Easter and Grandma Sue and Papa's visit

Doug's parent's and sister Kristen made the trek down to Utah this last week to spend General Conference with us. The trip was also made because of BJ's folk dance concert, Easter, and because the could come down and we love to have them. :) While they were here we did a couple of activities, documented with the pictures below. The girls "helped" Papa with the dishes.... always a dubious and wet adventure.

Yes, that water IS pink... almost the same color as the dish soap squirted liberally into it when Papa wasn't looking. :)

We also took an afternoon and visited the aquarium in Sandy. I had never been there so I was a little surprised to see that it looked like an old grocery store with two entrances/exits on either side of the front of the building. Come to find out it had actually been a grocery store at one point, and then converted into an aquarium of all things. They did a really good job inside, it was just odd to feel like I was going into a live fish market right at the beginning....

Such a cute picture of my girls, but I didn't notice till much later that Eloise's shirt was hiked up so far. Oh well. I was also surprised that she even got onto that frog in the first place.

Cute picture of Grandma, but I have no idea what Papa was looking at.

Looking into the bubble view of sea anemones.

If you look right under Eloise's hand you'll see the octopus. I was shocked how big is was, and how much is creeped me out! Apparently I don't like octopi.

Humongous lobster. The hands are from my mother-in-law and Eloise to give it perspective for you. I wondered if the cleaning staff ever got hungry and eyed those claws.... yummy.

The girls didn't want to touch the sing ray (of course) but the loved splashing in the water... which they began to do quite enthusiastically right after I snapped this picture and had to be taken away.

That fish is a big as my head!! We did see the penguins, but it was so crowded that I didn't get any good pictures. Apparently we went on a day that everyone was on spring break and it was really crowded.

After the aquarium, the grandparent's took the kids home and I told Doug we were going up to Salt Lake for a dinner date. We went to a restaurant called Mazza that is middle eastern cuisine, and it was FANTASTIC (leave me a post if you want the address and description) and I surprised him with an overnight stay in Salt Lake. It was pretty funny because he was kind of griping in the car about my desire to go all the way to Salt Lake just for dinner, and so when I showed him the hotel reservation he was floored. And to make things even cooler, I got the hotel that we stayed at on our first honeymoon night. And to make it even cooler for me, it was one of the cheaper of the nice hotels. We had lots of fun going to the hot tub, eating snacks in bed while watching movies, and gorging ourselves on the awesome made-to-order hot breakfast the next morning. OK, maybe I gorged myself, and Doug ate normally to be honest. :) It was a very nice and relaxing trip, even if it only lasted less than 24 hours.

That weekend was General Conference, which is always really nice but really challenging with kids to entertain, but having Grandparents and Aunt Kristen there made a big difference. The girls got their Easter baskets on Sunday morning, ate lots and lots of candy all day while we listened to conference and prepared an amazing Easter dinner (ham, potatoes, rolls, salad, glazed carrots, deviled eggs [from dying Easter eggs of course], homemade raspberry sorbet and coconut jelly [a Japanese dessert courtesy of BJ]) Don't you wish you had come to our house for dinner? Yes, I bet you do. :)

Here's a picture of the girls in their Easter dresses and the bunny masks the Easter bunny left for them. I thought they looked hilariously cute. They still wear them around days later and jump out saying "April fools! Happy Easter!" Mild confusion, but understandable considering those events were so close together this year. Happy Easter to you all!