Number 43!

Joel turned 43 and we've been so busy that I haven't gotten around to blogging about it until now. 

Here's what he got: a Dallas Cowboys Piggy Bank, a LA Lakers Motorcycle License Plate Cover, his wetsuit for the Ironman, a beach towel for Ironman, Joseph Smith movies, a book about the St. George Temple co-authored by a friend of ours, Doug Alder, and he also got money to sign up for the St. George Marathon.  Does it seem like his life revolves around church and training for some kind of running event?  Well, as long as he's happy. 

 After work the kids took him to Laser Mania to play laser tag and miniature golf then out to eat.  I am pretty sure that the kids enjoy his birthday more than he does.

 Here's a side note:  Joel's softball team MAFU won the entire season.  1st place baby!  It was so much fun to watch them.  Vince Tauanuu is one of our dearest friends and it's his team.  We love Vince.  Joel and Vince have worked together for 5 years at Red Rock but Vince was just hired on at WESTLAKE High School (Sloan's school) as the new head football coach starting next year.  He is going up next week to look for a place to live so this will be his last season with the team.  We are going to miss him so much but he's just going up to Saratoga Spring area so I'm going to hook him up with Steve so he can stay in the family.  We'll get to see him when we go up north to visit.  Good Luck Vince!  We Love You!

D-WEEK!

At the ending of every school year Dixie University has a D-Week. It's like Homecoming with a week of fun and activities but it closes out the year instead of opening it.  I took the kids to the carnival, caught up with the Wells kids and we had a lot of fun.  Everything is free there.  They B-B-Q hambugers and hotdogs with chips, cookies and drinks.  Then they have bounce houses and each club has a booth for people to go around and either play a game or they just hand out cotton candy, popcorn, popsicles.  You can also get a balloon animal or go rock climbing.  This year they had a photo booth too.  Here are our picture's:

We are way cute huh?  I clearly wasn't ready for the first one.

Matty joined us and we did pretty good for only getting 5 seconds between clicks.

Oh man.  Josh.  That first picture kills me.

For some reason I don't have any other picture's of this night.  But Spencer does on his blog so click HERE.  A great time was had by all!!

Rocklobster!

 JoEllen and I went and saw the B52's in concert a couple weeks ago.  It was AWESOME!  I LOVE them.  I had/have about 6 of their albums and I loved them all.  However, I've come to find out at the concert that they have been around waaaayyy longer than I thought and have a ton of songs that I don't know but instantly loved.  Like "WIGS".  It's an instant classic.  They were the most popular in the 80's and very early 90's looking like this on the cover of Rolling Stone.  But below is how they look now.  Pretty well preserved I think.

Fred Schneider,  Keith Strickland, Kate Pierson,Cindy Wilson

 At the concert Keith wasn't there.  They never mentioned why, but they had 2 other guitarist, a keyboard player and drummer.  Maybe he was sick.  We had really good seat. We were right in the middle a little more than half way up.  I think JoEllen had better picture's but I took long enough to get this blogged so I'd better not wait for her pictures or I might not ever do it.  It was super fun.  I'd do it again in a heartbeat.

Ladies Luncheon

 The Rogel's came down Conference weekend because it was their Spring Break and went camping but on the way back they stopped here so they men could go to the Priesthood session and they could stay overnight and listen to Conference the next day.  Well, it's tradition that while the men are out that the Ladies go out to eat.  We left the littlest at JoEllen's to fend for themselves with pizza (Emily was in charge) and we head out.  This year we went to the Black Bear Cafe.  This place is known for it's wide variety of menu items that you can get at any time of the day and for how huge the portions are. Most of us got breakfast food but JoEllen got this great turkey and avocado wrap with sweet potato fries!  Sophie loves french toast and the only ones on the menu were cinnamon roll french toast.  Apparently they cut 2 huge cinnamon rolls in half and batter them and fry them up like french toast.  Then they put the frosting and powdered sugar on top and served with sides of syrup!  Oh my word it looked amazing.  I didn't try it for fear of falling in love because that is the last thing in life that I need.  But everyone said it was as good as it looked.  We had a great time.  I can't wait until October when we can do it all over again.

Elder Jaden Beckstrand

On Tuesday April 9th Jaden was set apart as a missionary of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints by these amazing men who uphold and honor their priesthood.

Brian, Joel, Grandpa, Jared, Jaden, Stake President and Phil.

The next morning he flew out from the St. George Airport to the Provo MTC.  After his 6 week stay there he will hopefully fly out to Lisbon Portugal.  I say hopefully because I hope his VISA is ready for him. If not then he will be a Visa Waiter somewhere like Shayne is now.  His setting apart by his Stake President was wonderful.  He said some very nice things about Jaden and gave him some good advise about writing home and working hard.  We had a lot of family there from both the Beckstrand and Andrus side.  You could tell he is well loved and supported.  Jaden is an incredible man.  He has always been a great example to us here and I know he'll be a great help to the people of Portugal.

Finally Hot Water

The only thing that we've had a problem with in this house has been that stupid water heater.  First the pilot light wouldn't catch and I had 2 different people come in, look at it for 10 minutes and tell me that I needed to just get an entirely new water heater for 1600, then charge me $120.  Then I complained to Kyle who brought over his incredible neighbor Rob Pead who told me I just needed a new ignition thingy (see how smart I am).  So he bought one and I put it in myself and for 3 years we never had a problem.  Now the motor/fan/draft inducer thingy went out.  I know, I know, what the heck is that?  Well our water heater is in the basement for some reason and it needs a motor to push the gas out of the house.  Most houses have theirs in a room upstairs or in a garage where the gas can go straight up.  Ours has to be pumped to the side.  Anyway, I called someone to come look at it and they said they'd find a new part and let me know.  I had already found a new fan for $30 so I told them I'd order it and call them to put it in.  A week later it came and when they put it in it rotated the wrong direction.  So they said they'd have to find the right part and call me back and they charged us $180.  My brain totally said to me that if you reversed the polarity and turned the fan around then it'll totally work.  That's what happens every time I put the batteries in backwards in my little hand fan, it spins backwards.  It made total sense to Kyle so they tried it but it didn't work.  The guy who saw it last called and told us that he found the part we needed and it was $750 plus $100 shipping and that we'd be better off spending the $1600 for a new one.  Well, that just didn't sit right with me.  So, back to the computer we went.  We found the right part for $215 plus $20 shipping.  So...a week later it came and JOEL put it in and 20 minutes later we had warm water!  Yeah!  No more heating up water to wash my face, try to fill up the tub for a bath, cold showers, warm showers at the Rec Center or JoEllen's and no more taking our whites over to JoEllen's on Sundays to do while we're visiting.  Thanks JoEllen!

 

He's such a man.  Now there's proof he can fix things.  Hahaha.

Run 4 Kids

Every year Joel does the Run 4 Kids 10 K to help raise money for the TLC (The Learning Center).  It's a place where they help 2 and 3 year old's develop properly.  Josh went there for about a year to help him learn to speak.  So we have a soft spot in out heart for this place.  This year Joel and John had 6 Red Rock boys run it with them. It's always a good training run for him.

John finishing.

Joel finishing.

HAPPY KEASTER!

I love Easter and my Dad LOVES Easter.  Every year we go up to Lehi where Grandpa turns his backyard into a Easter Egg Hunt Wonderland.  Not only can you find regular hard boiled eggs but you can get eggs with candy, quarters, dollar bills or even a lucky number in it.  There is one per person and then there are always hidden sandwich baggies full of Peeps and other candy that wouldn't fit in the eggs.  He hides them everywhere.  In the tree house, in the flower garden, in the fence, in the deck, in the rock garden, behind everything.  One year he even hung them from the tree branches with fishing wire just high enough that the kids couldn't reach them to see how creative they could be to get them down.  We all look forward to this holiday every year, more so than Christmas because we are all together.  After the hunt is over you can trade Grandma your lucky number for a prize.  It's usually a ball, bubbles or something fun like that.  One year the older girls got cute bucket hats and Shayne loved hers.  (She wore it to every swim meet for 3 years until someone stole it from her.  She was so mad.)  Then we have a Bar-b-Que and enjoy the afternoon.  Well this year we didn't make it.  Jan and Andy were coming down to make a wedding cake so we were going to help her, landscape the yard (blog to follow) and paint Shayne's old room and make it into Sophie's new room and paint Sophie's old room and make it Josh's new room (blog to follow).  It was a crazy weekend.  On Saturday JoEllen came over first thing in the morning and we painted up a storm in Sophie's room.  Then later that afternoon I felt bad that the kids didn't get any kind of Easter Egg Hunt so we went to the movie and saw The Croods.  It was AWESOME!  Sophie says it'll be the first movie she shows Shayne when she gets back.

The first thing we did when we got back was color a million eggs.

 

          Sophie made this one to look like the Australian flag.

Sunday we went over to JoEllen's and had dinner and helped out with the cake.  It was just like old times,  so much fun having Jandy back in town.  We decorated a million eggs the day before and then had our annual Egg Cracking War.  You pick and egg and an opponent and you hit your ends of your eggs together.  Who ever doesn't cracks wins and picks a new person to go against.  You get to use both ends of your egg before it's out, then you get a new egg.  This year Josh was the big winner.

      Andy did his Peep Show for us.

 

 Then we helped with the cake.  Well, mostly JoEllen and Sophie helped out.  I took pictures (It's a very important job).

 

 To cut a cake in half easily the best way is to use dental floss and wrap it around the cake layer and pull in the opposite directions until the floss comes out.  It works flawlessly.

 Here is what you get when you put all that time and effort into an amazing cake.  Did I say AMAZING?  Because it was amazing.

 Then Sunday morning everyone got up to find where the Easter Bunny had hidden their baskets.  It is always a lot of fun.  Sophie and I got Easter bonnets aka...Sun hats.  So that's what I used for my basket.

 

It was a lot of fun but we are already planning to go up to Lehi for next year.