The Spring Chicken

Have you ever wondered where a big bunny that calls himself Easter gets all those chicken eggs?  He gets them from the Spring Chicken. 

What we did this Easter.

We colored pictures Grandma sent and then sent them back to her.  Grandmas and Grandpas like that sort of thing.

We attended our ward’s annual pancake breakfast and Easter egg hunt.  Roz is eating a pancake here, as is everyone else.  She was eating everyone else’s pancakes.

60-some kids competed for 600 eggs.  I know how many there were because well, how shall I say, I was in charge of this event.

Here are the two champs searching for egg glory.  Upon discovery of their first eggs they promptly sat down and ate the contents.  As a result, most of the eggs were snatched up, but Brookston and Everett remained positive.

Roz had some bucket difficulty.

But enjoyed herself anyway.

She did not find any eggs.

On Easter Sunday we attended church, celebrated the Resurrection, came home and dyed some eggs.

There was a lot of stirring and egg cracking, but it was fun.

I am saying something very profound about eggs here.  And believe it or not, the white skirt made it through completely unscathed.  I’m going to write a sacrament meeting talk about it sometime.

 

Later that week, I think it was Tuesday, after all the sales on Easter candy, the Spring Chicken finally arrived at our house!  She left some dogs dressed up as bunnies in baskets,

 

and some lollipops that were quite popular.

Then we ventured outside to find her eggs.

They missed one.

Once again, Rosalyn didn’t find any eggs. But, once again, she enjoyed herself anyway.

So close.

Pooling the booty.

And then I ate a lot of mini Cadbury eggs.  A lot. A lot. A lot.  And I just don’t feel bad about it.

We have little Brits.

Yeah, I spelled it right. I meant to say Brits, not Brats. They love the British show Kipper and have picked up a few British intonations. Watch this short video for an example.

Everett can’t find his horse. He can’t find it.

Now instead of saying “let me have a turn” they say “let me have a go".” And instead of “Ready. Set. Go.” It’s “Ready. Steady Go.”

If you’re unfamiliar with Kipper, here’s one of my more favorite episodes:

Safari–Journey to the Serengeti

The most idyllic moment of my life occurred on this morning.  It makes me sad that my limited narrative skills will rob the recounting.  But, for the sake of memory, I’ll do my best.
I think it rather fortuitous that I woke up early that morning.  Nick was still asleep, the vents on the tent were rolled back, and I could see Africa all around.  The night before gave no hint that we had such a fantastic view.  I quietly crept out to the deck and saw this:

I love showering.  It’s probably my favorite thing to do.  One of my favorite things at least.  And sometimes I feel weird to say that I went all the way to Africa and went on Safari and my favorite memory is this outdoor shower.  But it’s just the truth and I can’t deny it. 

While I showered the sun came up, the mists rolled away, and wowza.  I’m just not doing it justice.  Chelsea?  Amy?  Want to tackle this one for me?  Could you write it out all pretty like?

A nice guy brought us hot cocoa and cookies so we sat and looked at the view.

Here we are at breakfast.  I wrote this note in my journal:

8:04 am  Out of the corner of my eye I notice Mark discreetly spit his coffee back into his cup.  It was salt, not sugar, he added.

This is a random picture to include in a safari journal, but Angie french braided my hair for me, and it was the first time I’d had that done since I was like, 10 or something.  That’s 18 years french-braidless ended, just like that.
I remember at breakfast I kept raving about the fantastic shower, and asking everyone if they had had such a fantastic shower, and my goodness, did you shower this morning? Wasn’t it the best shower ever conceived?  I noticed Jeanette didn’t look as thrilled as I thought one should look after a shower experience like that, and Martin quietly informed me that their shower hadn’t had any hot water.  Poor, poor, poor Jeanette.  It really was the shower of a lifetime.
We said goodbye to Oliver’s camp, piled in our Land Cruisers, and set off back thru Tarangire. 

Today I got to be in Mama Empey’s car.  I was excited. 







There are a lot of pretty birds in Tanzania.  All these amazing bird photos are from Martin.







We ate lunch on the road since we had a bit of a trip to our tented camp in the Serengeti.  Here is my delicious boxed lunch.  Sometimes I still think about this lunch and wish I could have it again.  It was sooooooooooo (repeat for 15 seconds) nice to have all my meals prepared.  I mean, yeah.  Nice.  So savory.  I ate it all.  And then I ate the parts that other people didn’t want to eat.

Okay, I’ma have to stop here for today.  I really wanted to get all of this day finished, but I might go blogging crazy.  So it ends here folks.  I’ll pick up after lunch next time. 

Now you see him

 

Now you don’t.  It took me about 15 seconds to make it happen.

I just got Adobe Photoshop CS5.  Let me know if you need anyone taken out of a photo. Content aware is a beast.

nick writing 1st person for nicole:  since I’ve become a freelance designer in my spare time away from being a full-time mom and part-time design assistant (where I win $1000 faucets in raffles—another story for another post), I’ve needed some decent software to make my doodleicious compositions in a legitimate way.  so, nick went to ebay and peeped the merchandise.  MSRP is $599 for Adobe Illustrator CS5, and I wasn’t interested in anything but the best.  $599 is too much.  Nick scored a decent deal, and it came in the mail a week later. 

While nick was being super diligent in his classes—paying attention and stuff—he paused to send me a skype message that read, “Do not open the Illustrator package, whatever you do.”  He left me a voicemail, too, with similar sentiments.

My directive was clear.  At this point I thought the thing might blow up if I opened it, so I steered clear.  When Nick arrived home he enlightened my mind with his stunning good looks and a sweet deal from Adobe direct.  What was this?  80% off the already student discount??  This, my dear readers, was a revelation indeed.  For 1/4 the cost of the Illustrator we had purchased earlier we could have the Design Premium Suite CS5.5.  Oh yes, the bounty of content aware at my legally commercial-use ready fingertips.  Vector power, with the power to make…vectors!  Oh the scalable grandeur.  And all the other programs you’ll see listed here: http://www.adobe.com/products/creativesuite/design.html.

this is from our trip to the west coast down the PCH a few years back.