Max's 4th birthday!

Oh this boy! So much personality in one little 4 year old body! This little boy who has perfected his scowl, is also the same one who frequently calls me from the other room "Oh beautiful!" or when Chad arrives home from work proudly announces, "And look dad- beautiful is here too!". He also refers to me as "Princess Lea", "Hot face" and even tells me regularly that he wants to marry me and that he can because he is now eight years old. Max currently loves all things Star Wars, legos, Thomas the train is still a contender, and loves acting like an adult. I regularly see him whip a domino out of his pocket which is his "cell phone". He's been known to whip out his "wallet" at the store (after announcing that he had money to buy a toy & I questioned him on it). And he loves insisting on having his turn at taking pictures. It was no surprise that he asked for a camera for his birthday. What a guy!

Per his request, we roasted hot dogs for his birthday dinner (I love it when my kids request easy meals! (We had donuts for breakfast...wasn't our healthiest day). His cousins joined us for that and for cake and ice cream. Happy birthday Max!




And a few pics taken by Max with his new camera.

Spring General Conference pictures

General conference is a semiannual worldwide gathering of members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints were we receive guidance, instruction and encouragement from our church leaders about how we can better live a Christ centered life.
Hopefully we're growing spiritually every conference individually and as a family. Sometimes that's hard to chart. But I can note our families' physical growth and that is part of my intent with these "general conference pictures".

Yes, Liam has a snaggle tooth. His two front teeth have been loose and hanging down for weeks. We've used many bribes to try to entice him to work on it, but his comfort level won out. I'm happy to report that his snaggle tooth came out two days after these family pictures.




All of the talks at this spring general conference were so inspiring and I'm excited to review them all!  Here's just a brief list off the top of my head of some of my personal favorites-
"He Asks Us to Be His Hands"- Cheryl A. Esplin
"What Shall We Do?"-Neill F. Marriott
"I Was a Stranger" -Linda K. Burton
"Trust in That Spirit Which Leadeth to Do Good"- Henry B. Eyring
"That I Might Draw All Men unto Me"- Dale G. Renlund
"Always Retain a Remission of Your Sins"- David A. Bednar
"Refuge from the Storm"- Patrick Kearon
& I loved these 2 videos-
"When We Were Strangers"
"I Was a Stranger: Love One Another"

Easter 2016

Spring break 2016- USS Alabama

Lately Max has taken an interest in photography and begs to use my camera. So I let him try his hand at it.

You can tell he's angry that Liam got a turn with the camera here.

And then he ran off in protest (see the little blue and yellow dot). But we resolved the issue by letting him use the camera on my phone.












Submarine

Spring Break 2016- Navarre Beach

The original plan included some of my family coming to stay with us, but they broke down in Louisiana and had to re-route to Missouri to take care of car problems. We had a condo that would accommodate 12 and there were only 5 of us, so we called our friends to see if they wanted to join us. Thank goodness they are fun and spontaneous & came on short notice!


















The Navarre Beach Pier


This pic makes me laugh. Their family is so happy and smiling and everyone's hair is in place...and then there's us.













Our friends left a day and a half before us and Florida rained mourning their loss. We had to drown away our sorrows in food (Flounders in Pensacola...yum!) and shopping. Sigh. haha