What an amazing girl!

Brittany and her family are in our ward, and they are such an example to us!

Andrew's Birthday!

I mentioned before I was really behind... here's proof. Back in June, Andrew turned 4. Here are a few pics of the celebration. Unfortunately, there was a flu bug going around, and Andrew and I were both sick on his birthday. Andrew was much better about it - he didn't let a little thing like throwing up keep him from enjoying his birthday! :) Thanks to Victor's herculean efforts, the day was a success!

He wanted a ladybug cake, so here's the grand result. Of course, we didn't have any of the strong food coloring paste, so it's a pink ladybug. Oh well, Andrew liked it, and that's what matters, right? I think Victor did a good job!

And of course, you have to have party games! Enoch was in charge of this - it's "pin-the-spot-on-the-ladybug."

Posing with a couple of his presents. Andrew really wanted a propellor cap and a "hoppity-ball."

And the big present: his new bike, complete with helmet and everything! Look at him go! Happy birthday!

Catching Up....

Okay, I've been REALLY delinquent in my postings. But I've finally got the pictures off the camera and am ready to catch you all up on the recent LaJeunesse happenings. We'll start with the big news first.

We've finally done it. We've inflicted torture on our oldest son. As he said to me the other day, "You're ruining me, Mom!" I guess our work as parents is finished! I didn't think I'd hear that till teenage years! But, after a year of trying to get Enoch to break the bad habit of walking on his toes, we've had to resort to drastic measures. So here he is, the proud wearer of casts on both his feet:

Isn't the red with black stripes just stylin'? How fashion-forward my son is! Luckily, it hasn't slowed him down much. He's putting on the shoe things so he can go outside and play. He climbed the rock wall on the playset without any problems....

At least he's still smiling... Actually, he's been quite the trooper about the whole thing. No tears, no tantrums... Amazing! It's a little hard for me to watch him struggle doing things that are normally so easy for him. He has to crawl up the stairs, since he's not used to all that extra weight on his legs. And when we went to the library today he had to stop and rest in a chair. Poor guy! But he's doing well, and hasn't kicked his brother yet...

Happy B-day, Lynn!

The big day finally arrived! Our little girl turned one last week, and we had a good time celebrating. We started out with pizza and soda - always a hit at our house.

Even Lynn loves pizza already - see how happy she is?

Here's the oh-so-glamorous cake. Victor is usually the cake decorator in our family - it's in his genes - but I figured Lynn is too young to care, so I took a shot at it. Lovely, huh? At least it's pink and flowery and girly...

And you can tell she enjoyed it!


All the kids after the feast. Of course, getting them all to look at the camera and look relatively normal is pretty much impossible, so I just got one of Lynn being cute!

On to the presents... I'm not sure Lynn actually opened anything, but the boys had a good time! :) Again, she's still too young to care about opening presents - she just wants what's inside. Especially if it's stuffed and can easily be dragged around the house.

Here's our beautiful little girl - happy birthday Lynn! We love you!

Easter and Legos...

So I have to relate a hilarious conversation we had last night after dinner. A little background: The boys are really into Legos right now, especially the Lego Star Wars video game. (They've already beaten Lego Indiana Jones...) If you've never seen the Lego video games, anything that is hit or killed just breaks into little Lego pieces. If it's your character, you just reappear whole again shortly after being hit. Nice and kid-friendly.

Well, last night while I was doing the dishes and Andrew was (slowly) finishing his dinner, he said out of the blue, "Lego people are resurrected." It took a minute for that to register in my brain, and Victor and I chuckled - at least our talks about the real meaning of Easter were kind of sinking in! But trying to create a "teaching moment", we told him that real people will be resurrected, too, but it won't happen right away, like it does in a Lego game. It will take a long time until we are resurrected. Then Enoch, with his 5-year-old wisdom, said, "Yeah, it took Jesus 3 whole days!" Needless to say, we have a lot of teaching to go, but we had a good laugh about that one!

"Spring" Break?

So Enoch is out of school for Spring Break. And this is how it looks this morning:

Kind of a misnomer, huh? Spring Break... makes you want to put on some shorts, have a picnic in the park, go fly a kite... I guess we'll have to settle for playing in the snow!

Christmas

So, it's probably about time to post some Christmas pictures, huh? Enjoy... We spent a week in Tucson with my family and had a wonderful time.

Here are the boys and their cousin Sydney supposedly going to sleep on the couch. Didn't work so well, but they had a good time!

Wrestling with Uncle Mike and cousins.

My family has a tradition where we line up youngest to oldest in the hallway, and then head into the family room to see what Santa brought. Now it's our kids lining up instead of us, so here are my kids and some of their cousins. We missed the rest of you!

The LaJeunesse stockings laid out nicely on the couch. With 30 people there Christmas morning, we all just took what space we could find! And yes, I know Lynn has a ghetto, non-matching stocking. That's because every year I say I'm going to make the family stockings. Hmmm, maybe next year...

Enoch and Andrew enjoying their stockings.

Onto the presents.

And then on to playing with the presents. They found a corner to enjoy their Lite Brite.

And this is how Victor and Lynn spent the afternoon. Too cute! I love this picture!