11 Years and Senile

Yesterday was our 11th anniversary!!! Grace was kind enough to remind me of that fact this afternoon. Fortunately both Christian and I had completely forgotten, so we can just laugh about it instead of just one of us feeling guilty. Christian's been feeling like crud for the last two weeks with some virus probably (of course I'm ready to send him in for MRI's and blood tests, etc. :) ) and I was pretty busy getting things ready for our Cultural Diversity night for our church's missions weekend and trying not to stress about the things I still need to do to get ready for our upcoming family trip to Zion.... My heart rate's up just thinking about it all now! Anyway, the dinner went really well, we had 92 people show up to hear from 4 missionary families and lots of food left over. Today were the men's breakfast and ladies' tea and tomorrow's a full day as well! Monday we'll actually get to celebrate our anniversary, if we can get the whole childcare thing taken care of. The plan is to hit Oak Creek Canyon again, though earlier in the day, for some blackberry picking. Which is MUCH funner without kids complaining about all the thorns, etc. :)

Oak Creek and Rapunzel

 Elijah with Faith and Gary. Happy birthday, Faith! :)

 Marmie and Judah

 Food and soda- the best part of a picnic, in the kids' opinions... :)

 Andy was banished to the toddler table :)

 Buddies and cousins- the way it should be :)

 Once we crossed the super-slippery rocks, we enjoyed a perfect shallow spot for the little ones.

 Kale'a, world's cutest 7 month old

When we got home Christian and the kids harvested our garlic. I was having too much fun braiding to stop and make several smaller braids instead of one ginormous one.  :)

Family Party

We had the twins' birthday party last night, with "just" family. It was so much fun all being together again for the first time in a couple years. Almost as good as Thanksgiving! Except we had french toast for dinner and not turkey. :)

 I love that our family loves to hang out together!

 Elijah made the girls red, felt swords- definitely from the heart of a 4 1/2 year old boy. 

 Anne made them a card as well as a paper cornucopia filled with paper hearts she had cut out. Wow, the inborn difference in genders is amazing.

 Peter made them bracelets made with buttons

 

 I amazingly refrained from singing the Toy Packaging song by Sara Groves.

 

 Berea sports the new origami headband from Auntie Grace.

 Gary and Faith decided to buy the biggest thing they could, just because they love us so much (hahaha). :) It's a big hit with all the kids and buys me some time at least. :) 

The funniest moment of the evening was when Tirzah dropped her shorts/panties and sat on the 3 1/2 inch wide potty belonging to her new dolly and was fully preparing to let loose! Fortunately we caught her in time and took her to the big potty! Funny girls. :)

Two twos!

As opposed to tutus... we now have two two-year olds! They are very outspoken, given their limited vocabulary. "No like it, K?" (spoken very firmly) The next year should be interesting. :) Here's a couple comparison pictures for ya...looks like they've finally started growing into their eyes. :)

 At four months old

Two years old!

Saturday

 Almost 2! The twins have potty-trained themselves, even naps and nights- crazy girls! Fine with me, of course. :)

 Anne, pretending that sweeping is SUCH hard work... :)

 We got to watch Kale'a while Laura and Caleb picked up my parents from the airport. Cutey even with a runny nose.  :)

 The girls like to draw. We've had to hide our printer paper.

 Peter spent his hard-earned money from taking care of our neighbor's dog to buy two guns- one for himself and one for Elijah. So now they can vent on the cleaning lists... Pretty sure Peter's not going into any cleaning service when he grows up... ;)

 Our peach tree survived the winter just fine, only to be killed by our Spring. Sigh. What might have been.

 The almond is doing fine now, we'll see what Winter/Spring do to it!

 The chickens are so ugly now, but really fun to watch. They seem to think of me as their mother hen and follow me like puppies any time I'm around. Better than pecking me. I've never really like chickens, especially roosters, and part of me just wants to butcher them and be done with them, but Christian says that would be silly since they're supposed to be starting to lay eggs in the next month or so. Oh well. In the meantime we're trying to train them to actually roost at night on their roosts and not in the nest boxes! Training chickens is tedious. But last night two of them got it right! There's hope! :)

 Itty baby green beans!

 Cabbage! Yum!

 Bell peppers

We're so happy to have my parents back and can't get enough time with them! One of these days we'll remember to pull out the camera while they're around. :) Have a great day!!!