Harrison's Baptism

This year Harrison turned 8 and was baptized.  For the special occasion both sets of Grandparents flew out to visit.  It was great having everyone in town for a while and to celebrate our wonderful son's baptism.

Our ward does group baptisms, and as luck would have it Harrison's baptism was held in conjunction with three other children in the ward.  We are all friends, and one of them is Harrison's best buddy who lives a few houses away.   I really love our ward, and these four families are great.

The service was held at the stake center, as our ward building does not have a baptismal font.  I have never known a building to not have a font, even the tiny branch building in Sikeston where I was baptized had one. All four kids were baptized by their dads with plenty of family attending.

The confirmation was also a special process. My dad gave me great advice as a missionary that I have always remembered.  The confirmation is not the time for teaching, advising or reminding.  It is a blessing, and should be used to bless the life of the recipient.  Ever since then, I have had a different perspective on church blessings.  Here I blessed Harrison to both feel and understand the Holy Ghost in the many circumstances of his life.  In the days leading up to the baptism, I could really not think of anything else that was more important than that.

The baptism was great, and since then I have been noticing how Harrison is changing and becoming more grown up. He and I can talk about things in a more mature manner, and he has enjoyed learning some grown up things like cooking. He loves making scrambled eggs.

Paynes Visit

My parents visited us in early March, and it was great.  They came for a long weekend when it was still hanging on to winter, not yet the spring part of March.

We spent most of every day just playing and enjoying each others company.  As noted in another post, my Dad helped me finish off the kitchen table.

Here's the kids playing and enjoying their grandparents. Apparently I only took pictures of Olivia, but the other children were present and playing. Now that my Dad is retiring this summer, we hope they come again soon.

Big Bubbles

When my mom came to visit us, she did some grandma magic. Bubbles hold some sort of enchantment spell over children. Its amazing.  Kids love to blow bubbles, follow them in the wind, and pop them.  My boys love to stomp them if they fall on the grass.

Harrison: Me and Noah thought it would be fun to pretend to save the Star Wars galaxy by popping all the bubbles. Of course it was just a game. The big bubbles were more fun to pop.


She bought a variety of bubble wands, but the big attraction was definitely the massive wand.    Here, I managed to encase Olivia in a bubble, well from the camera's point of view. It reminds me of Glenda the good witch of the South traveling in a bubble.


The boys had taken some of their medium wands and used them as lightsabers to pop the bubbles (and save the galaxy).  After a little while, the neighbor kids noticed and joined in.  We soon had a very large crowd, which came back often on later days to ask us to start the huge bubbles.

Just some things...

I wanted to remember. Yesterday, after hearing Olivia cheerfully awake in her bed since 6 AM, I entered her room around 6:45. When I walked in I found her sitting in the corner of her crib with her blanket over her head like a ghost. When she heard me she scrambled to pull it off to see who had come to visit, and greeted me with a giggle and a smile. Then, she stood, in the same corner, which happens to be next to a book case. There were some books sitting on top of the book case, and she reached each arm through a different slat opening in her crib, and picked up a book, and began flipping through the pages as she pressed her face against a 3 opening. I wanted to get a photo of this hilarious little act, but I knew if I left the room she would drop the book and cry for me. So I just stood there and enjoyed the moment. She is a silly little girl. Her favorite past times lately are sitting, rocking and pushing. She loves climbing into chairs, the kids sized chair in her room in particular, but anything she can scale. Also sitting in anything she can fit into, like laundry baskets and toy boxes. We have a little wooden rocking horse which she gets up on and rocks all on her own now.

She also likes to rock in our Ikea chair, and the rocking chair in her room. She has some great push toys which she likes to toddle around with, but she also loves pushing her brothers. That's a habit we'll need to brake before nursery starts.. She's still crawling to get around, but seems to dare to take a few more steps everyday. Today I think she took about 10, and was grinning from ear to ear when she got to where she was going.

Now, to change the subject, we are not so excited about our latest house guest. When we first moved in our new place there were ants. Kind of annoying, but with one treatment they seem to be gone. Our newest "friend" is the stink bug. We started noticing them on the screens, and on our front door, sometimes making it inside. Well, the other day I came down stairs to go out the door and found at least 20 of them all around the door frame (on the INSIDE of the door...). I left, and came back, and there were hundreds on the outside of the front door. I quickly bolted in side (as quickly as you can with 3 kids and huge flying insects attacking you) to find the number in the house had at least quadrupled since we left. So I got out the vacuum and sucked them all up. Luckily it's been raining, which seems to keep them away. I found a not so helpful article which pretty much says "deal with it." Maybe it will just rain all fall....