Pure Delight

Posted by Kimmi:

This past weekend, the rain finally cleared for one glorious day of sunshine! Mark and I took advantage of it and introduced Spencer to the playground swings. Sure Spencer has the infant swing that sits in a corner at our house, but these swings were outside! In the sun! Spencer really liked the swings and giggled the entire time. I can not wait to have a swingset of our own (not just for the kids, but for me as well). We will be investing in a small outdoor baby swing that Spencer can enjoy all summer!

Please enjoy these pictures and the pure delight on Spencers face!

What is this contraption you are chaining me into?


Hey this thing isn't half bad!


Love it!

Oh how I loathe thee…..

Posted by Mark:

I HATE dandelions. My blood literally curdles when I think of their retched little yellow flowers and the fact that if I don’t quickly kill them they will inevitably turn into a little puff balls of a few thousand seeds destined to spawn into other carbon copies of their parents.

Kimmi insists that I’m obsessed. I don’t know why she says that??? Maybe it’s because I physically cringe and shutter when I see people’s lawns covered in these evil plants…. Or maybe it’s because she observed me walking around my Sister’s lawn in Connecticut pulling out dandelions while we were supposed to be on vacation…... Or just maybe it was because I woke up the other night from a nightmare because my lawn in my dream looked like this:


Last year, I was fairly confident that I could take care of the fertilization and weed control of my own lawn. I said to myself that “it can’t be that hard, plus I'll save a bunch of money!” but after creating a few fertilizer burn spots last summer and this spring having already spent a few hours combing my lawn pulling out multiple buckets full of dandelions I’ve decided that it’s time to call in professionals. Fear for your lives devil weed!

Carl Bloch

Posted by Mark:

I can't say I'm the most cultured person in the world. I daydream about cars and power tools, I like getting my hands dirty with dirt/sawdust/oil and I enjoy video games where the soul purpose is shoot as many of the enemy as possible.

However, from time to time I try to put aside my Neanderthal ways and partake in the finer things of the life. Last week was just such an occasion. BYU's museum of fine art managed to secure a number of paintings by the artist Carl Bloch. The highlight of the exhibit being five of the eight gigantic alter pieces that Carl Bloch created that have been, until now, housed in a number of churches in Denmark.

Since the exhibit opened in November I've told myself and Kimmi on numerous occasions that wanted to go see this once in a lifetime collection. Due to my normal procrastinating nature I chose to wait till the final week before going on line to reserve tickets. To my utter dismay I discovered I wasn't the only one in the area that had the same thought. For every day until the exhibit's close on the 7th of May the tickets were entirely reserved! Not wanting to take "no" for an answer, nor did I feel like waiting in the stand-by line for fear of driving all the way to P-town and getting turned away, I decided to use the last arrow I had in my quiver... Name Drop.... I called up my grandpa's secretary, told her my predicament, told her my desired day of attendance, and voilà! Kimmi and I had tickets. Though I'm slightly embarrassed that I had to stoop to such procurement methods I am no less glad I did because the exhibit was quite spectacular.

Not only was I amazed about how someone goes about painting such beautiful pieces of art but I couldn't fathom how these paintings got shipped here! They are just huge and the liability to ship them must have been immense! Anyway, it was a nice addition of culture to the lives of Mark, Kimmi, and Spencer (Spencer had a blast. His favorite part was the TV that showed all the different churches that these paintings were borrowed from in Denmark. He was transfixed!)

P.S.
Upon exiting the Carl Bloch exhibit you pass a room that had this in it!

Hard to believe that this 12ft tall sculpture is made entirely out of books! It was fun to walk around it and see the different kinds of books used. You could see scriptures, magazines, dictionaries, ect. It was a fun end to a great evening.