Play Together...Stay Together

Can you tell Erik is gone? That's when I blog my friends, be it three posts at a time. Since he departs every Tuesday, Mondays have become pretty treasured evenings. This week we had a spontaneous reenactment of a galactic battle with a medieval twist. Erik told the kids to go play for fifteen minutes so we could talk uninterrupted while doing dinner dishes. They came downstairs in these duds:

Erik couldn't resist using one of the light sabers to engage "jedi deklan gone batman" in an intense battle.

The damsel was in great distress.

But never fear, Sir Deklan was not going to give up.

But truth be known, his skills had nothing to do with his conquering of the enemy. The secret was the damsel/fairy princess' flower powered token containing secret charms.

When it was all over, Sir Deklan was dubbed a hero by the heroine.

The End.

Easter Is.....

Waking up to a maze of yarn that leads to your Easter basket. (Who knew that stringing yarn could cause the Easter Bunny's helpers to spew forth vulgarities?)

Eating eggs Benedict,

Color coordinating in new Easter outfits (my favorite part, by the way):

Feasting on a leg of lamb,


And coloring eggs so that mom can think of recipes that will require the use of two dozen hard boiled eggs, And most importantly, finding renewed hope in our Savior that we can each be forgiven of our sins and live as families forever!

Milestones

Sophie had a few milestones last week. In fact, a week ago today she smiled for the first time. It was memorable. I can't remember the first smiles of Sadie or Deklan....some "firsts" sort of seem gradual or uncertain. Not this one. She just finished eating. It was about 6 a.m. and I was snuggling her close, hoping we could both sleep a little bit longer. But she was bright eyed. I looked down at her and waalaaa...there it was: the biggest open mouth smile ever!


My friend describes taking pictures of your kids (especially babies) quite well. You take 64 and hope 1 or 2 will turn out. Well that's what I did the next day. It's sort of a half smile, but you can't blame her. We had just returned from the pediatrician where she had her two month check-up which included four shots. Sad! The pediatrician was a little worried because she had dropped on the growth charts. I'm not worried....if she follows the curves of my other two, her growth curve at her 4 month visit will reflect the last year of the stock market. It's that skim milk diet I'm telling you! At least she's on the charts!


Without further adieu, here is the token photo where I tried earnestly to capture her smile:


P.S. I'm learning how to use hypertext in my posts. Thanks Katie for being my first link. Baby steps to a better blog!

Blessings

We've been busy. Very busy. And there is much I could say...like how my life has been transformed with a new car (although I'm going to drive the old car to and from Sadie's school this last quarter; with 144,000 miles, what's 3,000 more?), how Deklan continues to make us laugh (like today when he reported to Sadie that it was picture day at preschool so "he got handsome"), how Sadie started soccer and finished her 3rd quarter of school, or how Erik's job is in the final stages (and won't we be glad when his weekly commute to Yuma is duh, duh, duh, duh DONE!), or how I'm returning to my roots and breaking out the sewing machine (more to come on that exciting news), or how I'm trying to rennovate my blog (based on blog etiquette....more on that later too).

But of all the activities and such that keep us busy, one was most signficant and that was the blessing of our little Sophie Brooke. It was three fun filled days with family and friends....21 people Friday night (the 27th) , 36 people Saturday night and 23 people Sunday night....filled our house....every nook and cranny. We swam at the hotel, ate at In N Out, visited, filled ourselves with delicious food (even if I do say so myself), opened gifts, built a backyard fire, cheered at Sadie's first soccer game, had a "family meeting" for old times sake, and ooohhed and ahhhed over Sophie. It was a beautiful weekend! And all I can say is, "I feel blessed!"