March 16 - March 22

Sunday March 16: It was my Sunday to teach in YW, My lesson was about grace, a favorite topic of mine. I used a really lovely video from Elder Holland about the grace of the Savior, and I think the lesson went over well. McKay and the kids stayed home with colds, poor guys.

Monday March 17: The first day back at school for Tyler and I. Life is just hard sometimes. Luckily it was also St. Patrick's day, and that made getting up and getting dressed a bit more fun for the kids (and me)! Here they are, getting their 3% of Irishness out!

Demon Irish Hound?

Tuesday March 18: McKay and Jamie did their usual Tuesday activities, library, grocery store:

which always looks way more fun than what I'm usually doing at the same time: 

Lots of pharm notes today on lots of cardiovascular drugs (I sent this picture to McKay, and he said he loved how it's enshrouded in inky darkness as if it just emerged from some evil dark abyss. McKay and Jamie picked me up from school for a lovely lunch date at Smashburger. 

Jamie spent most of the lunch wrapping herself in my scarf.

Wednesday March 19: McKay sent me this crazy picture of a whale’s heart while I studied the cardiovascular drugs. 

This is...unsettling. What's their heart beat per minute? What's the stroke volume, for goodness sake!  (*McKay has informed me the beats per minute for a blue whale is six. SIX!)

We had our YW activity at the church that night about family history. I finally finished my shelves, and after the kids went to sleep, McKay and I watched Before Midnight, the last of this really good movies trilogy about a couple who randomly meet in Vienna. Watch it! McKay grilled steaks for dinner with his new steak rub from Fort Worth, and it was sooooo good.

Thursday March 20: Tyler’s school had a Zoo day where the zoo came over with lots of baby animals. He’s been counting down the days since last month, so this was pretty much the most exciting thing ever. Jamie and I played Jamie Princess Memory all morning long, and a lot of the night after Tyler and McKay left.

The only difference between this and normal Memory is that we play with the cards face up. It makes the game enjoyable with a 3 year old :) Since Jamie is not familiar with most of the Princesses she has her own names for the characters:

"Two cups with the red roses."

"The Golden Teas."

"The Mama Tea and the Baby Tea"

"The pillows with two shoes on them."

"Tic-Toc."

 I had precinicals at hospital to pick my patient's information for the next day. While I stayed home to put my preclinical paperwork together, McKay and Tyler went to a Mavericks game that night. McKay sent me these pictures, and this basically sums up the night:

Apparently the "Happy" song was on, and Tyler was really feeling it.

Friday March 21: Another clinical day! This turned out to be a hard day for me. I think its going to be important for me to learn to deal with other people's pain. That is all. With all our car switching from day to day, we were finding ourselves stuck at times without carseats when we needed them. Hence, McKay took Jamie to pick out a new booster seat, mainly to use as a backup in McKay's car when I need him to pick up the kids unexpectedly. Jamie is very excited, even if she has to wait until June to use it everyday. This does not stop her from asking to take the white car every morning :)

Saturday March 22: I spent the morning making the kids clean up their rooms really well. Predictably, this took the entire morning. Then, once the horrible times were over, we were off to the Hamilton's Crawfish boil.

After the kids went to sleep, we watched Dallas Buyer’s Club, and it was amazing. Jared Leto was so fabulous :) It was also pretty cool to know all the places they were talking about, being right here in Dallas. I realized that all the gay clubs they were frequenting to find customers were probably just one street south of us, on Cedar Springs, fondly known as the Gay-borhood.

Funny Things:

Text from McKay: "Ya know that age old rhetorical question "if an idiot dog came across a cup of craisins, would he eat them?" Well, we now know the answer. It's a resounding YES. Every single one of them."

Jamie insisted on putting her own shirt on, and it took her three fifteen minute tries. 

But she absolutely refused help.

I tried over and over to get good pictures of Tyler and Jamie playing with all the other kids, and each time the merry go round came around again, Eli stuck his face right in the camera lens with this huge goofy but purposeful grin:

I seriously had like 12 of these pictures of him.

"Jamie! Look over here! Jam--ELI!"

March 9 - March 15

Sunday March 9: I started on a project that I've been waiting to do for so long, and I finally had the time: painting our piano! (SORRY CINDY! I know it's a Hinckley Heirloom and was supposed to have museum status but I just couldn't help myself!). We used Annie Sloan Chalk Paint, and that stuff is awesome to paint with. No primer, no sanding, two coats, and BOOM, your piano matches your dining room!

 (No makeup pictures are going to be grumpy pictures.)

We had a Hinckley family dinner that night after the painting was done. Per our usual assignment, we brought the cake. A birthday cake, to be exact, since it was Michelle and Patrick's birthdays, both on the 21st. We also brought them a present to perk up their new apartment, which I can honestly say is the first time I've seen Patrick get excited about anything:

Mon March 10: For our first official day of spring break, we trooped over to Grapevine to visit our neglected Legoland. I had a stroke of genius before we left. I brought five dollars worth of quarter, and let Tyler and Jamie choose whatever rides they wanted to ride out in the main mall area.

 You can't see it at all in this picture, but Tyler used a few of the quarters to make a Legoland penny. This is the only evidence we have that it exists, but we lost it just a few hours after it was made. There were many tears.

Tuesday March 11: McKay took the white car in to get some much needed repairs, and I went to Lowes and bought a power saw! Did you know they are like $30 at Lowe's? I have all these Pinterest projects that I've been wanting to do forever, but haven't had the tools to do them.

Wed March 12: Tyler, Jamie, and I spent the morning cleaning up and getting ready to go on our mini vacation. After McKay got home, we dropped the kids off at Lisa's house and then jetted off to exotic Fort Worth! We spent the night a this cool bed and breakfast in the middle of downtown called Etta Place.

This counts as a selfie technically, but I was checking out my outfit in this giant mirror, and it turned out to be one of the only pictures of me from the whole trip, so here it is, proof I was there!

It was based off Etta Place, the girlfriend or wife or something of Butch Cassidy, and the entire place was decked out in Old West theme, but elegant old West theme. It was pretty amazing. We spent the night walking around downtown Fort Worth all around Sundance Plaza, and had a ton of fun poking into places and checking out what was going on. We stopped in the Scat Jazz club in time to see this crazy awesome band:

Thursday March 13: We sort of got to sleep in, but there's a whole lot of construction in downtown lately, and the pounding and crashing right across the very echo-y street made it difficult to stay asleep. We cruised over to the Stockyards and shopped around all the little shops and stands and farmer's market places there.

(I forgot to take pictures down there, so I've borrowed these pictures from a girl I know who also went to the Stockyards lately. Thanks Melanie!)

I bought these cute little bird napkin rings at one place, and McKay picked up an obscene assortment of salsas and steak seasoning from another place. Then it was ELTON JOHN TIME.

As you can probably tell, we had awesomely bad seats. But it didn't matter even a little bit. This man is almost 70 years old and had more energy than anyone else in that venue. His band (all a good ten years younger at least, had to take breaks, but Elton just kept it going and played a solo while they were gone. He was hopping up on top of his piano, walking around the stage rocking out; it was so so good. We had these people sitting behind us who had obviously only come for the benefit of their one friend, who was REALLY into Elton John. He would be rocking out in his seat, and then prod his friends into singing along with him.

"Saturday! Saturday! Sat- Come ON Ryan!" Then he'd be joined in by a very disgruntled Ryan: "Saturday. Saturday! Saturday, Saturday..." It was so funny.

Friday March 14: We picked up the kids from Lisa’s in the morning and had a make up donut day for them. Then we all went home and slept off our respective vacations; we were pretty tired!

Saturday March 15: Poor McKay had to go back to word, but Tyler, Jamie and I had a grand time in the backyard building a new shelf for my side table. I've been meaning to do this for quite a while. The kids like to take running jumps into the couch, and since we have wooden floors, the couch just flies backwards into the front window, and each time I'm sure they're going to keep going through the window into the front yard. I brought it inside and weighed it down with a few cute suitcases, one of them being a 25 pound accordion. So far, the couch has stayed put.

I like my new saw :) 

That night we had a housewarming party to go to up in Frisco. The Murdock family made delicious carne asadas, and we brought our famous red rice to their carnita soiree. True to their heritage, that's all Tyler and Jamie would touch. It was a really fun night, and it was awesome to see the Murdocks in their lovely new home.

Funny Things:

We mentioned at the party that we went to a concert that week. Someone asked us, "Wait, did you see Miley Cyrus!?" We quickly reassured them "No, no, it was Elton John!" It took me just a second to realize that's only slightly less embarrassing :)

And not a funny thing, but a GREAT thing! Michelle and Patrick found out they are having a baby GIRL!