Something funny....

Alex is in repeater mode. He repeats EVERYTHING! You can just be holding a normal conversation, and he'll pick out whatever he wants, and just start repeating whatever it is. Yes, we certainly do need to watch what we say around him!

Well, on our trip back to the midwest, we have this fabulous friend, Dori, that we feel like we've known forever! She's awesome and amazing! She does this thing with her family that is simple, and easy! We've always been told to read our scriptures every day, and as a family we do alright, but individually it can be hard to find time. So, she gave us an idea of what they do. They take a min. 2, max 10 minutes after dinner and read whatever they want that's spiritually related... books/magazines/scriptures... and after time's up, they discuss what they learn for 5 minutes total. Quick, easy, harmless.

Well, 2 nights ago, Todd announced he was leaving the table after dinner to go read scriptures, we were all welcome to join him when we were done eating... 1 hour later, James was still eating. And he really was eating too! He ate so much that night that he later complained of a stomach ache! Geesh, James, maybe it was all the food you ate!!! Then our home teachers came over.... yeah... Strike 1...

Last night we tried again after dinner, and it was awesome! James read this Bible reader with pictures to Glenn, I read a magazine with lots of pictures to Alex, and Todd read from the Book of Mormon. After 10 minutes, we went around and talked about what we learned. James and Glenn went first, Alex of course repeated everything I had said that I had learned :-), and then it was Todd's turn.

To preceed the story, Alex has been into Elmo lately! His grandparents gave him a tickle me Elmo thing for Christmas, and while he's been potty training, his favorite book to read is about Elmo.... anyway, back to the story...

Todd started out... "I read about Alma" (he's a prophet from the Book of Mormon)... Alex belts out "Bout Elmo!" He was QUITE excited that Papa had learned about Elmo! It was adorable!

That's all for today! Take care everyone, and I'll include a picture for fun, but it's nothing important! It's how we rode around as a family on our trip.

We're BACK!!

James' dream came true... he was able to go 'back in time' to do our vacation all over again. This time it was SO much better having Todd around to share in the experiences. I don't think there is a better way to glue a family together, then taking a month-long road trip. And expense wise, I think it would have been 6 of one, half-dozen of another between flying and driving. But experience wise, driving far outweighed flying. We enjoyed our time together immensely as a family on the way to and from the midwest. Just us, having fun together. And we loved our time with our family, getting to see them individually, and really spending some good time with everyone. I can't wait to do this again. Hopefully in a couple of years.


As wonderful as our vacation was, I will have to expound upon that later. I thought I'd start our blog again with things that have happened since we've got back. I felt a little overwhelmed starting from our trip.... so... baby steps :-)
The picture above is from a zucchini in our garden. It's a prime example of what happens to zucchini if you leave it for a month! A friend of mine actually came over and picked something like 6 zucchini while I was gone. She told me I was insane for planting 3 zucchini plants in my garden... I told her it was only 1 plant! Needless to say I've been making lots of zucchini cookies, and will make lots of other foods involving zucchini! Sorry Todd! So far, the kids are LOVING the zucchini cookies. Even all the neighbor kids came over on Saturday to have a whole plate full! I never mentioned there was zucchini inside :-)

One other experience I wanted to share, exemplifies the optimism that James has for life. It was on the way home from church, and I had asked the boys about what they learned in church. Glenn went on about how he'd learned about Noah's Ark. He was telling about how Heavenly Father sent the flood but warned Noah beforehand. Glenn explained how there was a flood all around the entire earth, and there was no land. He was quite excited about this part. James pointed out that if God looked down on the Earth from space, the Earth would look all blue, "Wouldn't that look cool?" Then Glenn explained how 2 of every animal went onto the ark. James said, "The fish didn't go on the ark, though." Glenn responded, "Some fish did, like alligators got on the ark." Then James said, "Sure, but whales didn't go on the ark." Now, can you envision little James picturing this in his head... "Hmm, at least the fish had a great time playing hide and seek during the flood, with all those trees and mountains under water!" To me, this just shows how James looks at life. He is my optimistic child, always excited about life, no matter what gets thrown at him. So, at least I know, that if a flood comes, he'll see the positive of learning how to scuba dive so he can play hide-and-go-seek better!

That's all for now. I'll organize our family pictures hopefully sometime soon, so we can show you a few of the best. Watching Ellie grow over the month was definitely my highlight, though! We enjoyed having her so much! And she even starting rolling over the other day... let the fun begin :-)

Take care!