The World Famous San Diego Zoo

...or at least that's what they call it in the movie, Madagascar. For the better part of the past year, Adam has been praying daily to go to the San Diego Zoo for his birthday. He loves the movie Madagascar and can even quote some parts for you so I'm pretty sure that's where he got the idea. His dream has evolved into wearing a blue shirt with a "3" on it, seeing elephants, a cake and candles, and balloons. Every time he'd pray at a meal or before bed: "Dear God, thank you for this day and thank you for this food. I want to go to the San Diego Zoo for my birthday, and the circus, and the fair, and the zoo, and the circus, and the fair. Amen." Well, we got most of it.

Nick was already going to be down in Irvine for the Catalyst Conference so we just made a vacation out of it. We went to the park with Lollie, Bella, and Madalyn. We also rode in the big orange hot air balloon -for free- at the Great Park in Irvine. Amber helped me make...I mean I helped her make...actually Amber made this totally cool shirt for Adam to wear. It was blue, of course, and she cut out a 3 for the front and the name Neves for the back. It looks great in the pictures but now is even better since it frayed in the wash. Thanks, Aunt Amber!

Saturday morning came, and we all headed to the Zoo. Nick, Adam, Sam, and I, Trevor and Amber, and Jeremy, Lollie, and the girls. I brought along animal crackers and stuffed zoo animals for the kids. Adam chose the elephant even though he already has three at home! I don't know if Adam was expecting cartoon animals and lemurs singing "Move it, move it" but he sure enjoyed himself. He even got to let a giraffe eat out of his hand. We took a break at lunch to head out to the cars for the birthday cupcakes. Looking at the pictures out of context, you'd think we gave our son a birthday party in a parking lot- which we did, but then we went back in to the "World Famous San Diego Zoo"! Lions, and tigers, and bears. Then dinner, and off to home!

April 11th

For Nick's birthday this year, we went with a group of friends to a MMA fight. We all had a really good time, even the girls!, and I'm finally learning after over 10 years of being with Nick, how to give a "boy" gift.

He is risen!

He is risen indeed!

The boys were excited about hunting eggs even before they found out that Aunt Bubby puts chocolate inside!

Home-Owners!

We are now home-owners, or at least we will be in 30 years! We got the keys on a Wednesday night, had a first meal of Taco Bell on our dining room carpet, put the boys down to sleep, and then we decided it would be fun to stay up until 4 in the morning for a few consecutive days to scrape the popcorn off the ceilings and start painting! Crazy! We had so much help, though. Thank you to all of you who were such a blessing to us.

The first event we had in the house was the second night, Thursday, when the Deep End college group meets at our house. So we met in the empty family room amidst paint rollers and bags of debris and worshiped our Lord. We somehow convinced several people to stay after to help, too.

Here are some pictures I took just a few weeks in, so pardon the random shop vac or moving box. The boys' rooms look super bland. We haven't quite finished those. The plan is to decorate Sam's beige room with a road and vintage vehicles. Adam decided that he wanted rocketships and dump trucks. We're going with the rocketship plan with painted stars on the ceiling. :)

The Arkansas Branch

Nick's brother, Justin, and his family moved out to Arkansas several years ago and they came back for a visit. It was great to hang out with them before they headed off to the "happiest place on earth". We've gone out there to visit a couple times with the boys but mostly, they know them as magnetic heads on our fridge so it was so nice for all the boys to hang out and get to know their cousins.

Has it really been three months!?

I could make excuses but they might only satisfy myself...
I can't tell you how many times I've talked to people about our blog and said, "I'll update it during naptime, or after the boys go to bed." Well, it's taken me three months but they have finally gone to sleep!

Our lives have been filled with blessings and I will add more detail in other posts but in short: Nick and I bought our first house!, I've run probably a total of 4 times since my marathon, Nick turned 31, Adam turned 3 and we celebrated at the San Diego Zoo, I'm still in my twenties- but not for long!, I'm directing this year's VBS, and our church is moving into a new building.

So thank you for being so very patient with me and here it comes...