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!

Legoland!!

I've been meaning to post about our family vacation, but it's taken me awhile to get around to it. So I've picked out some of my favorite pictures to share some of our fun times. Here we are at the front gate - everyone takes a picture here, don't they?

One of my favorite parts was the 3-D Bob the Builder movie. Enoch was laughing through the whole thing - he thought it was so cool! He kept reaching out his hand to grab whatever was coming out at him. Andrew, on the other hand, wasn't so sure about it. About halfway through he realized nothing was going to happen to him, and he started to enjoy it. The boys liked posing by the Lego Bob, but when a "real" Bob appeared (in costume), they wouldn't have anything to do with him!

Here they are watching the boats. I don't think they realize that they aren't actually controlling the boats...

With most of the rides we had to do the "parent-swap" thing, because Lynn was too little. So here's Victor and Andrew going for a ride in the planes. Enoch and I went next.

Here's a ride that Enoch could go on, but Andrew (much to his disappointment) was too small for. So here he is, galloping away on his noble steed. Off to the joust, Sir Enoch!

This is just to prove that yes, Lynn was with us, and she was having just as much fun as the boys! Isn't she adorable!?!

This was Enoch's least favorite ride. He is holding on to that lap-bar for dear life! This picture just cracks me up every time I see it!

The boys loved this part - it's just a huge outdoor playground with lots of tunnels, ladders, slides, and fun stuff to crawl on, over, and through. Victor's next project is to build an exact replica in our backyard. Full-scale, of course.

Part of Legoland is a tour of a miniature Lego-making factory. So the boys are watching how Legos are made and packaged. Pretty cool.

Attached to Legoland is the Sea-Life Aquarium, which I was pretty excited to go visit. But when you go in, they have you stop in this enclosed area and wait for a few minutes. Well, Andrew freaked out and screamed until they let us out. So he didn't want to go through the aquarium, and it took a lot of effort just to go through quickly. Oh well. At least they liked this part. You can put your head up in this bubble thing, and watch the fish swimming 360 degrees around you. It was pretty neat, but not built for big people, and not meant for all 3 of us at one time!

So there's the quick recap of some of the things we did. We had a good time, despite the fact that I was fighting a cold. The weather was perfect, we didn't forget anything important, and nothing happened to our car, so we call the trip a success!

What Happens When...

...your legs don't go as fast as your upper body?

...your husband picks up a new welding hobby?

...there's a blustery snowstorm in October?

Just a few pictures I thought I'd share. The fence is a work in progress - I'll post another picture when it's finished. And Andrew's nose looks even worse now - it's a big bruise and a scrape. Too bad he missed Halloween by a week - he could have been Andrew the Red Nosed Reindeer. Ha ha ha - it's always good to get a laugh at your kid's expense! :)

Costumes? Who needs 'em?

So I spent this Halloween season trying to rejoice in my kids' imaginations. I kept asking them what they wanted to be for Halloween, and the answer would change fairly frequently. So I just waited until the last minute. Here they are all dressed up:

It's completely obvious who they are, isn't it? Andrew is Indiana Jones. Clearly. He has the hat and a piece of rope as his whip. Spent hours on that costume. And Enoch? Have you guessed it yet? If not, you must not be a 5-year-old obsessed with all things Indiana Jones. Obviously he is Short Round, because he has a baseball cap on.

So this is how they went trick-or-treating. I admit, I was a little embarrassed to go out with them, so I sent Victor with them. I could imagine what all the neighbors were thinking... "What greedy children! They didn't even dress up! They just want candy! What kind of mother would allow that behavior?"

Sigh. So I rejoice that they have good imaginations, that they aren't begging for expensive store-bought costumes, and that they really AREN'T greedy - they didn't even go up the whole street, just a small part of it. Victor asked them to go longer and get some more candy, but Enoch's response was simple, and quite accurate: "No Dad, we have enough!"

The First Field Trip

Earlier in October, Enoch got to go on his first field trip to a pumpkin patch. He was REALLY excited, and Victor agreed to go as a helper. He got some good pictures of Enoch and his class having a good time.

Here they are as they arrive at the pumpkin patch.

In the big tractor tire.

The pumpkin he picked out himself.

Victor had only a small allergic reaction to all the hay - those allergy shots are really working! And Enoch is excited for his next field trip in a couple weeks!

The Best-Laid Plans...

Okay, so have I kept you in suspense long enough? I know, I know. It's terrible how lazy I am... So here's the story. We were all set to go camping that weekend. The weather looked iffy, but we had Plan A, a back-up Plan B, and even a Plan C. We were set! We were going to a place outside of Socorro, and we were going with my brother-in-law and his family, so the kids could enjoy some time with their cousins. We made sure Enoch knew NOT to ride the bus home - we were going to pick him up from school and head out. No sweat.

Well, Friday afternoon rolls around and we get a call from our relatives - they had strep throat, so they weren't going to make it. There goes Plan A. And since Plan B was staying at their house if the weather was bad, there went Plan B as well. Plan C was to camp somewhere closer to home, so we could pack up and come home if we needed to, and not feel like we had driven forever. So we decided to head out that way. About an hour before we were going to pick up Enoch, here's what we saw:

A nice thunderstorm headed just the way we were going! Figures! So after a bit of deliberation, we decided to bag the whole thing. We didn't want to disappoint the kiddos, however, so we compromised. We tried to set up our big tent in the family room, but it was just too big. We then pulled out the little tent we haven't used in a while and let the boys sleep down there. It was a good idea - the boys had fun, and I got to sleep in my own bed! Plus, when the baby woke up at night I didn't have to get out of a warm sleeping bag and get her!

The boys even made name tags for each of their cousins and aunt and uncle (who they also refer to as cousins) and had a stuffed animal proxy for each relative. It was pretty cute!

So we enjoyed an "electronics-free" evening - no TV, computer, video games or anything. The boys read books by flashlight and played until bedtime, and had fun sleeping in their sleeping bags. I was amazed at how quickly and easily they settled down. I had feared they would be up half the night, but it worked out fine.

Yeah, it was a little more work than just putting them to bed, but this is the stuff memories are made of, right? And this way, we averted all tears and tantrums! And best of all, we got to eat Smores...even if they were cooked in the microwave!

Saturday Is A Special Day...

When kids are little, every day seems to be pretty much the same. Now that Enoch has started Kindergarten, we've begun to notice a difference between Saturday and every other day. We've tried to get out and do some fun things on Saturdays to celebrate!

So a few weeks ago we went to the Nuclear Science and History Museum. It was really interesting, but after about 3 minutes, both the boys were crying and saying they wanted to go home and get out of there! I think it was mostly due to the fact that there was a hands-on exhibit that kept making a REALLY loud noise. Then, thank heavens, they found the toys! A couple hours later, I was the one wanting to get out of there, but couldn't pull the kids away! It was a lot of fun to spend time together.

Victor set up a cool marble run to help entertain the boys. Well, that's his rationale anyway. I think he was just having too much fun...

Enoch was having a blast with the gears and seeing how many he could put together. Pretty fun!

Andrew enjoyed the blocks. (So did Victor.)
There were lots of cool things to do there, and lots of neat exhibits. Thumbs up!

Then last weekend we went to the west mesa and found a short little hiking trail to go on with the kids. It was only about 1 mile round trip, which was just right for the boys. And a nice view at the top. It was an old volcano, and Enoch kept asking me if lava was going to come out while we were hiking. He even found the hole at the top where he thinks the lava comes out! Ahhh, the way a kid's mind works is funny!

Victor and the kids. We forgot our carrier for Lynn, but had the stroller in the car. We did okay until the end when we had to climb up the rocky parts. Then we left the stroller and just carried her.

Me and the kids. Looking great! :)

The view from the top.

A short, but fun hike. And this weekend's outing deserves a post of it's own. Stay tuned...