Catching Up

At this point I don't even think the usual blurb about "oh it has been so long since we blogged..." will do any good. We know it has been that long. Learning how to parent two wonderful and energetic children has been that time-consuming. Please know we love you all and wish you could be our neighbors and see our kids all the time!

To get you caught up to speed, here is what we now all look like, and yes we added another member to the family (more on that later):

Bernie

Grant

Lucy

Dianna

Dave

The Crest Family

Bernie is the newest member of our family. He is a mini schnoodle (poodle and schnauzer mix). He was born on June 6, 2011 and officially became part of the Crest family on September 10, 2011. He has been a blessing to our family and quickly become a best friend to the children. After about three weeks of potty training and other general discipline, he is now a friend to Dianna too! He loves cuddling, tummy scratches, romping around with the kids and playing catch with the tennis ball.

Grant now has most of his teeth and is growing like crazy. He loves to play hide and seek in our master closet. He eats tons of banana, graham crackers, and yogurt. Grant sings and "dances" with us in the car or at home and generally loves music. He has quite a few words in his vocabulary like shoes, outside, mommy, daddy, and Jesus. We can also get him to fold his arms now at the beginning of a prayer.

Lucy is also growing like crazy. She now loves dress up with her Cinderella, Belle, Sleeping Beauty, and Repunzel dresses. She just got a set of princess mini dolls from her GG, Grandma Garlock and carries them around in her backpack that Kristy gave her. She is learning all the movies in the Disney catalog and it is hard to say what her favorite is right now. She goes to the library with Mommy and Grant every week and will bring home 21 books (3 per night) and 7 DVDs of any kind of kid show (bless Dianna's heart for lugging kids + huge loads of materials to and from the library).

Dianna is now a coordinator for Bountiful Baskets, a produce co-op. Her early Saturday mornings are spent as a volunteer unloading trucks and distributing the load to up to 100 people. She is also still the Relief Society liaison for anything food storage and spends quite a bit of time weekly buying large orders and distributing to members of the ward. She also has a lot of fun getting together with her book club girls every month.

And for Dave, I am working hard at Deloitte and am now a fifth year, significantly only because it is typically the last step before manager. I work on clients in the real estate and hedge fund/private equity spaces. At home the name of the game is bedtime routines or taking the kids out to give Dianna a breather. When not busy with work or family I typically work on my calling as ward clerk or play basketball with friends and coworkers.

Birthdays

Dianna’s Birthday
Dianna asked for a brand new purse for her birthday and she usually goes for the simple and inexpensive but this time I suggested she get something a little nicer. So she picked out a gorgeous new purse from Fossil. Back at home we had a nice dinner for her at In-N-Out, another of Dianna’s favorites and watched a redbox once the kids were down to round out the evening. This birthday was just about Dianna to a T. I love you honey and hope your next year is a good as the last!
-Thanks everyone for the presents and cards. It was nice to be remember!-Dianna

Dave’s Birthday
I really only had one birthday wish this year: to grill my own steak! We got some ¾” thick choice ribeye from Costco… mmm they were beautiful. Dianna made a fantastic cake as well and we had a nice family dinner and opened presents and ate cake. Thanks to everyone for their birthday cards and phone calls and Facebook posts!

Dog Sitting

Our friends needed a babysitter for their dog while they went out of town and we took the opportunity to see if we’d like to have a dog or not. The dog is an older female lab and was an angel of a dog. Lucy and Grant could not get enough of playing with her and every once in a while we had to separate them for the dog’s sake. She did great with kids. Dianna and I enjoyed it because she pretty much babysat for us. We also enjoyed having her because she forced us to get out of the house a little more. Oh… and we didn’t have to clean the kitchen floor at all because she licked it clean every time the kids ate! All in all I think we took one big step closer to getting us a puppy… maybe sometime this year?

Forth Worth Trip

After the Easter weekend I took the week off and my mom and Peter stuck around to watch the kids for us. Dianna and I took advantage of the wonderful gift to take an exotic vacation to… Ft Worth. Yeah, we drove about 45 miles to a little hotel on the west side of Ft Worth and hung out there for five days. We spent the week at the movies, eating out, seeing a few sites, and best of all… sleeping.
We went to a couple of really cool places in Ft Worth. We spent a morning at the Federal Bureau of Printing & Engraving, i.e. the place where they print paper money. It is one of two places in the country they still print money! It was cool to see all the different security measures and all the stacks of money sitting on the factory floor. One cool thing we learned is that the company isn’t a part of the government, they are a separate company and the government pays them between $0.06 – 0.08 per note! Also, if a sheet of bills gets jammed or shredded or something, the printers have to tape the sheet back together to account for every bill before they can leave that day. It was a pretty fascinating place.
We also went to the stockyards which is like a big old western town section of Ft Worth. They do a cattle drive a couple times each day with the biggest longhorns you’ve ever seen. We just walked around and ate some food and took some pictures for the kids. They also have a huge bar called Billy Bob’s. They call it a Honky Tonk but it was really just an enormous bar/concert hall/restaurant/dance hall kind of all-in-one. We went for Country Line Dancing Beginner’s Night and learned a pretty intense line dance. It really got us out of our comfort zone and to let loose a little. We felt so good we thought we’d try another not-so-Dave-and-Dianna activity: karaoke. It was a blast! Dianna sang Carrie and Kelly and I sang the Strokes and ZZ Top. What a hoot!
To round out the week Dianna and I took ourselves to one of our favorite places: Six Flags. We got about 4-5 hours in at the park going on almost all of our favorite rides at least once before they started shutting them down due to high winds. After all these years it is still so much fun for us… doesn’t ever seem to get old a good roller coaster!

Easter

Hey yall, it’s Dave again. Since the two kiddos are occupying more and more of Dianna’s time and energy, we have found that we have to tag-team the blog to get it done. So I will be writing the next few entries!
Family came down for Easter: Mom, Peter, Melissa, and Steve (a few days after). They had a fun time catching up with Lucy and Grant. It was a nice breather for Dianna and me since we got to get out of the house quite a bit without the kids. We gave Dianna the day off for Easter dinner and made a nice meal so she could relax. We made fish, we heard it was a tradition and it was tasty!

Here are some pictures from the weekend. The kids looked so cute in their easter outfits!