More videos. I hope to find time to write something for you too but not right now. We’ve enjoyed our holiday time with family. Here are some videos of Paul swimming and Caroline doing was she does best, eating bananas.
And sorry, apparently I always try to get her to sing “If you’re happy and you know it!”
All pictures were taken Sunday, October 7, 2012, on Paul’s fifth birthday! Thanks, Grandma and Grandpa, for joining us for General Conference and cake!
Happy birthday, my dear five-year-old boy!
Paul and his cousins got a chance to revisit Pirate’s Cove!
Paul stayed a little long after his cousins left to have a water balloon fight with some other kids. (The teenagers in charge didn’t quite know how to coordinate 30 4-6 year old kids but the kids still had fun!)
Cousin Samuel was not feeling well. He is taking a nap inside. But these climbers wanted to put on a show! And they are holding puppets as they climb!
Here are the cousins (aged 6 and younger; Daniel was at a class at this time)!
When a family has five children under the age of 5, another four between ages 4 and 6 (plus an 11 year old), the best possible place to have a family dinner is obviously the Train Restaurant!
Paul loves watching his food come out on a train.
Who knows when these four siblings will be together again?!
A great time was had by all! (Caroline slept through it in her carseat…)
Maybe this is still unintentional on Caroline’s part. But she is getting pretty consistent: I know if I put her on her tummy she probably won’t stay there! As much as I’m not looking forward to Caroline becoming mobile (I like her to stay put, thank you very much), I am so excited to watch her blossoming and developing into her own personality.
And what a personality she has! She seems to be a social bug: she loves to see a smiling face and will almost always return a happy smile. She wants to be near other people, even when they are not smiling at her. I’ve already pulled out her high chair so she can be table level when we’re eating — not down in her rocker or crib! She wants to be where the action is! She knows what she wants, be it food, a smile, or a clean diaper, and she will scream herself red in the face to make herself heard. If she simply wants a smile, she’ll stop crying as soon as someone approaches. Daddy says he will not give in to this “drama queen” behavior and I’ve overheard a lecture or two about it.
Paul usually wants to tell me what she needs as much as he can guess: “She’s still hungry” or “She has a messy diaper, Mommy.” But on occasion he’s informed me that he’s “tired of all that crying.”
Here are some pictures from our trip to Grandma’s house May 18, 2012.
Paul has one more day of preschool and then we’re off for a whirlwind weekend in Kirtland and Palmyra. And then summer officially begins, as well as my homeschooling years. I’m really looking forward to not having so much on my schedule: we’re going to take each day and each week as it comes, making fun plans to keep us interested and leaving plenty of open time on the schedule for imaginary play and running around outside.
We have decided to not send Paul to another year of preschool. There is a year before he’s officially kindergarten age, but we’ve started already. I’m really looking forward to learning and growing with him in the coming years. While I can’t say for certain we’ll home school forever, I’m planning on staying with it for the long haul. I believe that although it will be a lot of work, we are certainly going to have a lot of fun also!
Grandma Peggy and Papa Paul joined us last weekend! Then, my brother and his family and my mother and father came up on Sunday for Caroline’s blessing in church. None of these picture are very great (and I’m sad I didn’t get any pictures of my brother or his wife or Grandpa S with Caroline either!) but we were too busy enjoying each others’ company and holding that cute baby to take pictures, I suppose.
Paul was very excited to host a “party” for our Friday Fun Night with Grandma and Papa. It was full of made-up games that he enjoyed inventing for us. Here is one of them.
This picture is very out of focus but I love Paul’s ear to ear smile, so I had to include it!
(I promise, we will get real family pictures in the next few months.)
Paul saw me warming the bottle and asked, “But how are you going to get that back in to you to feed her?” So I had to let him give her her first bottle.
Reading bedtime stories with Grandma Peggy and Papa Paul.