Florida

I held an alligator.  And so did Sarah.  It was fun.  

An we went to Dinosaur World and saw tons of model Dinosaurs.  And the kids were afraid of the robots.  

But they liked this trash can

And the Wooly Mammoths

Kirtland, Niagara Falls, Palmyra, and the Statue of Liberty

We toured New York after Cleveland.  We saw Niagra Falls and a butterfly conservatory, the kids were terrified of the butterflies!  And it was freezing cold.  

Sarah forgot she was scared when I have her my phone and let her take 100 pictures of everything.

And we saw one butterfly fall into a trash can.  

The sacred grove was freezing!  And the smith home was so small for a large family!  

Denny's made a pretty nice Thanksgiving Feast.  

And we walked/carried children up the stairs to the base of the Statue of Liberty.  Can't imagine the climb to the top!  

  

I don't remember but apparently there was a Panda.  

At the Liberty Bell Elsie screamed hysterically for 25 minutes while we walked around, but nobody seemed to think we were kidnapping her.   I got to see Rocky.  

Pittsburgh conference Thanksgiving 2013

Matt had a conference in Pittsburgh and the kids and I got to go along.  We had lots of fun!  We spent the day at a science center.  

And another day at an awesome children's museum!  With a tunnel made of tape.

They let Benson help repair the tunnel!

And an art studio.  

A giant lite bright and a train table with a really pushy kid that Benson ignored.  

They had a pulley's room

With parachutes and trolleys.  

And lots of Mr Rogers stuff and I learned why I love to make things soo much!  

Andrew scooter

I just found this video of Andrew learning to scoot/crawl and everyone is cheering him on.  It's pretty cute.  It was from early September, he was not quite 7 months old.  

 

Couldn't figure out how to put the video on,  but everyone was cheering him on, it was pretty cute. Here is a screen shot of it at least.  

Pumpkin patch

We went to a pumpkin patch of sorts at a nearby church.  The kids had tons of fun running through all the pumpkins and tried to pick every one of them.  They each picked a mini pumpkin and were so excited to bring them home and paint them.  Then Benson and Elsie spent Thursday playing with them and now they are nowhere to be found.  Where could they have out them that we can't find then in a two day search?  We don't have any pumpkins to show for it, but at least I got everyone to loom at the camera.  

Soccer!

Benson and Sarah play soccer together.  They are on the Portland Timbers under 6 team.  It is fun, Sarah is good and plays hard.  Benson shows us how fast he is and avoids the ball.  We have fun.  

Happy Birthday Daddy!

Happy Birthday Daddy!  And good luck on PHD Qualification exams that started on your birthday!  That cake is a cougar on a BYU text book.  The kids put all of the due on the cougar.  

Benson stitches

Benson fell in the bathroom and tore his chin open and we had to go to the ER and get two stitches.  He was a champ and stayed still with just being held (the nurses and doctor expected to have to swaddle him so that he couldn't move.  

He had fun for most of it.  And a few days layer didn't even remember the stitches were there, literally he came and told me there was something funny on his chin and asked if I would wash it off.  They gave him lots of stickers when he was done!  

Benson is 4

What a big kid!  He wanted a turtle cake

He got lots of sports stuff to play with.  Soccer and baseball.  He and Sarah both start soccer in a few weeks. He also got Legos from Grandma and Grandpa D, they are a big hit!  Sarah loves to follow the directions, but Benson is a very creative builder.  

He still loves his beard, and he loves to help mom.  He always gets forks for the table and he colors constantly.  He is working on his letters and he wants to learn to read, since Sarah can, if I could get him to sit still long enough to learn.  

He loves to pick Sarah up at the bus stop and being the big kid at home while she is gone!  

He loves bring a super hero with Andrew.  

And he likes not taking naps, but often falls asleep instead of doing his chores!  

Star flower quilt

Finished this quilt! When I started it, my senior year of high school dad predicted it would take me 10 years to finish and I said no it would be done faster than that.  Well I showed him, I finished it in 8!  Haha so I barely got it done, but it has been a busy 8 years, College, marriage, 4 kids, grad school, a move across the country and at least 10 other moves.  

Speaking of kids, they wanted to pose with the quilt.  

Harvest

We planted a garden this year and the kids love it!  It is fun to hear Benson yell to us from the garden, "great news the corn is getting bigger!" Or " Sarah, great news we have one more strawberry growing!"  He has come a long way from the toddler that use to dig up my flowers and completely shred them.  

We harvested some spinach awhile back and had some salad.  And we picked a carrot before it was ready.  Today we picked the corn.  And it was a sad little harvest.

 But the kids loved it!  They were so excited and ran around singing and yelling "We will have plenty of corn for our supper!"  

This was a real learning and practice year.  Hopefully next year we can do better.  

Update!  We grew these carrots and four strawberries and three tomatoes!  

New puppy!

We got a cute little black lab/miniature collie puppy. The kids are already adjusting after just an afternoon. We haven't quite decided on a name, but I think it will be Daisy. We finished building it a house this evening and Sarah said " dad kept telling me pets were a lot of work... And he was right!" Hopefully they will be a lot of fun too! Sarah wants july 8th to be its birthday since that is the day it joined our family, she is very concerned that it have a birthday.

Braves game

We had a ward activity at the Braves game last night. We lost to the Marlins, but had lots of fun anyways. They had fireworks after. The kids loved it.

It poured rain but our seats were high enough that they were covered, so we stayed dry except I got a drippy seat. And Andrew fell asleep during the first inning and slept through the whole game!

Matt got free tickets from Home Depot and some insurance company so he took Benson a few weeks ago, and we are all going to another game in a few weeks.