Memorial Day with Mindy!

One of my best friends from California, Mindy, came to visit us this weekend and we had a great time! On Friday night, we got a baby-sitter and Dave, Mindy and I went to the Inner Harbor where we had dinner and walked around the harbor.
The next day, we all went to Fort McHenry where we had a picnic lunch and then walked around the Fort. This is the sight of where we defended ourselves against the British Invasion in the War of 1812 and when Frances Scott Key saw our flag still waving after the invasion was over, he knew we had successfully defended ourselves, and he wrote the Star Spangled Banner.
On our way to the airport to drop Mindy off, we stopped by the DC Temple and walked around the grounds. Here's our family picture in two installments due to the fact that Lacey WOULD NOT let us hold her. She was having so much fun walking all over the grounds, that every time we would try to pick her up for a picture, she would scream and wriggle her little body out of our arms until she was successfully back on the ground and happy as a clam walking around again. If this keeps up, we may have to send out 2-3 pictures with our Christmas cards just to get us all in there!

Graduation Day!

Dave finished up his MBA coursework in December, but he participated in today's ceremony. The same thing happened to him at BYU, where he graduated in December, but he didn't walk in the spring since he had already left Utah, so we thought it would be nice for his graduate degree that he walked. Lacey did really well during the ceremony, clapping along with everyone else and yelling "Dad-da" for support! :) The ceremony was really nice, Lesley Stahl from 60 Minutes was the guest speaker, and the weather was beautiful. We are so proud of Dave and as Dave pointed out on the way home, it's so nice to leave a graduation ceremony with no student loan debt to start paying off (Thanks to the Government)!

We love visitors!

For all you faithful readers, you may remember back in September when we had a "manny" for the month. Well, he missed his "other baby" so much that he decided to return with the rest of his family to spend the week with us and to see Washington, DC.


Kerry's cousin, Seth, and his family.

Lacey LOVED playing with Lilly and Luke.

And just like last time, Dave and Seth played as many sets of tennis as they could squeeze in (15) over the week. And just like last time, Seth prevailed as the winner.

We were also able to get away to a nice dinner while Dave's mom babysat all the kids. It was nice to get away and have grownup conversations and break evertything down with Seth and Cari!

The week flew by and we were sad to see the Cardall family leave - we just love having people visit. Lucky for us we have more visits coming. So, if anyone is planning to come out East anytime soon, let us know!

Mother's Day!

I don't know about you, but this picture just seems to capture Mother's Day perfectly. A VERY pregnant Kerry with her baby in one hand and a lovely fruit bouquet in the other.

We also hosted the entire Strom family for Mother's Day and Dave ended up doing 95% of all the cooking and 100% of the clean-up - what more can you ask for?

Turning the Big 3-0

Dave took the day off of work for his 30th birthday and unfortunately it rained the entire day. The planned day in the park with a picnic lunch had to be postponed, so instead we spent the day at home before meeting up with Dave's parents for dinner. The family came over later in the weekend for birthday cake. We actually ended up using the same candles that were used for Lacey's birthday, in case you noticed that they were pink instead of blue - as all the nieces and nephews pointed out to us repeatedly. All in all, it was a nice low key birthday weekend as Dave entered his 4th decade of life (now that sounds a lot older than saying you're 30)!

New York City...and our latest celeb sightings :)

For Dave's 30th Birthday (which is next Friday, the 9th), he really wanted to go to New York City. NYC is his favorite place in the country and we haven't been there for 2 years even though it's only a 4 hour drive away. Our parents made this trip possible -- my dad worked it out for us to stay in his company condo which is right in the heart of the city, for 2 nights and Dave's parents said they would watch Lacey so that we could go to shows, etc, so thank you to our parents! Anyway, once we arrived in NYC, we headed to Lincoln Center, which is where the temple is located. It is also where ABC studios is located. Live with Regis and Kelly was just ending and Dave spotted Regis walking across the street. He said "Hi Regis! Can you take a picture with my pregnant wife?" I think that caught him off guard as much as it caught me off guard! But hey, it resulted in a picture of me with Regis and his closed eyes. About an hour and a half later, we see Kelly Ripa leaving the sports club across the street, so we met her and Dave got his picture with her which he was very excited about since she is his "celebrity girlfriend." In addition, we saw Jeff Probst from Survivor and Cameron Matheson from Dancing with the Stars (last season). He's also on some soap opera, but since I don't watch any, I only know him from DWTS.




And here we are at the Plaza, one of NYC nicest hotels where the average room goes for $750 a night. By pure coincidence, some of Dave's closest friends from BYU happened to be in town the same weekend and they were staying at the Plaza, so we hung out there with them on Saturday and enjoyed the Butler Service and the bathrobes, slippers and gold-trimmed sinks before heading back to where we were staying! We had a great time with his friends and enjoyed a few hours of atmospheric luxury with them! All in all, it was a really fun trip, but we are happy to be back home with our baby :)