My parents offered to take my brother, Christopher & I (and our spouses) to the Tournament of the Kings at Excalibur for our birthdays. It turned out to be a lot of fun! Paul and I really got into the table banging, 'huzzah' shouting and eating without utensils. We sat in the 'dragon' section and enjoyed cheering for...the villain. (Paul was very good-natured about the inevitable, 'does this make you feel homesick?' teasing).
Afterwards, Paul and I wandered the Excalibur, as we'd never been in it before (we don't like being on the Strip), and the best we could find was the SpongeBob statue to take a picture with...so we did.
It was our last Sunday in Cimarron Ward, which is rough. The hardest part about moving (for me) is getting comfortable in a new ward. We had really enjoyed the strong spirit in the Cimarron Ward and all the friends we'd made, also the opportunity to teach Primary so we could spend all 3 hours of church together.
At our Sunday family dinner mom had a strawberry cake for me and Alec helped blow out the candles. Everyone wanted him to put his hand in and make a mess, but he hates being messy. Kelsey and I put some frosting on him and he did NOT like that.
This brings me to an interesting subject Paul and I have been discussing (in jest) recently and Paul may have won-
maybe Alec will be a clean astrophysicist like his daddy, and not 'dig in the dirt' as my mother so elegantly describes my choice. Too bad, I had high hopes of training a little anthropologist/archaeologist like me.
I've also noticed I only seem to take pictures of him in his little blue moose outfit lately...I'll work on that. Maybe it's because it makes his dark blue eyes stand out?
Alec had his 9-month old wellness checkup today (no shots-yay!) and he's now a staggering 20 pounds, 1 ounce and 27 inches long. The doctor was so happy, Alec's back on track, as far as his weight is concerned.
Classes began last week, and the first day was rough (partially because my textbook only arrived at the college 4 days prior- not much time to prepare), but Paul gave me great advice (and held me) afterwards, so Thursday went great and now I'm excited. I start teaching human evolution this week and am unsure exactly how I feel about it, so that should be interesting. Church leaders have all given
very different personal viewpoints (McConkie's against it; Widtsoe, Eyring & Talmage all feel it has some merit), I guess I need to figure it out for myself. Any thoughts? Heavenly Father works with nature, not contrary to it and the outline in the Bible follows the fossil record. The more Paul and I use science to understand how Heavenly Father has created a natural order, the more my testimony increases (Paul can better comprehend how planets and galaxies are formed and I can better see species and ecosystems), we don't see science and religion at odds at all. I'm not sure why right-wing christians' hackles are automatically raised at the thought of evolution, but after discussing it with Paul several days now, we both feel the evolution of man definitely has some merits (we agree with the scientists in the Church), I have more specific ideas (since I've been studying it for over 10 years), but would love to hear others' thoughts on the subject. Obviously we don't have all the answers, all general authorities agree that the dating of the earth is better referred to in the POGP where it's explained as 'periods' rather than 'days'; as each one may have taken a different amount of time and radioactive half-life dating allows us to extract a date range from existing material when it was formed into our world of several billion years ago. As to man's spontaneous creation or evolution, we're just curious about opinions.
Everything is going ahead for our move on Thursday. My brother Kevie's been stopping by on his way home from work and carting boxes over for us, which has really helped. Moving down to one room is going to be tricky, but we're working really hard, so it should all fit. We're still concerned about the dogs in my parents' home, so we'll see how this first month goes, then work from there.
Alec loved meeting the Easter Bunny, face paint (a ladybug), pony ride, chasing chickens & of course, the egg hunt!
We decided not to do a birthday party this year-just the cousins over for dinner on Sunday, which became a total Thomas the Train day! We had bought Alec the Thomas train table and it was definitely a hit. He plays with it more than all his other toys combined. 
I made him a train cake which was also a hit. 
We also dyed Easter eggs (seeing as we'll be in San Diego on Easter Sunday baking a wedding cake) and Alec enjoyed putting stickers on them.
Alec loved meeting the Easter Bunny, face paint (a ladybug), pony ride, chasing chickens & of course, the egg hunt!
We decided not to do a birthday party this year-just the cousins over for dinner on Sunday, which became a total Thomas the Train day! We had bought Alec the Thomas train table and it was definitely a hit. He plays with it more than all his other toys combined. 
I made him a train cake which was also a hit. 
We also dyed Easter eggs (seeing as we'll be in San Diego on Easter Sunday baking a wedding cake) and Alec enjoyed putting stickers on them.
