Marshwiggles

In past years springtime makes our backyard very wet from the melting snow and rain. Usually for about a month it is too wet to let the dogs out to play. This year has been the worst by far. Saturday when I tried to mow, I wore galoshes. I only got about 3 feet from the house before the water and mud was too much. The part I did looks terrible. By this time we expected it to still be wet but not standing water.

We decided to let the dogs out to have fun in the mud. You couldn't really see how muddy Sadie was but it showed up really well on Sylvester. He definitely had fun. It took a really long time to get them clean (grass clippings and mud).

Caleb went and got a pump and hose to pump the water out to the street. It worked pretty well and now hopefully things will dry out. Caleb took the video below to better show just how wet it was back there.

Kirtland

A couple weeks ago we were both lucky to have a Friday off and so we decided to take a day trip down to Kirtland, OH. We had never been there before despite it only being about 3.5 hours away. On the advice of a friend we went to the old temple first, maintained by the Community of Christ. The building was pretty neat although the tour was kind of lackluster. It was raining so we didn't get many pictures outside. Next we headed to the LDS site just down the hill. It kind of reminded me of Nauvoo because there are several fixed up or replica buildings that are part of the tour--Whitney Store, Ashery, Mill, Whitney home, etc. On this tour we walked around outside from building to building, so fortunately it had stopped raining just as we arrived. As always the sister missionaries were very enthusiastic tour guides and we learned a lot of interesting new things.

Sunday Snooze

A nice way to spend a Sunday afternoon. (Okay this picture was actually from a few weeks ago while watching General Conference. But it is nice to have morning church so that there is a chance to have a nap sometimes. Especially for Caleb and his early before church meetings.)

Happy Easter

Every year my family always had strawberry shortcake on Easter. This year I decided to try something new and made my own angel food cake. It uses an ton of egg whites and I was a little worried that even though it looked pretty good that it would not taste right. But it was a delicious finish after a delicious meal (which was a great new food adventure itself).

Hakuna Matata

The first weekend in April, we went to see the Lion King. It was amazing. The way they do all the costumes makes all the different animals come to life. When all the "animals" come in at the beginning through the audience and up onto the stage, it is so neat. The woman who played Rafiki had a great voice and was very funny. If you have an opportunity to go, we highly recommend it. Afterwards the cast was fundraising for Broadway Cares and you could pay to have your picture taken with Rafiki. So Caleb went for a repeat performance of his picture with Rafiki from when we went to Disney World 2 years ago.

And the Winner is...

Once again the girls have won the family bracket--this time Kattie. Many of us were really thrown when none of the #1 seed teams made it to the Final Four. Oh well. We had a lot of fun watching basketball for a few weeks. Caleb and I are proud of our win in the decoration category. And I am not at all surprised that Isaac won the trivia portion--he has always remembered everything about basketball.

The Madness had Begun

In continuing the Ipson Tradition, we got busy decorating for the season. Everyone in the neighborhood will know that we have March Madness.

 This year we went for the living room (notice the basketball covered futon). We have spent the past few evenings and all day Saturday watching the games.

And we did our bedroom. We have orange sheets and our basketball bed cover.