Ellen vs. Sarah

I have really enjoyed watching Sarah's hair grow and grow. I know some of you will probably laugh when you see these pictures of all of Sarah's hair, because it really isn't a lot. But compared to Ellen and Calista, it is a lot. Here are some pictures of all the girls and around the same age:

Sarah 5 1/2 months. She can't roll over yet, but she's getting really good at sitting!

Ellen. She's sitting, so I think they would be around the same age, although looking at her clothes, she might be 6-9 months old.

Calista is somewhere between 9-12 months old here

Jacque. I'm not sure how old she is here, probably between 6-9 months.

More on Samuel's baptism

This is the vest and bow tie I made Samuel for his Baptism! What a handsome boy!!

Samuel and Aaron before the baptism.Aunt Erica and Uncle Trace

Eli, Marjorie and James (after the baptism)

Nathan, Leslie, Josiah, Jarom and Sadie

Dean and Dawnie. Dad had gone to see the dermatologist the day before and had his nose "whittled" on, so he had to have a bandaged nose for the baptism.

Jacque, Tia, Calista, Ellen, Sarah, and Samuel

Okay, for those of you who want to hear the story I left you hanging on, here it is. James was asked to give a talk on the Holy Ghost. When he prayed to know what to talk on, the Spirit told him to talk about Josiah. Josiah was made a king at age 8 years old. His dad and grandpa were very wicked men, and the Lord wanted to destroy the people of Judea, but since Josiah was so good, the Lord told Josiah he wouldn't destroy the people in Josiah's day. Josiah went to the temple one day and had someone read the book of commandments to him. Then he rent his garments and covenanted with the Lord that he would keep the commandments. (At this point, James rent (tore off) his white shirt! And in front of everyone there!!) Luckily for us, James had on another white shirt underneath :) (more on that later). We then learned that Josiah had all of his people come to the temple and make the same covenant! After that, the talk was on how important it was to keep our covenants that we make. It was a wonderful talk, and I don't think anyone will forget it.

I wish James would've let me know what his plans were for his talk, because I had a hard time fully concentrating on his talk for the first part. You see, he didn't look quite right. For one thing, his tie wasn't up to par. James is usually dressed very nicely, and his tie is always perfect. However, this time, his tie wasn't real snug around his neck. I figured he must've had a cold and maybe his neck had swelled up. But as I was looking at his neck, it almost looked like he had two collars on. But then how could someone put on two white shirts and not notice? I kept looking back and forth from the two collars to his tie and finally decided I was going to have to talk to Aaron later and see if he noticed something odd. Then he ripped off his first shirt. He had on his white shirt and another tie underneath. That is why the top tie wasn't tied very neatly.

Supposedly I wasn't the only one who noticed. When James walked into the Relief Society room, Leslie told Nathan to go fix James' tie. As Nathan went up to help his father look presentable, James warded him off, telling him to mind his own business. Marjorie was busy playing the piano when James walked in, so a little later she happened to look back at James, and she tried to tell him to fix his collar. (I'm guess that James must've gotten dressed into the second shirt after arriving at the church). Again, James had to tell her that he had everything under control. Mom and dad had noticed something different too. When I talked to James later, he figured that all the ladies would notice, but not the men. When I did get a chance to talk to Aaron, he said he hadn't noticed anything!

I exercised with Shelby today, and she said she also won't forget singing Christmas songs with Marjorie as the pianist. She said it was so fun to sing the Christmas songs up to speed!

Baptism

Samuel had a big weekend with a birthday party/slumber party and a baptism. I don't have many pictures of the baptism yet, but they are coming. Thank you Uncle Trace and Aunt Erica for this picture. Mom was nice enough to take time to get a bunch of pictures. I'm excited to see them all.

Saturday was a special day. You know I thought people who had kids get baptized were really old. I guess I'm really old now!

The baptism was wonderful, except we were the late ones. Everyone was there except the Kerns'. Uncle Trace did a great job conducting. I got to lead the music and Grandma Kerns played the piano. Grandma and Grandpa Baxter gave wonderful prayers. Uncle Eli gave an awesome talk on baptism. While Samuel and Aaron were changing their clothes, Grandma Kerns played Christmas songs for all of us to sing. It was so nice to sing Christmas songs up to speed! After the baptism, Grandpa Kerns gave a great talk on the Holy Ghost/keeping covenants. For those of you who weren't able to make it to the baptism, you missed a very memorable talk. I don't think anyone that was there will ever forget that talk. I will quote from the Bishopric counselor who conducted our Sacrament meeting today, "For those of you who weren't there, you need to go talk to Samuel and ask him why his Grandpa ripped off his shirt in the middle of the talk, and what it had to do with baptism!" Are you interested yet??!! After the baptism, we had refreshments. Samuel asked for brownies and snickerdoodle cookies. I was worried that I hadn't made enough, but we walked out of the door with one cookie (which never did make it home) and I think 10 small brownies! It was just a perfect day.

Thank you to all that were able to come and make it a fun day. Especially thank you to Uncle Trace and Aunt Erica and Uncle Nathan and Aunt Leslie and their family for traveling so far!! It was fun to see you and it meant a lot to Samuel!

The BIG Number 8

Saturday was our family's first birthday PARTY!! We usually just have a family birthday party, but since Samuel turned 8 years old, we wanted to do something special. His birthday was actually on Monday, the 6th, but since it was a school day, we decided to wait until Friday for the celebration. We had a normal cake and ice cream on his birthday

and then we had a Dinosaur party on Friday. Samuel wanted an alien party, but we found some neat dinosaur hats, and little toy dinosaurs to decorate the cake with, so we'll have to save aliens for another day. Here's a picture of our cake. It was a lot of fun to make. Everyone wanted a piece of the volcano. It was made of Reece's peanut butter cups and those chocolate krispies, with orange frosting as the lava:

The kids got to keep the dinosaur that was in their piece of cake.

kids and dinosaur hats


Samuel invited four friends over to play games and have cake and ice cream. Two were boys and two were girls. They were all from his church class, which made it fun because I knew all the kids. We played pin the leg on the dinosaur

"a keen eye and a steady hand" (which is a game that Aaron and Samuel made out of electrical circuits.) The goal is to take the metal hoop (the red wire with copper hoop) from one end of the arch up(metal hanger) and around to the other, without the hoop touching the arch. If it touches, then a buzzer goes off. We counted how many times the buzzer went off. Ellen actually had the least number of buzzes. It only buzzed one time. However, the bigger kids didn't think that it counted because it was one continual buzz from one end to the other!

They also played dinosaur egg toss (we used little balls as our dinosaur eggs), volleyball with a balloon, and at the end Aaron got down on the floor and played alligator! Boy did that get rowdy. Aaron finally had to stop because he lost his voice. I think the kids all had a fun time. The two boys got to spend the night too! I didn't get any pictures of the kids doing the games. I totally forgot until after they were all done. Sorry!

Silent Monks Singing Halleluia

They had to have practiced for a long time. A lady in our ward wants to do something similar for our ward Christmas party. They thought I could be the tall one. Although, the tall one does a lot of bending over. I thought this was pretty cute though!

Who is that in the mirror?

Calista really likes mirrors. She broke a hand mirror a while back, and fixed it all by herself. I happened to see it lying on the floor after she fixed it. It had cracks in the mirror, but she had taped all the pieces together. Surprisingly it still works!

Well today, she came up to me with another hand mirror. She puts it up to my face and this is our conversation:

C: Can you see yourself in there?
M: How do you know its not Tonya?
C: Because of your long nose, mouth and neck!
M: Oh, yep I guess its me!

I'm glad I was having a good self esteem day. If someone were to hear that conversation, they might think she was describing a horse!!

All I want for Christmas

I thought this was a cute video. You might need to turn up your volume to hear this because it's pretty quiet.

A little bit ago I wrote a blog bragging about Samuel. Well now it's Jacque's turn. I don't know how I got blessed with such good kids. Jacque is so sweet to everyone. If the students in Jacque's class are good for the day, they get a green sticker on their take home folder. If they get four green stars in a week, then they get to go to the prize box on Thursday. Jacque of course is a really good student, so she's always getting to go to the prize box. But most of the time she's getting something for her siblings. For the first couple of months, Ellen and Calista were really excited for Thursday to come because then they'd get to see what Jacque brought them home. She still gets things for them, but she is starting to pick things out for herself, which I think she needs to do. But I've been very impressed at how loving and giving she is.

When I ask for help in the kitchen, Jacque is one of the first to volunteer. She's also my best help with the laundry. She'd really like to help more with Sarah, but I'm a little nervous to have her walking around with Sarah. Sarah's getting heavy and still does the uncontrolled wiggles. She does help me alot with bathing Sarah and getting her dressed though.

At school, Jacque doesn't get to go to music class. They had to cut it out of the budget. But I've been impressed with her teacher. She takes it upon herself to teach music in the class. Jacque is always coming home with new songs they've learned and she quickly teaches them to her sisters. On our car rides, it is fun to hear the girls singing songs that I haven't taught them.

Jacque has a new love. Jump roping! I used to walk around the track at school (for exercise) and it would always be around a recess. I think Jacque jump ropes every recess, all recess long. Although sometimes she tells me that if she sees someone waiting for a jump rope, she'll give her to that girl.

I love my kids very much, and it is always nice to see how well they are growing up!

CAUTION. READ AT YOUR OWN RISK. MAY HAVE DISTURBING DETAILS. Okay, for you brave souls who want to go on, here's one more thing. Jacque is also very brave/tough. She will let Aaron pull her teeth. Samuel was always a little nervous, but Jacque will open up and let Aaron have a yank or two. He pulled her front tooth last night. His only mistake was doing in the same room where I was nursing Sarah. I can't stand loose teeth. The whole wiggle the tooth with your tongue thing just grosses me out. And then there's the sound as it is popped out of the mouth...oh I shudder as I write about it! Now don't say I didn't warn you. But I am very impressed with Jacque's strength. I think I was probably one who just let it dangle until it fell out. Either that, or I've turned into a bigger wimp as I've gotten older! (No comments needed on that last bit).