Pictures

Happy birthday Morgan!

Sound of Music girls

Birthday breakfast at Google

The Build-a-Bear crew

Brig, Morgan, and Snowflake

That is one happy little boy

"...you want crystal gel?"

Micah performing at the school picnic

Curly hair and gray hair

Ang and Morgan at the picnic

Morgan's excited about the bubble gum, and you can see Brig eyeing it too

Nice smile Brig

Cool Story

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Birthday Recap and Travel Plans

Morgan had a really great birthday yesterday! We decided that rather than load her up with a bunch of stuff, we would create the perfect birthday day from start to finish. Angela did an amazing job of planning fun things throughout the day. She would open a new envelope each time one of the adventures was done to find out what the next one was - here's how Morgan's day went:

First, donuts with the family as per our unbreakable birthday tradition (unfortunately Dad was already at work on an early call); Second, breakfast with Dad, Mom, and Brig at Google; Third, a trip with Mom and Brig to Build-A-Bear where she got a husky named Snowflake and a High School Musical dog outfit; Fourth, afternoon kindergarten (not part of the fun...); Fifth, a trip to the beauty salon with Mom and the girls to get toenails painted all sorts of funky colors and patterns; Sixth, a family picnic to a beautiful area in the hills where we got to watch Micah perform some dances with her team; Seventh, tickets to the community theater presentation of High School Musical this weekend; Eighth, some presents from the family; and Last, a scrumptious ice cream cake and a late bedtime. Great day! I myself was bummed I missed the toe-painting party...

Now for travel plans - we have made a few decisions on travel plans for the upcoming months so I thought I'd share with you where we'll be and when.

Next week, Angela and Kennan are flying to Utah for a quick trip. The main reason for the trip is to be at Camille's baptism (she came to Kennan's), but I'm sure Angela will take the opportunity to help finalize any house things that still need to be done on the Provo house.

The week after that (Memorial Day weekend), I will fly out to Utah on Friday afternoon and go straight to work with Cameron on the Provo house. We'll work late that night, and all day (and night?) Saturday. We should be laying sod, planting trees, moving staging furniture in, and whatever else needs doing. Should be 'fun'.

And we've finalized our big summer trip dates as well: We'll drive to Utah on July 26th and all be there through the end of the Richards family Jackson Hole trip. I'll fly back to CA on the 6th to work until the 15th. I'll then fly back to SLC after the work week to collect my reluctant family. It turns out that Dan and I will likely be heading to SLC the same weekend, so my options are fly and be grateful I'm not driving, or drive with Dan and be grateful for the time with him. Pros and cons to both...we'll see.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MORGAN!!!!

Or as she is still sometimes affectionately known: "Mowgan". It's our little precious girl's birthday today - 6 years old! Wow, that just doesn't seem right somehow. Each year I exhort her to stop growing and stop getting smarter so that she'll be my little girl forever, and each year she assures me with a mischievous smile that she'll stop after her next birthday.

Morgan came up to Google and had a birthday breakfast with Ang, Brig, and me this morning. Her day is going to be one fun thing after another as Angela and I have planned out some really fun activities for her day, wrapped around school this afternoon.

I wrote this tribute for Morgan on the Richards family website and want to share it here:

Morgan, our sweet, happy, fun, loving girl turns six today. Morgan was our only child whose sex was a complete surprise to us at birth, and just like it felt so right to have a third girl, each of her additional new surprises just adds more and more to our family. She has always stood out as a special girl, whether it was her beautiful big brown eyes, her infectious smile, or the way she leads her friends now. I particularly love this note her kindergarten teacher sent us unsolicited: "What a blissful sense of joy she brings into our classroom. Her enthusiasm for learning and participating is contagious to her friends. Morgan has developed such a teachable heart. She listens actively and is a risk taker! Way to go Morgan!" That sums up nicely the Morgan that her teacher and classmates know, but it leaves out the parts that the kids at school don't see. Morgan is a wonderful big sister to Brig; she adores her older sisters and wants to be like them; she is a songbird who lights up our home with melodies; she is Mommy's little buddy; she loves primary and Jesus; and she loves her family. We love Morgan so much, and are grateful to have her in our family.

We love our Morgan very much!

If any of you are thinking of offering birthday wishes, can I ask a favor and have you take a minute to make a quick phone call or leave a voicemail? The kids love so much to hear your voices and hear from you that you love them and are thinking of them. It's not quite the same to refer them to a comment on the blog or to an email we received on their behalf. Thanks so much!

Seis de Mayo

I didn't write anything related to Cinco de Mayo, so I'm writing something about Seis de Mayo. Actually, it's about Cinco, just written on Seis... We had a big Mexican food BBQ at work yesterday and a mariachi band rocking the Googleplex for lunch. Good times, good food. I saw a lot of confused looking Asians though, and I heard "what's this?" a lot in the food line.

Just so you know, I'm wearing flip flops at work today. But they're 'professional' looking flip flops (leather), not the old plastic kind. Come on, this is a business and I have standards to uphold.

My buddy Jason is getting back into running after a prolonged foot injury, and it's awesome to be running with him again. I've already had a pretty good spring of running - according to my exercise log I've run 325 miles so far this year. St. George lottery results come out this week and hopefully I'll get some good news there - which means the running will start ramping up in a few weeks.

Brig's been developing a bit of an attitude lately. He'll flat out tell Ang or me "no" when we tell him to do something. It's gotten to the point that we have to say, "ok, go put yourself in timeout", and he'll start crying and walk into his room and sit on his bed. It's actually really cute - we don't make him stay in there long, just enough to get the point.

We've been helping Dan and Hailey a little bit on their housing search for this summer. It's been great to see some really good options pop up lately that they would never have known about, so we feel like we're helping them a little bit. I point this out because Dan is going to be recruited into Richards Moving Co. this summer - and I just want him to remember that we've been nice to him while he's moving endless loads of boxes and furniture between our houses.

Full Weekend

Busy weekend, but a lot of fun.

Kennan and Morgan were both in Friday and Saturday night school productions of The Sound of Music. Kennan, who played Marta, did a great job with speaking and singing parts; and Morgan was an excellent performer in the kindergarten chorus. I could tell watching both of them, whether zoomed in through the view finder on the video camera or from the back of the room with Brig, that they really loved what they were doing. We were really pleased for them to get that opportunity without Micah in the same play to steal their thunder.

Ang and I spent a few hours down in the basement on Saturday going through old boxes and things we've accumulated over the three years of living here, trying to decide what we really want to keep (and move). We erred on the side of "if we haven't opened that box since we moved last time, we pretty much can be sure we don't need it any more". So we took a load to goodwill, made a trash pile, and actually made some good progress in organizing what we are going to keep so as to be easier when the move comes.

We also took the kids to play tennis with our friends the Baughs. We mostly just hit around, and I was once again impressed with how well Kennan can hit the ball. Actually, the best part for me was riding their 11 year old son's rip stick (pictured). It's like a skate board, but instead of two wheels on each end, there's only one. You stay on it and propel yourself by weaving back and forth, similar to what you would see a surfer do. It took me a couple minutes, but before too long I had it down and was zooming around the outskirts of the tennis courts. Man was it fun! I want to get one for myself ... err, the kids.

After a lot of activities on Saturday, the kids were really worn down in the late afternoon and we needed to get them a rest before their play that night. They didn't really want to sleep, so in fun I said, "if you don't sleep, you won't be able to be Marta tonight, and I'll have to go do it for you." Kennan in a voice full of derision said, "Dad, you're not a good enough singer." and then Morgan piped in and said, "yeah, it's true." So there you go...I guess if you don't sound like Hannah Montana, you're not a good singer.

I watched the BYU rugby team play in the national semi-finals and finals over the weekend. They looked great on Friday against Colorado, but they got the big beat down by Cal on Saturday. It was still fun to hang with some old buddies, see some rugby, and get the opportunity to tell some obnoxious BYU fans to pipe down and stop embarrassing the rest of us. You know it was bad if you hear a Cal dad turn to his son and say quietly, "son, you can learn from this that just because you're losing, you shouldn't blame things on the ref, be rude, and act like that." I told him I agreed, and then at the next outburst I walked over and told the man (mid 50s probably) to shut up. Love the school, just not all the people... (Cue Matt D and Sam with their anti-Cougar venom...)

We also had a lot of friends in and out of our house this weekend. Micah has formed a really fun friendship with a relatively new girl in our ward, who also likes playing with the other kids (dream come true for them). We also met a neat new couple who came over to see our house, and who will likely end up living there when we move out. And we had a new family over for dinner last night that turned out to be really cool and we had a great time. We're blessed with many great friends and acquaintances out here that make our lives much better.

Now I better get to work...

Morgan's Crutches

Morgan was playing over at a friend's house this morning and they had a pair of kids' crutches there from an old injury. Morgan asked the mom if she could borrow them, and the nice mom said sure. So when Angela picks them up she brings out the crutches and insists on using them at school this afternoon. Angela says no, but Morgan persists. Ang asks her why she wants to use them and she replied something along the lines of I want to get really good on them in case I ever have to use them. You can't really argue with that logic. So Angela decides it won't hurt to let Morgan walk to her class with them, but that she'd then have to give them up. You can imagine the reception Morgan got at school, and Angela was barraged with concerned mothers inquiring as to how poor Morgan was doing... Of course Angela had to explain that she was just practicing, and then Morgan got pretty upset that mom "told her secret". So there you go.

So the moral of that story: if you ever want to get a lot of attention, show up for school/work/church on crutches.