Gabby and Seth

The only theme of this particular blog post is "cute kids".  Gabby's personality has developed so much lately and she is just so cute that I wanted to share a few pictures.  And Mr. Seth is about the most happy-go-lucky human I have ever known.

First, here are several pictures I took of Seth last week as he was looking very spiffy.

Father/Son Lego Night

A couple of weeks ago, Big Stephen and Little Stephen got to spend a couple of hours one evening playing with legos together.  Little Stephen insisted that our creations be put on the family blog.  (Maybe in his mind it's a little "equal time" for the article about the girls' new bikes.)  

 Last week I made an interesting observation about the difference between boys and girls when it comes to playing with legos.  When Stephen (the little OR the big one) plays with legos, its always about spaceships, cool bases, good guys/bad guys, police chases, guns, jails, etc.  When the girls play legos, their playing is remarkably different.  For instance, last week they informed me that the lego men were putting on a garage sale!

I'm A Boxer!

A number of months ago little Stephen started something new.  One day he was getting undressed in the bathroom to take a bath.  When he got his shirt off but still had his shorts on, the thought suddenly occurred to him that he looked like a boxer.  He ran out of the bathroom and began yelling, "Look at me...I'm a boxer."  When I saw him, I called him to come over and box with me.  After that it became a favorite game to play whenever he took off his shirt.  

A few months ago, I was sitting in the living room when Gabby suddenly came tearing out of the bathroom wearing only her diaper.  She ran as fast as her little toddler feet would carry her.  She stopped at the first person in her path (I don't remember who it was now), balled up her little fist and decked them!  Then she ran as fast as she could back into the bathroom with me saying "Gabby, no-no, don't hit...go take your bath."  Over the next several weeks she did the same thing several times.  Sometimes she wouldn't be satisfied with just one hit but wanted to throw several combination punches, perhaps on several different people.  Finally one day I grabbed her mid-punch and said, "Gabby, don't hit!"  Then she looked up with a confused look on her face and said, "But I'm a boxer."

Birthday Bikes!

Candace, Deborah, and Emma are each the proud new owner of a beautiful bicycle.  Candace and Emma got their bicycles for their birthdays last month, so we decided to go ahead and get Deborah one too (for her birthday this coming September). 

Welcome To Our Family Blog!

Well, we've finally decided to do it!  Here's our family blog.  The older girls and I spent some time for family night discussing, deciding, and designing it.  Just so you can know where we are going with this, here is our plan...

Since we have lots of great pictures from the last couple of years that we haven't really shared yet, we will do some "backwards blogging".  And since we don't want to just be living in the past, we will do some "forward blogging" too.  Of course, eventually we will run out of past events to write about, but it will probably take awhile.  Each time we post an article, we will indicate if it is going backwards or not.  We want to do the past events because we have so many great pictures that we want to share.

For now, we are making this an "invitation only" blog.  That may change later, but it may not.

Also, I plan to write some of the articles, but let Candace, Deborah, and Emma write some too.  Hopefully someday in the not-too-distant future they will be able to keep the blog updated and I won't have to do it.

For an opening post, we decided to share a few pictures from our most current family event, the remodeling of the church.  Here's a few pictures of each of the kids helping out on the job.

I had safety goggles and hammers at church the day before we started the job for those who wanted to have a picture taken in front of the soon-to-be-destroyed wall.