Precious!

It was about 8 am this morning. I was gathering my things to get ready to leave for work when my phone started to ring. I looked at the caller ID and it was my sister Elisabeth's cell phone. I answered of course. Elisabeth got on and and said, "Dallin has something he wants to tell you."

I waited and Dallin got on the phone

"Tank you for my puzzle."

It was SO cute!

About a month ago I was shopping with my roommate Mel, when I say this huge pirate ship puzzle. And the best part is that you can color on the back. I knew that my nephew Dallin would love it. He's amazing at puzzles, so I bought it and sent it to Elisabeth for Dallins birthday (Today!) She carefully hid it until today and then I got a thank you phone call. :)

These pictures are from my visit to Elisabeth and Cameron's house a few weeks after Dallin was born. They grow up so Fast!

Happy Birthday Dallin!

Flower Therapy

Mel and I decided that we needed some flowers in the front yard. Why?

a) because we like flowers

b) because they make us happy to see them and flowers are cheaper then therapy

c) because we like playing in the dirt (another great form of therapy).

So Friday night we ran over the Home Depot, where they were having a sale on flowers. We bought snapdragons, impatients and petunias. Saturday morning, after sleeping in as all people should on Saturday morning, we started playing in the dirt.

Emma came out to help us. We had a great time. The weather was perfect, warm enough we weren't cold, but cool enough we weren't dying. Several hours (with breaks to watch General Conference) and sore muscles later we finished. My camera died so right now I don't have a picture of the finished project, but I'll borrow Mel or Emma's camera and take one.

Celebrating Freda

It was Freda's birthday yesterday. We decided to throw her a 'surprise' celebration. It was a surprise until she called to ask if she had plans for Monday night because one of her co-workers wanted to take her out to dinner.

Since we had FHE last night we told Freda to be at our house at 8:45pm and then ran home ourselves to get there on time. We had one minute to spare and Freda was already there standing on our door step...SURPRISE, no one's here :) We made Freda go out and come back in so we could shout surprise...we're silly it's true, but that's why we're loved.

Emma and I made Ice Cream Cone Cupcakes. I haven't made them since I was about 12 or so and I think they've made the cones smaller since then since we put the batter up to the point I did the last time I made them and almost all of them flowed over. It was like an visual ode to melting ice cream. It was kind of pretty.

After cake and ice cream we played a game of Faces.

Great times!

Happy Birthday FREDA!!!

Cherry Blossoms

I love this time of year! It's beautiful! All the trees coming back to life after a long winter. One of the most beautiful sights I've ever seen are the Cherry Blossoms here in DC around the tidal basin. This year my mom had the week off from seminary and come up to visit me. We took her up to DC to enjoy the blossoms.

None of the pictures of Mom and I turned out that well. Between the lighting and the wind blowing our hair into our faces it made it kind of difficult, but you get the idea and you can just imagine that these are the best pictures of us you've ever seen :)

Mom is not sticking her tongue out at Melanie. She was just trying to get some hair out of her mouth. It's so awkward when you're eating your hair.


We were trying to take a picture of the three of us using the tried and mostly true method of having the person with the longest arms hold it out and try to get everyone in the picture...we weren't doing very well and a gentleman offered to take our picture.
We stayed until the sun started to set. it was beautiful! I took several pictures, but I think this one is my favorite.

Sister Sarah

So I finally found someone who could help me figure out how to change the settings on the scanner so that it would scan pictures instead of just documents so I now have some digital pictures of my sister missionary sister Sarah I can share. She's been in the MTC for a month now and left the MTC for Temple Square this morning. I'm so proud of her. I love seeing the way she's grown in just these few short weeks.

Sarah and her companion Sister Shurtliff by the MTC sign. It's just one of those pictures all missionaries have to take.

And this picture is another one of those shots all missionaries have to take...the traditional picture with the MTC world map, pointing to where you're going to serve. I promise there's some un-written rule that all missionaries have to take a picture with the map. I took one, I know my brothers David and Stephen took one too.

This is Sarah and her MTC district. All the sisters are going to Temple Square and all the elders to Hawaii. They're so cute.

I'll be sure to keep you updated on Sarah's activities, but if you want more details visit the mission blog Elisabeth and I are managing for her. sisterdurtschi.blogspot.com

Winter Wonderland...in March?

Okay...

I just have to say that this goes against everything I knew about March growing up. I understand that in other parts of the world outside of California, March is still considered winter, but in the temperate central coast California world where I grow up, March is the middle of spring! I never understood the song lyrics "April showers bring May flowers." it was always "March showers, bring April flowers and brown grass in May." I'm serious! They had the May Wildflower festival the first weekend in May in one of the small towns near where I lived and I never understood why they had it so late in Spring since a lot of the wildflowers had already bloomed and died.

However, here, in good ol' Northern Virginia, winter extends into March and we experienced it's full force March 1st.

Our backyard

Front yard

Me trying to find Emma's car

We probably had a good 4"-6" and most of the schools were delayed or closed. My office was closed. I was told to use my digression about coming in. My roommate Mel told me to say home. She didn't get the option to stay home (although I think she got to go in late) and she said there were 6 or so accidents on George Washington Parkway. Emma and I wisely stayed home most of the day. We had plenty to do since we had just moved in the Friday before. Unpacking and other fun activities. We ventured out about 4pm (after it had stopped snowing and the most of the roads had been cleared). We ran to the mall so Emma could use the fax and so we could order Internet. And you want to know the best part of the whole thing? It was about 60 degrees less then a week later....What's up with that?!

Naval Academy Dance

Melanie decided and I agreed (I will admit at the time I wasn't overly excited about going) that we should give the Naval Academy dance another chance. Last years was kind of lame and we ended up leaving early, but having made up our minds, we determined to have the best time possible. And we did! The music was really bad, but we had a blast making fools of ourselves.



Reed came a long with us
We took some pictures before we head inside. We look great :)

Melanie found a nice little naval lieutenant (at least I think he was a Lieutenant) to dance with. And yes...or course I took some pictures. She did mention that she wanted a picture with a navy boy sometime during the night...

And of course Mel took some pictures of the Stadium

And a picture of a F/A-18 Hornet, the type of plane flown by the Blue Angels, for her brother (and herself of course :)

Really good times, despite the kind of lousy music.