Very Cute Pictures; Playing with my camera, Making Fairy Shacks

There, that title is my tribute to my brother-in-law, Bill. When my in-laws were on their mission, he decided that we should make the family emails more interesting by making each subject line into a haiku. I think I did it right.

Well, here are some pics for you. Apparently, some child was messing with my camera so there are some slightly strange-looking (Pete's is a bit creepy) pictures of my 3 older kids, and then some cute ones of the baby, and my sister Caitlin and her friend Katelyn making fairy shacks (they call them fairy houses, but I needed one less syllable for my haiku).

This one is a bit to reminicent of the movie The Grudge. Not a good thing.

Not much better....

This one's better, but still looks like it was taken from someone's dream or something.

"You must have been a beautiful baby...."

First day of First Grade!!!

The owners of FairyLand Construction Co. with their most recent project.

Baby Bath Time with Mom and Dad doting and cooing.

My taking-care-of-my-body blog

Okay, I've made another blog specifically to make a journal of my journey to health. If you want to check it out, click on this link to reachingstride.blogspot.com

so funny

Okay, check out this mock blog called seriouslysoblessed.blogspot.com It's just funny.

Recently

As a favor to my friend Tricia, I am posting some pictures of recent happenings in our family: my new highlights, Peter and Andrea at swimming lessons, Sam baby powdering the chair, Claire getting bigger and smiling. Enjoy!

Fair and Not Fair

Today is the start of the 3 day event of the Madison County Fair. I'm totally bummed because I decided to enter my awesome strawberry-raspberry jam, but they did all the entering last night. I don't know why I thought they would do all that this morning. I'm so sad. My jam is really pretty and tastes so awesome! Rats. Oh well, now I know they do all their entering on the Wednesday before the fair. So unfair.
The kids are really excited though; they've been waiting for the fair for a long time. For those of you who have been to my house, you know that I live across the street from the Madison County Fairgrounds. That makes it convenient when you want to attend an event there, but kind of, well, noise-ish, but not noisy. For example, I had all my windows open this morning, and decided to finally close them because all the ambient noise consisted of "baaaaaa,......................baaaaaaa". At other times, I can hear horse whinnys and things of the like, because the parking lot for all the pickups and horsetrailers is behind my house. I really don't mind it, because then my kids can see a bunch of different animals without taking them anywhere. The circus came to town and presented at the fairgrounds, and we could see the elephants from my front window. So, I guess that's a fair trade for all the animal noises. Besides, I'll take the animal noises over road traffic anyday!
A side note: I just love my kids. While I'm on the subject of fair and not, it probably isn't "fair" that I have been so blessed. My kids are all healthy, good kids, and they are so loving. Then again, since we are the ones that feed, love, care for, teach, look after them, etc., then I guess it is only "fair" that Tom and I should be the ones to get the most enjoyment from being with them. :)

Blessed Baby

How very fortunate I am to have such a loving family. Andrew, Caitlin, Miriam and Molly all came to Rexburg when we had our sweet baby blessed. DC and Anjelica were supposed to come also, but a wrench was thrown in the works so they weren't able to make it. Only one of Tom's siblings could come, Danny, and his famly also. Of course, my wonderful in-laws were there, as well as some very good friends. I know, we are so blessed to have so many great people in our lives who love us very much. Here are some pics from the weekend together.

Accident Prone

Poor Andrea. She is 2 years older than Sam, but she is a wisp. She's got great core strength for her size, but she's still very wispy. Sam weighs only a half pound less than she does. This may explain why Sam can walk up to her to hug her, then decide he wants to wrestle instead and down she goes--nothing she can do about it. It also becomes a problem when she happens to trip; again, nothing she can do but fall, it seems. Well there's a program for kids to have a free lunch for 2 months in the summer at the park. The kids had been wanting to go for a long time, so I finally took them a couple of weeks ago. Everything seemed to be going along fine, until we were getting ready to go. I unlocked the van so Peter and Andrea could get in, which they did, while I was saying goodbye to a friend who was about to move to Hawaii. Well, I heard a scream-cry and looked over to see my sweet "Andrina" holding her elbow and taking in a deep breath, ready for the next cry. It seemed that she had tried to get back out of the van and fell, or just plain slipped and fell after getting in and then ended up in the gutter and a little bit under the van. I figured we might have a fractured elbow or something, but when I moved her hand so I could look at it, I saw the blood. There was a big piece of concrete that had broken off of the curb and was in the gutter and it cut a slice just above the bend in her elbow. The only clean thing I had in the van to stop the blood was some dried up wipes, so that's what I used. It was just under half an inch wide, but it was deep enough to see the fat and muscle. So, she got four stitches and was very brave through the whole thing. The saddest part was when she finally looked down and saw the blood. She didn't do a total freak out, but she did look at the little puddle in her hand, and with wide eyes and tears said, "Mom, that's MY BLOOD!" I just said, "Yes, but you are alright, you're alright." She had bruises all down her shins and scraped up her knee pretty good, too.

That's not even the all of it...2 days after that, she and Peter were supposed to be cleaning up their room, right? Well, they were almost done when they decided to play with their bedroom door and Andrea got a little split on her forehead. It may have been a good idea to get one stich, but Thomas just pulled it together with medical tape. We're putting her in dance this Fall, so hopefully we will improve balance as well as strength...poor kid.