GOAL!

Here's a video of Elizabeth's first goal. As you can see, Daddy was very proud. I walked up just in time to see it, also.

I suppose she should have passed it to one of her teammates but they don't really enforce that rule this year and Elizabeth took advantage! :) It's fun to see her really getting into the games this year and running hard.

First Haircut and Other Stuff

Joe had been wanting to cut Nate's hair for quite awhile now. I kept telling him that he had to at least wait until he was 1. So that is what he did. The evening of his 1st birthday while I was at cub scouts (one of my church assignments now...lucky me :) I came home to find my little baby with a buzz cut! Oh I was so sad. Of course he didn't intend to cut it that short but one thing led to another and that's what happened. Joe was hiding out in the girls' room when I got home trying to get Natalie to stick up for him. She wouldn't :).

The before and after pictures he took are perfect....

Before:

After:

(I also love how Nate's shirt is pulled down around his belly. That's such a dad thing to do.)

Of course it's just hair and I've (almost) gotten over it. He really did need a cut. I think Joe learned a valuable lesson, too. :)

Before anyone gets too upset at Joe, here are some beautiful flowers he sent me this week:
No they weren't make-up flowers; they were sent before the hair cut. I loved getting them. One thing I love about Joe is that when he gives flowers, he gives them usually on regular days. It's so much more fun that way. Anyway, it brightened up what was a tough week for me.

The kids got balloons from the local grocery store the other day. Later on, they ran in from their room and told me they wanted to give their balloons to Heavenly Father. So that's what they did....

As they were flying away, Natalie yelled, "Bye bye! See you when I die!" :)

Ever since we got back from Utah, Natalie has had a hard time being in a room by herself. I guess she got used to the close quarters. So, lately during quiet time she has been sneaking out and falling asleep in the hallway. She will sometimes try to do it at night, too, but she's usually OK with Lizzie in there.

In the doorway to the bathroom:

I don't mind this arrangement actually because when she sneaks out she pretends to be asleep so I won't make her go back in her room. Then, she is usually out for real within minutes. If she stays in her room reading books, she doesn't always nap. Plus, my kids are such deep sleepers that she doesn't wake up, even though she's in the middle of everything.

If Nate wakes up before her, though, he loves to crawl over and bug her. He thinks it's so funny.

Here's another random sleeping picture that I took a few months ago and forgot to post:
That's Elizabeth, asleep with her head hanging off the chair. Luckily, she never fell off.

I looked into Nate's room the other day and saw this:

Reading buddies.

And for the final quiet time snapshot, here's how I found Elizabeth one day:

I thought that was a cool little reading spot she made for herself.

I took pictures of the kids the other day before church. I was happy to find that the girls' Christmas dresses still fit...

"Mom---he's slipping!"

Nate is 1

My baby turned 1. I can't believe it! This year really flew by. I still think he should be this size sometimes:

Don't get me wrong. I love him just how he is right now, too:

He is my boy. He has been SO different than the girls were in a lot of ways.

For one thing he is messy. He makes a bigger mess just with a sippy cup of milk than any other baby I've ever seen. He just spits and dribbles it out like crazy. I took a picture one day:

How did he get it on his forehead? I have no idea.

When he's eating something he likes, he just shovels it in. One day he was cramming about as much beans and rice as he possibly could into his mouth. He made himself gag and threw up onto his tray. He was about to pick it up shovel it right back in when I stopped him. Yuck.

He can also be quite violent. He is still a big hair-puller/scratcher/biter. Luckily the biting hasn't been as bad lately. I've been punishing him for these things but he's always yanking on Elizabeth's hair in the car when she's reaching down to buckle her seat belt. I can't do much about that. That's one of the downfalls of close quarters in the car I guess.

With all of this, it's quite a miracle that his sisters are still completely smitten with him. It probably has to do with his smiley and lovable side. I keep waiting for them to be annoyed with him but it just hasn't happened yet. They are such good sisters, for one thing. I don't give them enough credit for that. And, he is one happy, adorable little boy. We are so glad he came to our family.

He is still not walking and not really all that close either. He can stand well but he doesn't think he can. I still think he will walk before the girls (15/16 months) but we shall see. His only words so far are "mama" and "dada" and even those don't always refer to us. This age is so fun because it feels like they are learning something new every day. The other day I saw him rolling his little car along the ground just like a big boy.

He loves cars and balls. He loves his green blankie. I love when he snuggles on me. He still does his shy look sometimes, although it's much less often. I'm going to be really sad when he doesn't do that anymore.

Anyway, we had a couple of birthday celebrations. We went to my parents' for Labor Day and celebrated the late August/September birthdays.

Here they are:
(Abby, Grandpa, Nate)

This one turned out great:

Monday night, we had our own little family party. First we had dinner. I included two things I know he loves in the meal: watermelon and rice.

Enjoying his watermelon

Then it was cake time!

He wasn't sure what to think about us singing to him:

He smashed it up before he even took a bite

Finally tasting it

Yummy...

Natalie made quite a mess herself...

That will an excellent blackmail picture when she's a teenager.

Then it was present time.

He got a fire truck

And....a gigantic basketball hoop!

It was quite a bit bigger than I realized when I bought it so it's mostly an investment into the future kind of present. He can't play with it now (oops). He did love when Daddy helped him dunk, though, and he loves just playing with the ball...

The girls love it, too

Coming up next: Before and after pictures of the haircut his daddy gave him while I was out Tuesday night...

Family Pictures

I forgot that I had planned on uploading the family pictures we had taken before the big group pictures. The ones of the kids turned out really cute:

Come on---these are some cute kids... :)
Beautiful Natalie

I'm not in love with how ours turned out but they are still definitely nice to have...




I wish that we would have tried a different family position and that the kids could have smiled better but I guess there's nothing you can really do about that. We were already bribing them with ice cream. What more could we do? Nate especially doesn't look too thrilled about the experience.

My Kindergartener

My oldest daughter started school this week. I am still trying to assess my feelings about all of this. I've had a pretty hard time with it all. I know it's weird, but I wasn't looking forward to this. Well, I was for Elizabeth's sake. I knew she would love it. But I was dreading it. I don't know what my problem is. I guess I have a hard time letting go. Just thinking about her starting had me in tears a few times. The night before she started she told me she was excited and nervous. I said I was too. She asked me why I was nervous and I told her I wasn't sure what I was going to do without my big helper around all the time. Then she gave me a wonderfully tight hug. That got the tears flowing. I love that girl.

Anyway, with all of that as a backdrop, you'll probably be surprised to hear that I didn't cry at all when I actually dropped her off. I surprised myself. I think it was mostly because I saw how excited she was to jump right in. It wasn't sad at all. She had a great first day and has said the same thing every day since then.

My week, on the other hand, has been difficult. I think I was not only mourning the loss of having my daughter around all the time, but also the loss of my freedom that comes with entering this school-age period of motherhood. Now I'm at the mercy of the school schedule. And the afternoon kindergarten schedule, no less, which I'm learning isn't so fun. She goes from 10:40 to 2. It probably won't be so bad when Nate is down to one nap but right now he naps in the morning right until we leave and then I have to keep him up until after we pick her up. Natalie and Nate eat lunch at the normal time while she is gone but Elizabeth eats when she gets home from school. I feel like I'm feeding kids all day long. I haven't established any kind of quiet time yet since I've wanted to let them play together after school but I think I will have to start that again soon, if only for my own sanity. I just haven't had my regular time to get anything done so life has been chaotic. You think you'll have more time to get things done when they go to school but it has just been opposite so far. OK, I'm done whining now. I'm sure we'll figure things out soon and get a system that works better. And then something will happen and it will change again :). Such is life, I guess....

Although I'm sad that she doesn't get the time with us that she used to, I'm happy about the things she is learning and the new friendships she is developing. She seems like she has matured a lot already.

I did enjoy a (relatively) calm trip to Walmart the other day, too, with 2 kids instead of 3. It does make a difference and seems so much more manageable.

Here's another picture, with Natalie this time:
(pretending her shades were reading glasses)

Here's a cute video I took not long ago of the big girl demonstrating her elephant noise...

Joe's Trip to Ghana

I wrote this post and Joe filled in some of the details later:

Joe loved his time in Ghana this summer. Ghana is of course very different from Tanzania, the only other place in Africa he's visited, and I think he enjoyed seeing a part of West Africa.

Ghana is one of the most stable and thriving countries in Africa, due, in part, to the fact that it was the first to achieve independence (in 1957) and Joe noticed a difference. Although, there were some things he didn't like as well as Tanzania (the food, for one :).

The room he stayed in was quite nice, in an executive hostel on the university campus (GIMPA- the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration) where he took his class. He took a law class there (Multinational Corporations), through Fordham University. Fordham arranged the study abroad, with law students from two Ghanaian universities, and American students from around the US.

He had class during the week, and on weekends he traveled to the Buduburam refugee camp to help out at an orphanage run by Africa Heartwood Project.

One cool thing about his visit was that it happened to coincide with World Cup soccer. Here is how the lobby of the hostel was decorated for the occasion.

This is later while watching one of the Ghana matches.

GOAL!

Joe was also at the refugee camp for one of the matches and he said it reminded him of the movie Cool Runnings--groups of people were surrounding every available TV watching the games. (sadly, no photos of that...) We were glad Ghana did so well in the tournament.

He got to visit the Supreme Court of Ghana with the other visiting law students.

Here he is right next to Chief Justice: Her Ladyship, Georgina Theodora Wood (as she is called).

One of the highlights of his trip was visiting the Accra Ghana temple. He said it was the most beautiful temple he has ever been inside. He loved all of the color inside the temple.

He also loved attending church in Ghana. These siblings are some of the first members of the church in all of west Africa. James Ewudzie, in the purple pants and tie, was the fourth person baptized in Ghana and a counselor in the first branch presidency.

He loved the local wildlife as well:

A vulture

A centipede (he said this was about as long as his foot)

These hawks were just enjoying their meal right around people, and the locals didn't seem to notice them. I guess they're like what pigeons are to us...

These are termite mounds...right next to the student dorms...

Crazy, huh? He also saw a live cobra right along the street where he walked to get to the bus station. And there was a scorpion in his room one night.

Here are some cool people sights:

A woman balancing a platter full of mangoes on her head:

If you think that is cool, then check out this woman balancing an entire bra store on her head!

Hahaha - I love that one.

Joe thought this was just cute so he took a picture. This little girl is bending over to tie her teddy bear onto her back, just like the women tie their babies to them.

He also got to visit Cape Coast, including the slave castle, one weekend while he was there. This is James Ewudzie again, and he gave Joe an awesome church history tour.

This spot is actually the site where the very first baptisms into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints took place in Ghana.

Looking out at the ocean from the Cape Coast slave castle (one of many slave castles in Ghana; Ghana was a major slave trading region)

This is one area where slaves where kept in the castle before their deadly journey on the Middle Passage.

Joe said this was a truly sobering tour. The tour guide said there was about 3 feet of human feces on these floors, with people packed right next to each other. Too many awful things to adequately express in a few sentences... Sadly, and ironically, the Christian chapel was located right above this room.

A plaque at the castle:

He enjoyed the local art and picked him some souvenirs for us.He didn't buy these, but the artist wanted him to take pictures of some of his work. The artist's name is James, and he is teaching some of the orphan children to paint.

This painting of Joesph Smith happened to be one of the paintings he'd made:

I thought that was pretty cool.

I think the highlight of his trip was definitely working with the children at the orphanage. To learn more about what he did while he was there, you can go to the AHP site here and see another slide show of pictures.

From Left to Right: Princess, Watta, Bintu, Joe, and Jefferline (the little girl in the red is a neighbor girl).

Bintu is the youngest of the orphan children: Age 7. (and the cute neighbor)
This cute little boy also isn't an orphan.
His name is Gordon (after Gordon B. Hinckley), and he's the son of the one of the volunteers who helps run the place.

Joe with the orphanage staff: (Left to Right: Rufus, Rancy, and Jonathan.)

A classroom in the building with many of the eager students!
The children attend classes at various schools on the refugee camp, but AHP is beginning a vocational training center (VTC) to help them learn basic skills to help support themselves. Joe's job while there was to train the staff and teachers on how the VTC will run.

Victor (right next to Joe), is one of the orphans, and he is training to be an artist. He is 18, and he got a job painting numbers on some Nigerian jerseys right before their first World Cup game.

On Joe's last night at the camp they had a sort of going away celebration. Here, Rebecca, the matron at the orphan home, is presenting Joe with a bracelet so he will always remember them.

At the end of the celebration, the children all sang and clapped as they all hugged and said their final goodbyes. (Pictured: Joe, Glicia, Ranecia, and Eric)

Where's Waldo?

It was hard to be apart for so long while he was gone, but this was a great opportunity I'm glad he was able to have. When our kids are older we're hoping to be able to all go together to meet some of the wonderful friends Joe has made.