Cavities and Prescription Toothpaste

I went to the dentist yesterday. I had a cavity. :( It's been about 16 years since my last one though. Everything went well, and I'm still happily married! ;) I can say for myself now that Mark is a very good dentist!!! He also brought home some special "anti-cavity" Rx toothpaste for me. He claims it's for him to use too. Whatever, Mr. I've never had a cavity in my life! It was my first cavity in a long time, and now I need special toothpaste? I guess that's what I get for being married to a dentist.

NCAA Tournament-Boise

It's March Madness. In past years, I haven't been too excited, nor have I kept up with the brackets, the seeds, the rankings, or anything else pertaining to college basketball. A few years ago, Mark's office had a march madness contest where you fill out a bracket of who you think will win. One year I actually won!! A t-shirt!! Woohoo!! This year, Mark and I went shopping and bought some prizes for everyone at his office. The grand prize is pretty sweet, but since it's a secret, I won't disclose it quite yet. So I think I'm starting to buy into all this March Madness stuff. It's actually pretty fun, if you like watching basketball and guessing who will win. It turned out that Utah State was lined up to play Marquette (both of Mark's Alma Mater's), and they were scheduled to play in Boise. Since we are only 4 hours from Boise, and Mark was able to acquire "hard to get tickets" through Marquette, we packed up our kids, and headed to Boise with some friends of ours. Since we were only allowed two tickets, the men went to the game, while the women and the kids headed to a children's science museum, a park, and then to Zoo Boise (the men came to the Zoo because the game was over by then). USU lost to Marquette in a really close game (they lost by one point), but overall we had a really great time. The kids loved the hotel, swimming, the museum, the Zoo, the warm weather, and the spaghetti factory. It was a fun weekend. It's good to get away sometimes!

Mark and Caleb at the hotel before the game. Notice that Mark is wearing a USU hat, and a Marquette shirt, but he was really cheering for USU!

The kids playing in the hotle closet

The babies!

FUN AT THE MUSEUM

ZOO BOISE

New Zealand--4th and final part

Our last few days in New Zealand we spent in the Hamilton area. It was fun being so close to the temple. Each night Mark and I would go for an evening walk around the temple grounds.

Here is a picture of the temple at night. I'm standing on the stairs. You can't see from this picture, but there is graffiti on the front of the temple. Most of it came off, but you can still see it a little bit. So sad.

We wanted to have one more beach/swimming/snorkeling day, but it rained the last two days we were in NZ. The day before it rained pretty hard, so we just went shopping. The last day, we decided to brave the weather and go see Raglan beach and Bridal Veil Falls anyway. These were such gorgeous places! I was bummed the weather didn't cooperate, but it was still fun.

Here is Mark walking toward the beach at Raglan.

Beautiful Raglan beach.

If you click on this picture, you will see many surfers. Raglan is known for surfing, and apparently the best surfing days are the rainy ones?! I guess rain is good for snorkeling too?! Too cold for me.

Here I am at Bridal Veil Falls. The water looked murky, but Mark's dad said it is usually very clear. It must have been the storm.

Mark and me at Bridal Veil Falls. We were both wearing our swimming suits, just in case the weather decided to clear up. It didn't. :(

We then went back to Mark's parent's home, packed up and left for Auckland. We visited the Sky Tower which was really cool. There are tower's like this all over the world. Mark and I have been to the CN tower in Toronto which is very similar.

Here is a view of Auckland from the top of the Sky Tower.

Mark and me inside the Sky Tower.

We didn't have any time to eat at the restaurant on the tower, so Mark's parent's drove us to the airport, where we bought a rugby ball for our boys, and then we went home (having 3 little boys we couldn't have left NZ without getting a rugby ball. We also got them some cute All Blacks jersey's. The All Black's are the NZ rugby team). The trip home was good. We were so excited to see our children. When we got off the plane and saw Caleb, he looked at us like we were strangers. It didn't take him too long to remember us. James and Andrew were great! It wasn't hard jumping right back into our lives!

Here we are at the LA airport.

Here are our boys, decked out in their NZ duds!! Aren't they handsome?! Right after we took the picture, James and Andrew started to "play rugby." James said, "Andrew, I'm on the All Blacks team, and you're on the All Red's team!"