JANUARY-MARCH 2026

You know it has been busy when it takes 3 months for me to post photos of what we are doing.  Sometimes it means we are just not doing much photo-worthy, but this time it is a busy several months!

We started the year hosting a friend party "White Elephant" tradition with old friends from the neighborhood.  We love these guys!

Sydney is into CATS so we got out ears and got some new cat toys to play with when she comes over.

We went on our first AVIARY outing with Bree, Elliot and Sylvan.  He is not quite into looking at birds yet, but he was a good sport!  We love the Aviary!

We had a trip to visit Austin and family in Washington this spring and enjoyed very much getting together at sporting events like this one where we watched Evan play soccer!  Yes, it was cold!

And here he is after the game!

We also enjoyed our first ever INDOOR soccer match with Brooklyn this time.  Really fun sport, very fast paced!

Sunday we broke out the new game "Cover Your Cookies" that we brought for the family.  It was a lot of fun!  We played while we waited for Austin to finish his meetings after church.

Valentines we celebrated with our family dinner group and our two local VALENTINES!

The next week we took off on our SAFARI ADVENTURE!  It started a little rocky with one day having all our flights get cancelled so we missed the first day of our safari...

...but WE MADE IT! And we had the time of our lives!

We went with our new traveling buddies, Robert and Jenny Nelson!  We were so glad that they asked to come along!  It was meant to be.  We loved sharing this together~

~the early mornings leaving at 5:30 AM were magical and the sunrise and sunsets were spectacular!

Getting to see all this wildlife in their own backyard was just a miracle!

Everywhere we went, we were seeing animals and birds!

We had the most amazing NIGHT DRIVE with a camp tour guide and he did an excellent job finding so many cool animals like this white female lioness.  She is the Queen of the Birmingham Pride.

Rhonos are rare to spot, but we got to see this one a couple times.

And the birds never stopped amazing us.  This little Kingfisher was so colorful and was EVERYWHERE!

Just like this Lilac Breasted Roller was along all the roads like our Starlings...speaking of which, their starlings were colorful and beautiful!

This is us at the end of our tour with our guides Kerry and Josh.  We sure love them and know we were meant to be with them on this adventure of a lifetime!

Scott stayed in Africa for the Zimbabew temple dedication and had a good experience there while I flew home with Nelsons and got back to work.

We love getting together with our grandkids here.  Sydney is at a fun age where bubbles delight you...well, do you ever really grow out of that?

We took their new Stroller Wagon on an outing on the River Delta...

And storytime with Sylvan is ALWAYS a good thing.  Look at his size in this picture because in the couple months since then, he had about doubled!

Carole had told her kids last fall that what she really wanted was for them to all go to the temple with her.  So, in March they made that happen.  I was lucky to get to come along.

It was a lovely spring day at the Jordan River Temple.

Scott enjoys doctoring up any grandkid photo he can...and Sylvan getting to eat big people food has been fun!

SpringBreak we took a little trip to southern Texas to use up a companion fare.  It turned out to be a great little birding area and we loved it!

We have a new traveling buddy...this is FANG from S Africa.  He has joined us on all our big birding outings and we hope he gets to go on many more.  We share them with our safari guides who gave him to us at the end of our safari with them.