Wii Fun

Having the Wii has been fun. Watching other people play the Wii is fun too!

Eli's 4th Birthday!

We had a lot of fun celebrating Eli's 4th birthday this year. We had a small friend party, I made a Triple Layer Strawberry Cake with Strawberry Cream Cheese frosting. Eli's favorite present was his very own fishing pole (which he got to use Saturday night). Morgan and I also took him to see Toy Story 3 in the theater. He is old enough to sit through a movie...but this one was awfully scary for him. He was very nervous about what was going to happen to the toys and at the end sat on my lap. I had to reassure him that everything was going to end well.

Update

After Beth's wedding we got a visit from Uncle Sam, Aunt Amber and cousin Kedrick, Eli and Josh LOVED playing with all of them. We've had some fun at parks and around the house.

The last picture is a picture that Eli drew. This was his first time drawing a face! I was pretty excited to have him go from just coloring, to making something specific! Yeah, Eli!

Paper Boy

Forgive me for not posting recently. I thought my blogger was having issues. It is, but I can work through it. Rather than showing me that my picture is on my post it gives me the code for it. But when I actually post the picture appears. Weird!

Anyway, Eli was on the front cover of the Ottumwa Courier July 10th 2010. He, Morgan and his Uncle Sam were out disc golfing when a newspaper man asked to come take their picture. I think it is pretty cool!

Eli's Prayers

Eli has always been very interested in praying. Lately his prayers have taken on a new dimension. We started off with very basic prayers. At meal times he would offer thanks for the food, ask it to be blessed and that was it.

So we started talking about what we should pray for each time. We'd come up with a list of 3-4 things and then Eli would say those in his prayers.
Now he's often spouting of a list, mostly of the 'bad' things that he is thankful don't happen to us.

He will often say 6 or more of these at each family prayer:
Thank you we don't smoke cigarettes.
Thank you we don't have fire in our mouths.
Thank you we don't drink alcohol.
Thank you we don't drink coffee or anything like it.
Thank you for no tornadoes.
Please keep us safe from tornadoes.
Please keep us safe from mosquitoes.
Thank you we don't smoke.
Thank you we don't be in fire.
Thank you firemans can rescue us.

(I just asked Eli what were some of the things he prayed for and he said, 'I know some of the good things. Having the `Spirit and the Holy Ghost, and Jesus and the Fireman!.")

I'm sure there are more, some things we don't understand so as he talks more clearly we will be more and more surprised.

Beth and Wade

Hello,

So I've been trying to update my website for several days now with pictures from Beth's wedding. Blogspot is not working. Arg! So instead I'm just going to tell you we went to Beth and Wade's wedding in Nauvoo last weekend and it was wonderful!

We had a great time and are so happy for them, maybe someday we'll get pictures up. :)

Barge

On our way to Nauvoo for Beth's wedding we got stopped by a barge. It was kind of fun to watch the boats go by. We let the boys get out of the van for a little so they could see them better. The funny part was watching two different trucks try to back off of the bridge. Apparently if they have to wait to cross the bridge what they needed wasn't that important.

One of the trucks was doing a terrible job so Morgan's brother got out, asked the guy if he needed help and drove the truck down for him.

We had left with plenty of time, so we weren't stressed out about missing the wedding just because of a barge.

Cousin Fun

Grandma Lasley helped Eli find 4 leaf clovers. Now Eli picks up any plant with leaves, brings it to me, and counts 4 of the leaves (even if there are 7) and tells me he's found a 4-leaf clover. Here is one of his finds.

Smiley boys!

Cousins pulled by Uncle Sam.

I love this picture of Eli, Henry, Ked and Josh.

Henry's trying to make it outside.

He made it!

Josh loves the trike at Grandma's house.

For Beth's wedding we slept in the city hall. Eli called it camping in a garage. At least it was private!

Josh and Eli

Henry in the van.

The Flood

Our camera was not broken after all. It just needed some time to recouperate. We were even able to get the pictures off of it. I feel very blessed that we didn't get more water than we did. Morgan talked to some people who got 3 FEET of water in their basements. The lawns all over the city are piled with stuff that was ruined and needs to be thrown out. We were quite blessed.




This is one of 2 places that water was spewing out. Morgan was smart and tied a belt around it which limited the water that could come out. We are going to talk to a plumber and see about getting this replaced so hopefully it doesn't happen again.


And finally two movies showing the insane amount of water running through the streets. I felt quite glad that we live in a little hill, so the water is going down and not pooling where we are.

New Camera!

Wednesday morning our basement flooded. We had 4.5 inches in some places. We had everything up on pallets so all of our stuff was fine, but it was a mess to clean up. Taking pictures of the crazy water (the streets were covered from water from curb to curb) in the basement I accidentally dropped our camera. It wasn't on, but it hasn't come back on yet either.

Since we have Beth's wedding this weekend we didn't want to wait to see if ours would work again so Morgan went and bought us a new one. If you listen carefully to the above video you can even hear sound!

As for the movie, while at YW Camp I learned the game Ninja Assassin. It is quite the game. You should picture 15 YW leaders standing around in a circle playing this. Hoo-rah!

Curled

We practiced curling our hair to get ready for Beth's wedding. Shannon and Amy are in charge of her hair and we all became guinea pigs. I'm sure the real deal is going to look Awesome!

Independence Day

We went down to Morgan's parents for the 4th of July weekend. It was great to be with family and just relax before the big wedding this coming weekend. We went to Graham's Ice Cream Shop, did fireworks, saw baby bunnies in the garden. There was also disc golf, swimming, shopping, and date night to watch Eclipse. It was a great weekend!

Josh is too cute (and messy) eating his ice cream.


Very focused.

Bunnies!

Checking out the bunnies.

Snake fireworks.

Eli is excited!

Firework boys!

Yum..snakes

Sparklers!

Shannon and Josh

Eli loved the sparklers!