Easter

The Dockstader boys are early birds and Easter morning Carter was the first to wake up. I was hoping to let him play in the living room and I could catch a couple more winks on the couch.

No such luck. As soon as he saw the gift the Easter Bunny left he was very excited.

Abby with her "Barbie in a Mermaid Tale" doll
Carter with Harold the helicopter
Grant with his chatter telephone
After morning conference my family came over as well as Samantha's in-laws. We had a really yummy brunch. (I wish I had a picture of the food it was so good.)

Then the kids had an Easter egg hunt.

Cousin Jacob show off all of the eggs he found.

Savino playing catch.


This is as much of a smile you can get out of Eli

Most of the grandkids (Grant was napping)

Dying Eggs

Update on the family

Our family is doing great. We are happy, healthy and keeping busy.

Abby is still doing good in school. She is now a member of the ABC Club. Over spring break she was complaining that she missed school. I am hoping her love of school will last.

Abby was blessed with her mothers coordination (or lack thereof) but has been doing better at riding her bike. On nice days I take Abby and Carter out to ride their bikes and they love it.

Carter is also doing well. Apparently I am a total flake because it took me two years figure out Carter is allergic to apple juice. It is weird, he can eat apples and he is fine but apple juice is a no go.

Grant is growing so fast! He loves to eat and will eat just about anything we put in front of him. He is also a big boy. He mostly wears 2t clothes. Grant started army crawling at eight months and crawling a couple of weeks later at nine months. He pulls up on everything and walks around the furniture.

I now have two calling: Ward bulletin and Primary Secretary. I spend most of my time doing the "mom" thing but I have also kept busy working on projects around the house (painting, gardening, etc.) and when the stars align going to the gym.

Dean has been busy with his calling with the Young Men. He also has been working around the house. For some reason we have a lot of projects going on right now (kitchen revamp, new base boards through out most of the house and front yard landscaping)

Random Stuff

A couple of weeks ago we went to have family pictures taken at Woodward Park. After we let the kids feed the ducks. I took the opportunity to take a couple of pictures.
The boys have been taking baths together lately. Grant loves to watch Carter be wild.
Carter was helping me put switch plate covers back on after painting. He is surprisingly skilled with a screwdriver.
For some reason it is really hard to get a picture with all of the kids together. So far this is the only one I have of all three kids, all happy and looking at the camera.

Spring cleaning

When we moved into our house this closet became the catch-all for anything we didn't know where to put.

I have been bitten by the spring cleaning bug so I decided it was time to clean it out.

I am so happy with it now. I even have an empty shelf!

Early this morning. . .

I woke up to a sound. After a minute I realized that sound was water. I thought, rain? No, too loud. I thought maybe Dean ran the dishwasher and it was still going. I rolled over to go back to sleep and looked at the clock it was just before 4:00a.m. If he ran the dishwasher when he came to bed it was way too late for it to still be running.

I woke Dean up and told him to go check what was going on. He got out of bed and headed down the hall and I heard an "uh"

I got up and saw water everywhere. Dean stopped the water gushing out of a pipe that had burst under the kitchen sink. It flooded the kitchen, hallway, laundry room, entry, half way into our carpeted dinning room, into the living room and part of Abby's room.

We looked at each other and I said, "towels?" Dean laid the first towel down and it did not make a dent in the lake that was now the better half of our house.

Once Dean's brain woke up he got out the shop vac and started sucking up water. Luckily the kids slept through it.
I called our home warranty and they sent plumbers out to fix the pipe but they did not cover any of the other damage.

Once business hours rolled around Dean called our homeowners insurance and told them what happened. They said it would be one to two business days for someone to come out. Dean told them a large portion of our carpet was soaking wet. They told us to go ahead and call someone to come out and just keep the receipts.

After pulling up the carpets and cutting out the wet pad, 16 industrial fans and who knows how many dehumidifiers we are done for today.

Someone made it out from the insurance company and they said it IS COVERED, thank heaven.
We have to have the fans and dehumidifiers in the house for two to three days, have a new carpet pad installed in the living room, dinning room and Abby's room, remove all of the tile counter top in the kitchen to pull out the cabinets and have drywall repaired.

I have a feeling it is going to be a long process but I am just grateful we have family that has been helpful and offered help throughout the process, that we have insurance that will cover the cost, that we were home and it didn't flood the entire house.

I can say one thing. . .

LIFE IS NEVER BORING FOR THE DOCKSTADERS!

Army Man

Grant started army crawling yesterday. Today he is just getting faster. Grant is 8 1/2 months old. As I am typing this he is attacking Abby, she will move and he will follow her, she scoots over more and he follows.

Our Wicked Weekend

Last weekend Dean and I took a weekend trip to San Francisco.

Friday afternoon we packed Carter's bags and took him to my sister Rachel. My mom came to stay at our house with Abby and Grant.

We arrived at our hotel, checked in and went for a walk to Union Square. We stayed at the Parc 55 Hotel. It was really nice. It was also a great location because we were close to Union Square, walking distance from the theater and close to the cable car station.

This is the view from our room.
I didn't take any pictures of our room but this is one I found online. (Our room looked exactly like this.)

We were so lucky that the weather was great. Saturday we slept in, which was wonderful. Then we ate breakfast at the hotel. After that he took the cable cars down to Fisherman's Warf.

We walked around and did a little shopping.

Dean at the end of Pier 39



While we were at Pier 39 we decided to go to the Aquarium of the Bay. It was fun. They had some big aquariums that we walked through.

Dean watching the anchovy

The jellyfish were a little creepy.

February is also Tulipmania at Pier 39. The flowers we amazing.

The highlight of our trip and our reason for going: Wicked!

It was amazing. I have been wanting to see it for a while now and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. The actress that played Elphaba (the wicked witch) was amazing. I have never heard anyone that could sing like that.

At the Orpheum Theater