Crawfish

We were invited to our very first crawfish boil.  I must admit that I am not a big crustacean person.  I don't like seeing dead things in the same state they were in when they were alive.  The eyes, the legs, the antannae...  YUCK.  But, crawfish is a Louisiana experience, and I was determined to have it.  So I braved it all, cracked that crawfish open, and ate it.  Cracking the crawfish open was gross.  But the meat was good.  I don't think I'll be holding my own crawfish boil anytime soon, and I won't be ordering any at a restaurant (boiled at least), but if I'm invited to a crawfish boil again, I'll go.  Brielle loved the crawfish too.  She wanted to play with the ones we'd already cracked open.  Sick.  But it was a fun time.

Brielle and Daddy with the crawfish.  Brielle was really interested in them.  Look at that face as she checks it out.  Priceless!

Easter Egg Huntress

Our neighborhood had an easter egg hunt for all the kiddos this past weekend.  The weather was beautiful, and there aren't too many kids in the neighborhood, so it was a perfect easter egg hunt.  Brielle caught on pretty quickly and she got quite a few eggs - way more candy than she could ever eat.  She had fun delving in to a cupcake afterwards.

That was one sour jelly bean!  Brielle ate about 10 of them.  I guess she likes her candy sour.

Louisiana Spring

I'm finally getting around to posting some pics we've taken of the Louisiana spring.  Everything is in full bloom, and our garden is growing.  I have more hope for our beans and tomatoes this year, and our peppers are thriving too.  Yay!

 The front of the house

 One of the pomegrantes on our pomegranate trees.  Pomegranates are the national fruit of Armenia.  I'm beyond thrilled to have two trees in my yard!

 One of our many rosebushes.  The people who lived here before us had total green thumbs.  I, who have no green thumb, am trying to keep everything alive.  Yikes!

 Our garden

 Our new Hibiscus.  I'm so glad to have another one.  Our last one froze, and I've been pining for another.  I love that there are two colors of flowers on this one!

My latest project:  our front door wreath.  I like how it turned out.

Toddler Olympics

Brielle and I have been going to Toddler storytime at our local library since we moved here.  She loves the stories and the songs.  To end their spring storytime and gear up for summer storytime, the library had a Toddler Olympics.  Brielle loved it.  The kids participated in hockey, discus, long jump, and the ring toss.  Brielle is a natural discus thrower.  At the end, all the kids received a "medal" for participating.  So fun!

Brielle showing off her participant's crown

Brielle and her little friend Morgan showing off their medals.  These girls just love eachother.  Love the hand holding going on in this picture.

GWC and Strawberries Galore

Mark heard about this place east of Baton Rouge called the Global Wildlife Center.  It's a free-range wildlife preserve where they take you on a wagon ride among the animals and let you feed them.  They have all kinds of neat animals including zebras, giraffes, gazelles, longhorns, kangaroos, and deer.  We decided to make it a Saturday outing.  I'm so glad we did.  It was well worth the drive.  Brielle had a blast feeding all the animals.  The deer were her favorite, but I think she likes the zebras and the llamas as well.  She also loved the braying sound that the donkeys made.  Here are some highlights of our trip:

 On the wagon, ready to go

 Camels

 Brielle loved throwing out the food.

 Watching the deer.

 A Rhea bird

 A longhorn.  Nice to have a little Texas flavor.

Zebras.  They were a bit mean, but awesome.

After the Wildlife Center, we headed to a Strawberry Festival in Ponchatoula.  It's supposed to be the biggest strawberry festival in the state.  And they weren't kidding.  I have never seen so many people in one place before.  You couldn't even move down the street.  We fought our way through the crowds to try strawberry smoothies, strawberry daquiris (virgin, of course), strawberry begniets, and chocolate covered strawberries.  All were so yummy.  Brielles' favorite was the strawberry daquiri, which she called her "strawberry juice".  After we had stuffed our faces, we took Brielle on the carousel.

We sure do love Louisiana!

18 Months

Brielle turned 18 months in March.  She is officially Nursery age (yay!) and is learning so many new things every day!

Brielle on her first day of Nursery.  She loved it!  Didn't even know we were gone.

Stats:
Height: 33.5 in. (90%)
Weight: 28 lbs. (90%)

Brielle finally started saying yes, so now we don't have to hear "no" to every question we ask.  She has started speaking in short sentences, though most of the time it's still one-word communication.  Some of the things she comes up with make us laugh.  The other day, Mark came home from work and she said her longest sentence to date:  "Shake, shake, shake, shake a booty."  We were both floored.  Of course, that prompted a video moment:

Happy 18 months Brielle!  Thanks for making our days happy and full.  We love you!

Heartbreaker

HeArTbReAkEr

We're addicted to you.

We love our Cougars.  Rain, shine, sleet, hail, win, loss, we will cheer our cougars on.  So when our beloved team made it to the sweet sixteen, we counted ourselves extremely fortunate.  Not only were the Cougars making a name for themselves, but we only live an hour from New Orleans, where the next tournament games were being held.  We found some tickets, left Brielle with a sitter, and drove to the game.  One of the things I love about being a Cougar fan is that there are other Cougar fans everywhere.  It seems that when you live outside of Utah, if you meet a fellow member of the Mormon church, then you've also met a fellow Cougar fan.  Our team was well-represented in New Orleans.  It felt great to walk down the streets of the Big Easy and see Cougar t-shirts everywhere.  It felt great to get a big smile, wave, and hello from people wearing those shirts once they saw ours.  Camraderie.  That's what I like.

Fans on the Street

Mark in front of the New Orleans Arena

We started out sneaking near the front row to see the team warm up.

Then we moved to our seats in the nose-bleed section:

When we saw all the empty seats right before the game started, we moved closer:

Much closer.  We were right behind the BYU section in front.  So fun to be with the cheering fans.  And we celebrated as the Cougers fought the fight.  We jumped up and down and hugged our neighbors when they pulled ahead.  We screamed ourselves hoarse as the clock ticked down and they were tied.  We bit our nails in fear as they held the score to a tie.  And we sat in quiet dispair as the overtime game closed with Florida in the lead.  And our hearts were broken once again.  We love our Cougs.  Just wish they wouldn't break our hearts.  So until football season, GOOOOOOO  COUGARS!