Who Doesn't Love The Avengers?

Certainly not this guy who made his own Thanos Gauntlet Gloves in his spare time.

Suki Girl

We woke up Easter morning and Suki had lost the use of her hind legs.  He legs grew more and more limp as the day went on and she seemed to be in a lot of pain.  We were all concerned and worried.  I took her to the vet the next day.  All the kids were crying as they left for school before we found out what was wrong with her.  We weren't sure what was causing her legs to not work.  The vet assumed that she had a compressed spine and she required an MRI to discover where and then surgery to fix it.  They sent us home with some meds to await her MRI and surgery.

As you can see she wanted nothing to do with her pills unless they were wrapped in bacon.  She really stuck her nose up at me!

The surgery was a success and she is about 85%-90% better.  Mostly just a little slow to go up the stairs and she still can't jump up on the couch.  She sure gave us a scare.  We love our Suki girl!

Kayden's Scout Ranks

Kayden was pretty excited when he learned that he was going to be able to join his dad in the deacons quorum and scouting while he was 11.  He recently had his first Court of Honor where he received his Scout and Tenderfoot ranks.

We are super proud of Kayden!

Easter 2019

We enjoyed celebrating Easter with the boys and with family today. 

We started out the weekend by dying some Easter Eggs.  Makes for great deviled eggs and egg salad sandwiches!

Easter morning the boys were reading to go hunt eggs.  But getting them to take a normal Easter morning picture was a chore!

The boys took over 30 minutes to find their Easter baskets.  The Easter Bunny sure knows some good hiding spots in our house!

 Josh was the first to find his basket.  But it still took him a long time!

 

Just as Kayden was holding up his Easter basket, the bottom broke loose and all the contents fell out.  He was still happy with all his loot though.

Jaxon's basket was in a place he didn't even know existed in our house.  The drawer of the laundry machines!

A couple of weeks before Easter, we were able to have an Easter hunt with Grandma and Grandpa Haacke and Becca.  It took them a while to each find their eggs.  My boys aren't too good at Easter hunts apparently!

It was a great Easter and we loved celebrating.  We also love our Savior Jesus Christ and are grateful everyday for his atoning sacrifice.

Spring Tennis

Josh had a great spring tennis season. He started out by playing JV Doubles and then quickly moved on to JV Singles.  He had his ups and downs through out the season and improved a lot.
 

The season tournament came and he ended up winning 3rd place in his JV division!

Spanish Fair 2019

Jaxon and the rest of his Spanish class worked their buns off to get ready for the Spanish Fair down at BYU.  They really wanted to win this year and dedicate their win to Señorita.  They were all pretty excited when they announced that Lone Peak had won.  Señorita's family was there to witness their win and to celebrate with them.

Happy Birthday Jeremy!

We had fun celebrating Jeremy's birthday over the course of the last week.

It started at Grandma Haacke's house the week before his birthday.  We hadn't had a chance to celebrate Grandpa's birthday so we celebrated two birthdays.  They both love the traditional Haacke Strawberry Shortcake.

We went to lunch at The Cheesecake Factory the day before his birthday as a family.  Then we celebrated his birthday after church on his actual birthday:

46 and still handsome.

 The traditional Heavy, heavy hangover thy poor head....

 When I asked Jeremy what it was that he wanted for his birthday he said, "A dog to replace Oakley when we have to give him back."  Jeremy has become quite attached to Oakley and they have become good friends.  So I had another moment of weakness and gave Jeremy a stuffed dog to let him know that once we give Oakley back he could have another puppy.  From the looks of this picture, Suki knows whats coming!

 

Josh took a turn bonking on the head.  Jeremy also loves back scratches and anything he can use to scratch his back.  So I gave him a back scratching kit.

 

Jeremy ended his birthday celebrations by having dinner at Grandma White's house.  He shared his celebration with Landon.  Happy birthday Jeremy!  Your family sure loves you!

Jaxon's Prom

Jaxon had a good time attending his Jr. Prom this year.  He asked a girl that he was friends with in our old neighborhood when he was little--only he doesn't remember playing with her!

 

He sure dresses up nice.  He even got a haircut for the occasion!

Jaxon and his buddy, Josh, drove their dates together in Jaxon's car.  Ironically Jaxon's date is a cousin of Josh's.  They didn't know until Jaxon went and picked up his date.

Jaxon picking up his date, Mikayla Gibson.

Jaxon's friends: Dakota, Skyler, Josh, Jake, and Jaxon.  Good lookin' bunch of boys!

Group date photo.

Spring Break Texas Trip

Visiting Texas really was a fun vacation and we all enjoyed it.  But Jaxon especially loved it as we were on Jaxon's dream vacation.  Jaxon and Jeremy flew down to San Antonio just in time to see Manu Ginobili, one of Jaxon's all time favorite Spurs players, retire his jersey.  Jaxon has had a love of the Spurs since he was in the 6th grade when his basketball coach told him to watch and take note of how the Spurs are team players.  Well, he did and his hasn't stopped watching them since.  When they announced the date of the jersey retirement, we decided to gift that to Jaxon for Christmas.  The trip could not come fast enough for Jaxon!

The jersey retirement was on March 29.  Just Jeremy and Jaxon flew down for the game.  It was cool for them to see the AT&T Center as well as watch a Spurs game live.

 They had all sorts of things for the fans at the game that day.  They had tissues in all of the seats just in case you needed to shed a tear or two during the ceremony.  They also had hats for everyone.  Then Jaxon was able to have his picture taken with one of Spurs Championship trophies! 

Jaxon soaked it all in and enjoyed it all.  (Minus the headache he had...must have been all those tears from the ceremony.)

The actual retirement ceremony.

The next day the rest of us flew in so that we could see the sites of San Antonio together.  Our cousin Tyler lives in San Antonio where he is a police officer and it was especially fun to hang out with him to see the sites and get a taste of San Antonio.

Once we met up with Tyler, our first stop was to the Alamo.  It was cool to see such an old building smack in the middle of a bustling downtown.  We had a good time exploring and seeing the history of the place.

 There was a fountain outside of the building that held all the Alamo relics.  Kayden asked Tyler, "What will you give me if I dunk my head all the way in this fountain?"  Tyler told him he would give him $10.  But Kayden didn't want money.  Honestly I think he wanted to do it just for fun and laughs.  But they settled on two Pops Chocolate Bars.

 

Tyler was pretty surprised that Kayden actually went through with it.  We all had a pretty good laugh and Tyler followed through on his promise of the chocolate bars....which were significantly less than $10.

 Outside the Alamo.

 

One of the things on Jaxon's San Antonio bucket list was to go get pizza at Big Lou's.  We all squished into Tyler's car and he drove us out to Big Lou's.  We got a 37" pizza and it was delicious!  Everything really is bigger in Texas!

After we got big pizza, we had to try out the big cinnamon rolls we heard about earlier in the day while in a shop.  We got a three pound cinnamon roll and split it among the six of us!  As we were retrieving our leftover pizza from Tyler's trunk, Jaxon noticed some of Tyler's police gear.  Tyler let him try on his bullet proof vest.  It was a fun filled big day!

Tyler had to work the next day so we decided to go to Sea World.  Josh and Kayden had never been and the last time Jaxon went was when he was two.

We had fun hitting as many shows in as possible as well as seeing the animal life.  The weather was a little cool, but we still had a good time.

It is always fun to see the killer whales!

 Jeremy, Josh and Kayden wanted to go on all the rides.  Many of the rides were water rides and they got soaked!  Since it was so cold, Jeremy had them all stand in a big dryer to warm up and dry off as much as possible.  A lot of the other rides were closed due to windy conditions....did I mention it was cold??

Besides eating out, we enjoyed a few meals in our hotel room.  Another bucket item list for Jaxon was visiting HEB Grocery store, who sponsors the Spurs.  It really is a nice place.  We picked up food for dinner after visiting Sea World.  We had a good time relaxing and eating in our room. Kayden even made it all fancy by garnishing his glass of water with a grape!

After church on Sunday, we went and explored the River Walk and took a boat tour.  The River Walk really is a beautiful place and truly a highlight of San Antonio.  Jaxon found himself falling in love more and more with the place.

On Sunday night we went to go and see a really old cathedral that puts a light show on every night.  We didn't know much about the light show, but we decided to check it out.  It was pretty cool!  The lights made a picture on the cathedral and we saw the whole history of San Antonio and Texas through the light show in less than 30 minutes!  We were really glad we went to see it.  Here are a few (ok, a lot of) highlights:

 

On Monday, we met back up with Tyler at his apartment to meet his cute dog Reptar and then do some hiking at Pedernales Falls State Park near Austin.

The boys loved on him and played with him.  He is a pretty sweet dog and you can tell he is loved and coddled by Tyler.  Tyler wouldn't even make him climb down the stairs to go outside and the poor dog didn't even know how when I tried to get him to  do it!  We gave Tyler a bad time about that one.

Pedernales Falls State Park did not disappoint.  We loved it there.  We climbed all over the rocks and enjoyed the beauty of the falls.

 Kayden decided to dunk his head in the falls.  Crazy kid.  He didn't get any chocolate this time around, just a few laughs.

Tyler decided to try out his Parkour skills while jumping off rocks.

After a full afternoon of hiking, we said good bye to Tyler and made our way to Austin.  We stayed in a great hotel there where we enjoyed the pool and a quaint hamburger joint a couple of blocks down the street.

Kayden always loves a good cannon ball!

We spent the next morning exploring Austin.  We went to the University of Texas Austin campus to look around and to see the Lindon B Johnson library, which we didn't have time to explore.  We did get a great tour of down town via Segways.  We all had a great time riding the Segways and saw a lot of Austin in a short amount of time.  We saw the governor's mansion as well as the haunted Driskill Hotel that was built in 1886.  It was pretty inside, but we didn't see any ghosts!

After we finished touring Austin, we grabbed some lunch and headed towards Houston to see cousins and Aunt Juli and Uncle Craig!  We had a great time staying with them and we were able to see some sites around Houston while we were there. 

We went to the coast town of Galveston where we toured a retired ocean oil rig.  It was pretty fascinating to see how those function.  After the tour we went and got some sea food at a local restaurant.  It was tasty!

 We went and visited the Houston Space Center the next day while Cameron and Meaghan were in school.  We thought it was pretty cool how they would transport the space shuttle back to Florida on top of an airplane.

 Inside the space center there were lots of interactive exhibits and things to see.  Above we are experiencing a take off and landing in a space shuttle.

 Kayden is walking on Mars and then practiced his shuttle skills in a simulator with Jaxon.  Then all three boys climbed into a cockpit to await launch.

 There was a lot to see and we got tired as you can see from the upper left picture.  The kids were tiring of me taking their picture.  But they had fun with all the interactive exhibits, as did Jeremy!

 Seeing just how they were able to mount the space shuttle on the airplane and then exploring the inside of the shuttle.

 We took a shuttle all around the NASA campus and were able to see how NASA is ran and how it functions.  It was pretty cool to see people at work knowing that we were witnessing some of McKay's dream jobs.  We certainly missed McKay while at the space center so we bought him a cool shirt to send to him.  Lower left Jaxon said, "You can't take my picture anymore," so I did just to prove that I could.

 We were able to go to the Houston temple to perform baptisms.  The temple had been flooded during Hurricane Harvey.  But it has been restored and is beautiful.  It was fun to be all together in the temple.  We had brought our on family names and then also did some names for a local stake there.

Our last night at Aunt Juli's house we stayed in to watch the home opener Astros game so the kids could swim.  They had a great time swimming together and making memories.  

It was a great trip and we are so grateful that we got to spend so much of it with family.