Random things from January

Benny graduated from nursery at the beginning of the month. He is now the youngest child in primary. Here are all the cute kids from his primary class. I think Benny will benefit from this boy to girl ratio in the future.

Lila has become quite the busy body. One day after exploring in our bedroom she came out like this with my bra around her neck.

For Luke's birthday he got some Lego's from a friend. He loved them so much that we let him use some Christmas money to buy some more. He started building the house but then called me in to help him. I ended up taking over and getting really possessive about the whole thing. I realized at that point that I should never take over my kids projects.

I made this French bread and thought that it couldn't harm the bread to let it rise the entire time we were in church. It grew so much that the two loaves swelled to fill the whole pan. I just rolled them out again and reformed the loaves. It worked out. I am sure you are all relieved to hear the happy ending to this bread tragedy. (Note: That is Spencer's hand...not mine.)

Mom and Dad Higginson followed us up from Utah and stayed during the week of New Years. Little Spencer wanted to help Grandma write birthday cards for the year. He pushed so hard I think she got them all written for the entire year. That kid can be relentless.

This picture was taken the day of Luke' birthday party. Lila and I are both wearing our aprons that we bought from the Higginson family reunion last year. It is from the Stella Merle apron line.

While Leslie and Aaron were here visiting we made a little trip out to Jacksonville. Here they are at the Jacksonville park.

Leslie took all of these pictures of the kids. She actually took most of the pictures from this entire posting. Luke's picture was probably the funniest. This is a Mona Lisa face to me. You could spend a life time studying the details of his expression.

Spencer - also a noteworthy kid

Benny - I like him too. Can you tell that I am feeling guilty for saying so much about Luke's picture and not as much about the others?

Aaron - We would keep him if his Mom wouldn't miss him so much.

Luke and Spencer

Cute Aaron

Leslie did a good job capturing Benny on the swing. That is a difficult task.

Leslie and Aaron on the streets of Jacksonville.

The boys happily explore the shops along the main drive.

Boys on a bench

Boys with a mechanical parts man

The kids gather round Spencer for a story.

Lila likes to wear this little head wrap. When she finds it, she brings it to me to put on her head.

This is one of Leslie and my projects we completed while she was here. She brought some digital files of some pictures she took of the Salt Lake temple. She and I edited it to make it look like those neat pictures that you can buy at Deseret Book. We blew it up and put it in this picture frame I got from a local thrift store. I think it turned out pretty nice.

My aunt who passed away last fall gave each of her nieces and nephews a prism from her prism collection. I hung mine in our window. When the light hits it just right the colored light scatters all over our family room. I love it.

Aaron loved it too. Here he is trying to catch the light.

On Monday evenings we try to go over to the church to play basketball with the kids and let them run around. The next series of pictures are from that.

Here Lila waits for the ball to be passed to her.

Good buddies Aaron and Luke ham it up for the camera.

Here we are running "basketball drills".

This picture captures how the younger boys spent much of their evening at the church, in time out in their respective time out locations.

Many evenings the kids couldn't stop themselves from wrestling. On those wild evenings we sent them outside to run laps to get their energy out. They seriously ran up and down our drive way 20-30 times. The good news is that they loved it. They asked to do it again and again after the first night.

Here Luke, Aaron, and Benny hold up their pizza to make pizza beards.