0-3 were to "hunt" in the back of the church.


At this point Quincy really didn't know what was going on. When we were walking out the doors he heard a bunch of the older kids yelling (who were already outside scrambling to grab all the eggs they could, despite being told they were only allowed to get 10 eggs each). I guess since he heard everyone else yelling with excitement he thought he should yell too. It was funny because I know he didn't really have a clue what all the yelling was about, but of course he wasn't about to be the only one NOT yelling, so he joined in.



When we got outside to the designated area for the little kids to hunt eggs, a bunch of older kids were scooping them up as fast as they could. I had to yell at some of them to remind them, as they must have forgot, that these were for the little nursery kids. They apologized and put the eggs back. It wasn't much of a hunt, as the eggs were scattered all over the grass, but Quincy seemed to get the hang of it.


I thought it was interesting that all the older kids were hogging all the eggs, since the eggs didn't have candy in them. The original instruction was to get 10 empty plastic eggs, and then you went inside the church to receive your candy/goody bag. It didn't really matter how many eggs you got, as long as you had a few you still received a candy bag. I think Quincy ended up getting 12 eggs since the older kids starting throwing their eggs back on the grass. All in all, we had fun. I'm sure next year will be even more fun.

Sunday we invited our friends, Kim and Tyler, over for Easter dinner. I didn't feel up to making a ham or the usual Easter trimmings so I opted for Mediterranean Chicken, Twice baked Potatoes, and a Greek green salad. Everything turned out really yummy.

We are so thankful for good food, great friends, and our dear Savior who sacrificed his life for us so that we may live with our Father in Heaven again. Here's hoping that all of you had a wonderful Easter!

Side note:

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I forgot to tell you all what Quincy did for my birthday. He said his first sentence.

For a while now he's been putting two or three words together like, "Help Me" or "More Please", but on my birthday while we were eating our yummy burgers and fries he clearly said "Dad, I need choc milk".



A whole 5 words clearly stated as a sentence. Tyler and I thought it was hilarious that he said I *NEED* choc milk... Not to be mistaken for simply *WANTING* chocolate milk.



This kid is so smart.

Oh, and did I mention he officially knows all the letters in the alphabet. He can also say almost the majority of them when we point to a letter and ask him what it is.


He's not even 2 for crying out loud!?! Looks like we've done something right as parents, which of course would make anyone happy on their birthday. So thank you Quincy for such a wonderful birthday present to your mama.

It's that time of the year.... the weather is warming up...

...And we decided to plant a garden. Luckily the place I work at also has a greenhouse and so I have quite the selection of vegetables to choose from at a discounted price. So far we have planted:

Romaine Lettuce (green and red)
Spinach
Celery
Arugula
Tomatoes
Shallots
Cilantro
and Onions

We are planning on planting some potatoes and strawberries this year too. It will, hopefully, be quite the garden. Last years was a disappointment because the weather was so cold until May, we couldn't plant things in time. Our hope and prayer this year is that we will have a fruitful garden.


In addition to planting our vegetables and herbs, I also planted some tulip, daffodil, and hyacinth bulbs. They won't flower next year because they were forced in a greenhouse, but they will the following year. I don't care, the foliage is still nice.

And lastly, to complete our little garden we planted some ground moss to grow between the rocks. I think it looks nice... or rather, it will look nice in a year when it fills out more.

And as a nice surprise..... today Quincy received an Easter package from Grammie and Grandpa Loren. He got:

A Sesame street coloring book
Some summer shorts
Hersey's chocolate eggs (which were Quincy's favorite)
A little Curious George
and A smiley hackey sack



He loved all of it... especially the treats and coloring book. Thanks mom and dad. I'm sure we'll get great use out of the coloring book at church and such. Love you guys!

Saving the big bucks!

We got some smoking good coupons this last week. We got one coupon for margerine at Albertsons for .49 cents a box, with a limit of 8..... so of course we purchased 8. Afterall, who can have too much butter? Then we had a coupon for spices at Walgreens 2 for a $1.00. I got 6 spices for $3.16! And lastly, but not least we got some Colgate toothpast at Rite Aid for .99 cents.

I love good coupons... which make for great deals.

More fun with animals.

The funniest part about our trip to the Julia Davis park were the geese. This time around we brought some stale popcorn. The geese at this park are far more courageous and daring. They came right up to us, practically eating the food right out of our hands. We gave Quincy a few pieces of popcorn to feed to the goose and this is what happened:

Here the goose is sitting nicely, as if he's trying to communicate... please give me some of that popcorn... PLEASE!

Quincy still didn't quite get it, so Tyler had to show him how.

And here Quincy is tricking the goose. He would hold out his hand as if he was going to throw it and as soon as the goose would get closer to get it he would shove it in his mouth and laugh out loud. It must have been a funny game because he did this over and over until this goose came along:

This goose (the one of the right) was mean, notice how his head is in a low position and it looks like he's about to attack his prey, Quincy. He was hissing and making nasty noises. I quickly had to tell Tyler to get Quincy further back. Quincy obviously doesn't understand the concept of a 'mean goose'.

Here Quincy was trying to make amends with the mean goose by waving his hand while saying "HI". Unfortunately the gooses' heart was not softened. Perhaps next time Quincy will break him down.

The adventurous side of our son!

Monday we decided to head out to the Julia Davis parks. It's one of my favorite parks in Boise. Quincy had so much fun playing on the playground. This year he's actually big enough to understand the concept of a playground's equipment.

In the picture below Quincy is working up the nerve to go down the "big kid slide". Look at his face!

Doesn't it just scream.... what will happen if I get in?

Here is he taking the plunge, or should I say dive. Literately he ended up going down on his tummy, feet first.

Ahhhh... but look at the exhilarated look on his face afterwards. It says: SUCCESS!

Here was one of the first pictures when we got to the playground. He, for some odd reason, was a little freaked about walking up this ramp. I don't know why. He was clinging to this 'hand rail' the whole way up.

Scared of a little ramp, but not fearless of slides and tunnels that lead to who knows where.

The hardest part of these tunnels was getting his feet out first, which he was insistent on doing.

Taking a little breather after a lot of playing.

"So Quincy are you gonna go down this slide by yourself?" YUP.

And of course if he can go down the slide by himself, than surely he can climb up it by himself too, right?

All in all, we will be back for more fun and adventures at the parks.

Sunday was a sunny day indeed.

Sunday afternoon after conference was over we decided to take a family walk down the street to the cemetery. I know what you're thinking..... a cemetery? But the reason we walked down there was because they have ducks, geese, and best of all swans!

The weather was perfect for a Sunday walk, and Quincy couldn't be happier getting out of the house.

He really loved feeding the ducks. I, personally was a big fan of the swans. They were so graceful reaching out their long white necks for the little cheerios and pieces of stale bread we were throwing into the pond.

The Cloverdale Cemetery also has reindeer. Weird, I know, but Quincy seemed to enjoy them. He kept calling the cows... I guess we have yet to discover what a reindeer is.

After we finished our lovely time at the "park" we were walking home and discovered this:

How sad. I felt so bad for this poor little duck who didn't make it to the pond to eat our treats. Of course I didn't feel bad enough because, like the good blogger that I am, I pulled out my camera to take a picture.

Mr. Jabber Jaws

I thought I would share a funny story that happened last week. On Wednesday afternoon we headed to the Meridian Library to make our usual movie trip.

Quincy has recently been obsessed with his pockets. He walks around frequently with one hand in his pant pocket, or one in his shirt pocket, or two hands in both pockets. When we got to the library Tyler went to the movie section to pick out some DVDs. Quincy and I headed to the kids section to play with the toys. While he was running to the kids corner, with two hands in his pocket he suddenly stopped and turned to the library lady at the desk and said, "I have a pocket." She said... "Oh, you have two pockets?" to which he replied, "Two" and ran off. It was so funny. He has become quite social these days. Telling complete strangers everything he knows.

Our little pocket man!

Quincy is officially big enough to....

... ride his four wheeler.

Which is ironic because he got this for his 1st Birthday. At the time he didn't really know what to do with it and we spent quite some time with out backs hunched over running behind him with it. But no more!

Now he is big enough to ride by himself!