Birthday Crazy.

Ella is obsessed -- seriously obsessed -- with birthdays.

It's driving me to madness.

I think it started when we went to Griffin's party last November.  Kim videoed some of the party and put the clips on YouTube, including when everyone sung "Happy Birthday" and Griffin blew out the candles on his cake.  Those videos have been viewed by Ella more times than I can even think about (usually when she's over at Grandma and Pop's).

Since then, we celebrate *multiple* birthdays -- every.single.day.  Sometimes it's her birthday.  Sometimes it's MY birthday.  Sometimes it's both of our birthdays together.  Sometimes it's Curious George's birthday. And on...and on...ad infinitum.

It's really the "Happy Birthday" song itself that's doing me in, I think.  Because it has to be sung every time, of course.  (Sometimes I'm allowed to sing, but most of the time I'm told sternly, "Don't sing!")  Usually, one birthday celebration requires more than one singing of the birthday song.

I really don't think she'll know what to do with herself once her birthday rolls around in July.  Her head might explode or something.

Bunny Day

Last Saturday was Bunny Day at the Natural Science Center, and despite the buckets of rain that started pouring down about 10 minutes before we left, we headed out anyway...we'd been telling Ella she had a surprise coming, and it would have been pretty crappy to let her down.

The rain probably kept some people away -- it wasn't crowded at all, which was nice.

We saw lots of bunnies...

...Ella got her face painted like a bunny...

...and she met the Easter Bunny (who, I should mention, I believe is the creepiest of all the costumed characters).

 

All in all, good family fun -- two bunny paws up.

Finally, a decision.

Last week, Jon and I were in Salt Lake City.  Jon's work sent us (and some other employees as well) out there to check out the city, see if we thought we could live there, etc.

It was a heckuva long flight out thre, and on the long leg from Atlanta to SLC, we were not able to sit together and both stuck in middle seats -- the WORST.  Ugh.

We got in around 6:30pm local time, and found it was snowing.  Wha?  Neither of us really brought appropriate clothing, as the forecast hadn't mentioned snow.  But snow it did -- all weekend.

It's hard to get a real feel for a city when you're stuck on a bus for most of the time you're there.  Even harder when it's snowy and foggy the whole time.  We didn't have a ton of time to explore on our own, either -- the weekend was crammed pretty full.  We did go down to Temple Square one evening, and wandered around for about 10 minutes, before someone came up to us and told us they were ready to shut the gates for the night, and could we please leave?  Ha.

The Temple was smaller than I expected.

Overall, we liked the city, and when we could actually *see* it, it was really pretty.  There are mountains on two sides of the city, and those make for some stunning views.  All the people we met there were really nice as well.

We could finally see the mountains -- from the plane on the way home.

Ultimately, though, we decided that even though we liked it out there, and we definitely want to go back for a *real* vacation, it wasn't the place for us right now, and we're going to stay in NC.   There were lots of good reasons for us to move, but far more reasons for us to stay.  So that's what we're doing, and frankly, I'm thrilled :)