Alex's Big Month

April has been a big huge month for Alex. Alex has always been interested in sports. He loves to shoot hoops, play catch, swing bats, and run. However he has always preferred to do these activities in the comfort of his own backyard. We have tried to sign him up for teams before, but he has always said he wasn’t interested. Well, after much waffling he finally decided to play on a little league baseball team with a few of his friends. To nobody’s surprise he absolutely loves the practices and the games. He likes to be 10 to 15 minutes early to each game and usually puts on his gear as soon as he gets home from school. The league is machine-pitch and everybody bats each inning, so we haven’t seen more than two innings yet. But it is a lot of fun and Alex is thoroughly enjoying it.

He also turned 8 years old this month which in our house means that you get to start going on birthday hikes with Dad. We chose to do a 2.2 mile loop in the area east of Lake Padden in Whatcom County. We had a fun morning finding the first wildflowers that had started to bloom, searching for a geocache or two, and taking lots of pictures. He tried out his new backpack and we were happy that the rain stayed away until later in the afternoon.

Turning 8 also means that he has the opportunity to be baptized. So the Saturday following the hike, Alex was baptized a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints by his dad. Grandma and Grandpa McCain and Williams both came for the event as well as Uncle Scott, Heidi, and Nicole. Aaron’s Uncle Marv and Aunt Janie were also in town and came to participate. It was a pretty special day and Alex was excited. There was a sweet spirit as he and another little girl both made these important covenants with Heavenly Father.

He has also become a cub scout and his first event is the pinewood derby. The car is almost ready and the race is Wednesday night. (We'll keep you posted.)

To close out the month Alex, Brittany, and Justin all get to participate in the Temple Youth Celebration associated with the dedication of the new Vancouver Temple. Alex and Brittany were selected to sing in a primary choir while Justin is in some of the theatrical numbers that will be performed the night before the dedication for President Monson. The practices, open house and upcoming dedication (all with the accompanying trip to Canada) has been pretty big news in our neck of the woods and we are excited about having the new temple.

We like Alex and have really enjoyed celebrating life with him this month.

Spring Break

This is Justin again. When I started this post about a week ago, Mom (Candace) was up in Canada with our new Nexus passes :-) taking the kids to a temple chior practice. First Order of busimess...Spring Break.

On Saturday night we died eggs.Darren kept wanting to stick his hand into the cup. We had to help him do it the right way.

That's better. Also, lately, whenever he sees the camera he runs up and says "Cheeese" with a huge smile on his face.

After Darrens turn was over, and pretty much whenever he saw an egg, he would grab it out of the box and throw it. We had quite a few eggs reserved for our special Easter dinner, Eggs al a golden rod.

On our Easter egg hunt he continued to find eggs and throw them, much to Amanda's dismay.
The hunt went well, and after wards, Amanda came up to Aaron and said "Dad, can I go get an egg from inside for you to hide so that I can find it." She was in the Easter spirit, and dad reminded her what Easter was about.



Easter pictures.

On Wednesday we went to Tulip Town at the Skagit county Tulip Festival.

Lots of pictures of tulips and people in front of tulips were taken. I got picture happy and took some really cool pictures, which we will show first.

It was soooo windy. Darren kept saying 'so winy" over and over, but we all adjusted and had a great time.


Alex's birthday was on Sunday, and he got lots of fun presents.
He also had vanilla, oreo, fudge, whipped cream ice cream cake. mmmmmm.


Last, and definitely not the least, Darren is the RED NINJA...