Mason's newest haircut

 Mike decided that Mason needed a haircut, and I sort of agreed with him. Here is a before pic:

 Here is a floor after cutting pic:

Mike used his razor hair cutting set.  He was pretty well behaved, he just kept trying to look towards the razor.  I held him in my lap wrapped up in a towel while he cut it.
And here is an after pic:

Takes some getting used to.

Temple open house pics

The new Kansas City temple

Family shot: kinda far and Mason was too interested in the fountain to turn around.

Easter Sunday

We went to Grandma's house for Easter Sunday and dyed eggs. Mason was NOT allowed to participate, I didn't want him getting dye all over his clothes.  The colors are funky because the eggs we had to dye were brown.  We had some fun experimenting with the different shades of brown in the different colors.

Then we went and gathered the plastic Easter eggs Grandma had been hiding in the back yard.

The dogs were freaking Mason out, especially the beagle, she is overly exuberant all the time.

He wasn't quite sure what was going on. . .

but he figured it out pretty quickly.

There's Mommy's big belly, half hidden by Mason.

Extreme close-up!

Daddy was very proud of this next picture.  Auntie Missa's birthday was the next week, so we had cupcakes with candles, and Daddy managed to get Uncle Jeffrey's toes in the shot, and thought it was amazing.

Happy Birthday Auntie! And Happy Easter everyone!

Some random pictures

Here are some cute pictures from our walk the other day.  He likes to go for a walk every day and on Conference Sunday, when his aunties and uncle Jeremy came home, he enlisted them to come along.

Mason, with his entourage and bodyguards, stylin his shades

Asserting his independence: "I can walk by myself Mom!"

Random picture mostly of me, the baby was protesting my position here, kicking like crazy.

He looks so grown-up here!

Then we have a couple of pictures showing what happens when Mason wakes up too early, and Mommy doesn't jump right up when she hears the empty bedtime snack yogurt container hit the floor.

Tired little man!

A few random thoughts (plus pictures!)

As my pregnancy progresses, I've been finding myself wondering, will I miss the time I have with my sweet boy all to myself?  How will this new baby affect our relationship?  How much will I miss one on one time with Mason?  I mean, I'm sure at first I'll still get some time alone with him, because new babies sleep a lot, but it won't be quite the same.

Don't get me wrong, I don't regret getting pregnant again.  I've just been thinking that I should use the time I have alone with my little bug as effectively as possible.

And now for the pictures.  I have bunches of pictures of different things, and figured I'd just stick them all on at once, along with a couple of videos.

Mason has a new favorite game.  It's called ride on Daddy's back!

He loves this game, it's on of those things that we have to do over and over again.

 And here is a quick video of it.  At the end of the ride, he likes to get dumped on the couch next to Mommy. Sometimes he gets overly excited and dumps himself off early.

 Here is a random picture from the zoo, with Mason playing with his wagon.

One Sunday, during our outdoor time, Daddy decided to climb a tree, then Mason wanted up with him. So cute!

Here is Mason figuring out how to build with Mega Bloks.

 And here's another video.

Mason has become a lot more interested in things like park play areas and swings.  Sorry he's looking away in this pic, but I still thought it was cute.

Sorry the video is so blurry, I was using my phone camera. 

And we've been blessed with a garden plot that a family in our ward is letting us use for the summer.  Mason has been enjoying helping out with the garden.  Daddy tilled it up using a shovel, then Mason saw Mommy and Daddy breaking the dirt clods, and decided to help. Using his hands.  Cute!

Again, blurry video

Tax exempt status

I've been noticing a disturbing trend on the internet lately of people demanding that churches lose their tax exempt status for one reason or another.  I've also seen people demanding that all churches lose their tax exempt status saying that the IRS should simply revoke the status.  There is one big problem with this demand.

Amendment 1 - Freedom of Religion, Press, Expression. Ratified 12/15/1791. Note
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.

The way I understand this amendment, the very first amendment in the bill of rights, churches are exempt from ANY taxes simply because Congress can't make any law that could affect the freedom of a religion.   All churches, regardless of what they preach.  I remember learning about this amendment in school and my teacher telling us that governments have used excessive taxation to control and even destroy religions.  So to keep our government from having the power to do anything of the sort here and protect religious freedom, Congress was barred from having any power over them.  Any thoughts?

Again, can't we go back to horses?

When Mike got into the car on Saturday to go to work, it freaked out on him.  First it didn't want to start and then when he finally got it going, he couldn't get any power from it and it began jerking around like crazy.  He brought it back home and got a ride to work from our home teacher, and we called his dad to come out and test the battery for us, hoping that was the problem.  Unfortunately, it wasn't.  My father-in-law played with the car a bit, and said he thought it was the fuel, either the filter, water in the fuel, or possibly the pump (ouch!).

We drove the car to Jiffy Lube, which is just around the corner, to test the fuel filter possibility.  We were told that our car doesn't have an external fuel filter, that if it was the fuel pump that the car wouldn't work at all, and that they thought it was a clogged catalytic converter.  They also warned us that if we kept driving it, we could damage it more.  So we brought it back home and parked it, and borrowed Mike's sister's car to go to church the next day.

This morning we called the tow company that our insurance pays for ($7 a year, and sooooo worth it!) and had them tow our car to the car repair place we use.  It was kinda cool how everything worked.  The tow company told us it would take 45 minutes to get here (10 minutes), the car place told us first that they might not be able to finish our car today, and then, after they diagnosed the problem, they told us the repairs would take a couple of hours and it was done in less an hour. Nice!

The bad thing is that the problem was more serious than we thought.  Our car is a four cylinder, and it was running on two.  Something to do with bad coil towers.  It cost $533 to fix.  Ouch!

Well, at least we got our car back quickly.