Passing Notes

Our friends were sitting in front of us during church today. Part-way through the meeting, Steven turned and passed us a little note that said the following:

This was a conversation in the car today.

Rion: "I'm Rion!"

Steven: "Yep. You're my Rion."

Rion: "No."

Steven: "No? Then whose Rion are you?"

Rion: "I'm Madie's Rion."

Looks like Madie's got a bona fide admirer. 

Not that we're surprised.

Madie and Rion show their bellies at a New Years get together.

Yosemite

When we were loading up to XC ski, Madie didn't want to wear a shirt or jacket. We really had to coax her. It was probably 42 degrees, breezy, and sunny. She eventually obliged.

Mal reacting to Madies hillbilly attire.

The original plan was to pull Madie in the sled, but she really didn't like it. So we put her in the pack. She liked it except for when we went fast.

Madies motivation for going on this trip was making a frosty the snowman. That was also our leverage to get her to obey us leading up to this trip!

Mal, a true Mainer. Cross country skiing at five months pregnant.

Enjoying our picnic.

We forgot to bring the features, but the cookies worked.

One of her latest facial expressions.

She was getting anxious to try the skis.

We were driving by tunnel view and I had to pull over to snap this. Wow.

We tried to hike to Vernal Falls, but it was getting too late in the day. We did hike a ways up the John Muir Trail though.

Madie was so good the whole day. She loved being in the backpack. Mal and I were pretty beat after doing all this in one day. But wow, what a day it was.

Arthur Rich Watkins (July 1916- February 2012)

Abundant life? Indeed. So much that my Grandfather wrote a two-volume, 1400+ page personal history about it. Here are some highlights of my Grandfather's life:

Madie, Myself, Grandpa, Dad

• Born July 31, 1916 in Salt Lake City, Utah
• Grew up on a turkey and cherry farm
• Served an LDS mission the Swiss & German Mission from 1936-1939
• While serving in Austria, he stood within 30 yards of Adolf Hitler in 1938 while  Germany and Austria were being unified
• After his three year mission, he stayed in Europe for an extra 6 months to learn French!
• Married Ruth Hansen in 1941
• Graduated from BYU with a Bachelors and Masters in Germanic Languages
• Drafted into World War II as an Intelligence Officer. Intercepted German messages
• While stationed in Italy, picked up Italian
• Graduated from Stanford University with a PhD in Germanic Languages
• Long career as a Professor at BYU
• Taught German, Russian, French, Norwegian, Gothic, and Italian (there may be more that I don't know about)
• He was actually fluent in German, Norwegian, French, and Italian and still read the Book of Mormon in those languages on a daily basis in his 95th year
• Twice served as a Mission President: Vienna, Austria and Padua, Italy 
• Was always reading a book and learning
• Fathered 8 children, 42 grandchildren and 112 great-grandchildren (includes expecting)
• Touched the lives of thousands of individuals 
• After waiting 12 years to be re-united with his wife Ruth, he peacefully and happily died February 23, 2012

He may not have a beard like the Dos Equis guy, but he is right up there with The Most Interesting Man in the World for his wealth of traveling, and life experiences. He was a Husband, Father, Grandfather, Great-grandfather, Professor, War Veteran, Mission President, Gardener, Linguist, Ice-cream Connoisseur, Etymologist, Philosopher, Historian, Friend, Disciple, Priesthood holder, and Example. We always knew he could have dominated in the game show Jeopardy. As a family, we couldn't be happier to celebrate an abundant life.

Little Yosemite

For Presidents day, we went to Little Yosemite in Sunol. Not Yosemite National Park, but a local Regional Park called Sunol. The name was coined because of the water and rock features in this specific area. It's hard to match the majesty of Yosemite, but Sunol is beautiful in its own right.

Madie liked throwing things in the water.

Random, blue rock.

And she fell asleep on the way back to the car. Her forehead kept bobbing against the back of mine, it was pretty pathetic. On a side note, we were walking by a tree when a small rodent just dropped out of the sky and came within a foot of Mal's head. Turns out a raven didn't like invader. It was a close one.

Valentines Day

 For Valentines Day this year, we actually kept along with tradition fairly well considering the circumstances. Tradition being that we prep our own dinner for Valentines Day. I must say, we come up with some really good stuff. I didn't get out of my class until 7:25 pm or so, which put a damper on prepping dinner. But, 30 minutes later Mal and I enjoyed crabcakes, asparagus, and steak/mushrooms. Plus, a dessert fit for a diabetic. Oh yeah, and happy engagement anniversary (February 12th).

Madies Valentines Party

Last Monday, Madie had some friends over for a little Valentine's party. Some of the mom's stayed and my friend Shaine came over to help keep track of any extra kids and--let's be honest--to decorate some cookies.

I started the party at 10:30 and planned for it to go until about 12:30. The idea was the kids would have fun, eat lunch, play, and then their parents would pick them up and they'd fall asleep. So here's what we did to reach that end.

The kids get busy on their confections. They had a blast frosting the cookies and then promptly covering any remaining evidence of actual cookie with sprinkles.

Shaine helped Rion with his cookies.

I've got to say, Weston cracks me up. He has a baby brother and to hear Weston talk to him is so cute. He was also entertaining to watch frost his cookie. I noticed the boys tended to be more in the "hurry up and get something on there so I can eat this thing!" category. The girls on the other hand (you can see Cara in the background) were in the "let's see how much frosting I can fit onto the face of this cookie" category. 

They also decorated some paper hearts with foam stickers. Madie at first thought they were candies and put one in her mouth. She grimaced and pulled it out then said, "Not candy." Yeah, not candy. She's a quick one.

Afterwards they had some lunch and played some games while the moms talked. I had a bunch of white balloons blown up and they had fun playing with those and playing ring-around-the-rosie. After everyone left Madie--who had locked us out of her room and ergo couldn't have a real quiet time in her room--watched about ten minutes of a movie before the inevitable happened:

And so I would say my timing was perfect.

Weekend Visitors

A few months ago, my sister Holly told me that she was going to be visiting San Francisco for about a week in February while Jeff would be at a conference. About two weeks ago, my brother BJ called and said that he was planning to come out sometime soon because Shannon needed to get some fingerprinting done in CA for a new job. I thought to myself, how fun would it be if we could all get together at the same time? Then, Mom decided to join us and we had ourselves a mini Watkins reunion. Sound familiar? This same sort of thing happened in August with the Conner family.

We went to check out the sea lions.

We met our niece Hannah, whom we had never met before.

The gang at Pier 39. There was a company doing a survey for a pharmaceutical for women between 35-60. They didn't mention the criteria before advertising "$50 for a 20 minute survey". After they informed me of the criteria, I walked away only to think of what I should have said five minutes later. "Don't let this facial hair fool you, I really am a 35 year old woman." I mean, we are in San Francisco...right?

Madie warmed right up to Holly...I think the Jelly-Belly's helped.

Ghirardelli Square for some ice cream. Madie couldn't get enough of the steps to play on.

Boudin, a famous sourdough company, had some interesting bread on display.

Madie with her Nana.

The ice cream was amazing.

Later that night we had dinner at The Rainforest Cafe. It's a pretty famous restaurant that features animatronic, life-sized animals such as elephants, leopards, birds, gorillas. All of the animals make some loud noises approximately every 15 minutes. We just happened to be sitting right in front of the elephants, and Madie was facing them. Every time they started making noises, Madie grabbed the closest adult hand and covered her eyes. They freaked her out. The funniest thing was she would peek behind the hand just to check on them. Poor Madie.

Saturday we headed to Monterey.

She was pretty captivated by the waves.

Sam and Brodi, Madie's fellow Arizona cousins, wanted to get in the water really bad. The water was cold, the air was cold and windy...they were pretty cold afterwards. I think Brodi even fell in.

Madie had a ball climbing over the rocks.

She was loving the puddles.We finished off the day cruising the Monterey Bay in a sailboat. Madie loved it. Right when we were approaching the harbor, she peed all over my lap. It wasn't just a twinkle, it was a long pee that lasted probably 5-7 thorough seconds. Glad I had a change of clothes for us in the trunk of the car!