Our Sunday morning/early afternoon

This year we get to go to church at 2:00 pm. I've never done that before, and, to be honest, it's not my favorite time to go to church. But it does leave a lot of time in the mornings to do things. We are still trying to get our routine worked out. Darren and I have decided to try and put Jake down for his nap at 11:30 or 12:00. So yesterday morning I wanted to put him in the bathtub and get him all ready for church before his nap. That way we could wake him up right before church and he would be ready to go. His hair was looking really long and unkempt. I decided to get out the clippers and cut his hair before I put him in the bathtub. He's not the most cooperative kid at getting his hair cut. In fact, he hates it. He had tears rolling down his face and all the hairs that fell onto his face stuck to the tears. I had Kevin take some pictures but he didn't get very close. When I was two thirds of the way done the clippers broke and I couldn't get them to stay together long enough to finish. About this time, Darren woke up from his nap ( or maybe Jake's screaming woke him up?). He tried to fix them, gave up and went to Walgreens to get some new ones. Then I held Jake while he finished the hair cut. By that time there was hair all over the bathroom , Jake and me. I put Jake in the tub while I worked on Ethan's hair. His haircut went much quicker. Just as he as getting in the tub with Jake, he noticed something in the tub that wasn't supposed to be there. Lets just say Jake had done something in the tub that would have been easier to clean up in his diaper. I quickly pulled Jake out of the tub which caused a lot of water to get all over the hair on the floor of the bathroom. We got the tub cleaned up, new water put in and kids back in the tub. Then tackled the bathroom mess. It turned out to be a not so relaxing Sunday morning/early afternoon.

Utah snapshots

We went to Utah for the Bartholomew Christmas party last weekend. ( I know, Christmas is over but this is when Ben could be home on leave from Iraq and Andy was home from his mission. We didn't know Andy was coming home a month early when we planned all this.) Anyway, here are a few snapshots from the weekend.
















Kevin and Ethan showing off the Pokemon game Andy gave them. Just as a warning, if Kevin asks any of you to play it with him, he will win. No one knows as much about Pokemon as Kevin does unless maybe Jared. (Mitchell, I'm guessing not Hawes. But maybe Jared Hawes knows just as much too. :-))



















Ben and Jenna taking a nap together. Ben woke up when I was taking this picture but he humored me and "went back to sleep" for the picture. They look cute together, don't they?
















The kids showing off the presents they got from the present game.



















I tried several times to get a good picture of Jenna because she was being really cute playing with a ribbon and crawling around in the wrapping paper. But she just woudn't hold still long enough to get a focused shot. This is the best I could do.
















Darren, Jake with his new truck and Ethan with his new dinosaur.

Rexburg Temple Open house

This morning at 7:00 am we had tickets to go to the Rexburg Temple open house. When tickets first became available they were gone within the first few days. We didn't get any at that time. But because of the high demand of interest in the open house, they opened up more time slots early in the mornings. Since we didn't have a printer at the time, Tracie helped us get some tickets. So this morning we finally saw it and it is beautiful. I was afraid Jacob would be trying to get into everything but he was actually scared to be put down. Either Darren or I had to hold him the whole time. And he's a heavy kid, especially climbing several sets of stairs. But I think it was a great experience for the kids. How many opportunities do you actually have to tour a temple? Not many. At church yesterday they said they were going to put out 30,000 more tickets so if anyone is interested go to www.lds.org to get tickets. (And actually, they didn't even take our ticket this morning. I don't think they will turn anyone away that doesn't have a ticket. A co-worker of mine went with her daughter without tickets and they got in without any trouble.) The open house runs until Jan 26 and then the dedication is Feb 3, 2008. Last week I also had an opportunity to be an usher at the open house. I stood by the baptistry door and made sure everyone went in and out the right doors to keep traffic flowing smoothly. Darren gets to be an usher later this month. We didn't take any pictures because you can't take them in the temple and we had to park at the stake center down the hill from the temple. So even to take a picture by the temple we would have had to have gone back to the stake center to get the camera and then march up the icy hill early on a cold January morning to take a picture. We'll just have to do it when it gets a little warmer.

Bringing in 2008

Happy New Year everyone! We brought in the new year with a great group of people. Here are Ethan, Tracie, Jeff, me, Jon, and Kristi and Darren is behind the camera.
















Darren really wanted to have a make out contest at midnight but no other couples wanted to participate. So here are Darren and I making out.

























































And New Years Eve also happens to be Kristi's birthday. She blew her candles out the first time but had her eyes closed. So we relit them and had her pose again so we could get a good picture.