Short & Sweet

I'm thinking of keeping the Christmas letter short & sweet this year. Something along the lines of...
Sweet Highlights from our Year…Sold our townhouse & bought a new(not to scale)
Babydue in 4 months!
D (8) was baptized. Miss H (5) loves Kindergarten. Our lil'Stinker (3) keeps us smiling! Hope you’ve had many sweet moments as well. We wish you joy as we remember the birth & life of our Savior.

(Sooo... just in case the month gets away from me b/f making & mailing them, now you know what it WOULD have looked like. And we DO hope you have a Merry Christmas!)

Big 3 year old!

3 Things we Love about this cute little man...
1-He's so affectionate. He's always willing to give a hug or a kiss.

2-He's very articulate. All our kids are verbal, but he amazes people with the thoughts he shares. He's rather methodical- almost reminds you of Churchill...

3-He has a great imagination. He pretends he's a hockey player, a race car, "master yoda", etc. It's fun to watch or listen to him play.


We're glad he had a happy 3rd b-day! We can't believe how fast he's grown!
Here's a link to flashback to the year he was born.

Our house this fall

Here are a few things I'm proud of this fall...

My garden! Having a garden was one of the things I was most excited for with the new house. We build a couple raised beds, but you can only really see the bed from the angle below b/c it grew well beyond the borders.

Miss H helped me decorate our table for fall. She even wrote placecards. (Usually I'm not a fan of our red/orange/yellow lamps, but they actually fit the autumn theme right now.)

And it's hard not to be proud when you are gaining weight- if it's for a good cause...

Heaven

Our faith teaches that marriage can be eternal. And what will we do for all eternity? We will learn to be like our Heavenly Father. We will create life. We will have children. In the celestial world, I can create as many babies as I want.
I know of many great women who can't get pregnant or can't stay pregnant or who aren't married but long to have a family.
I love the babies I have. I miss terribly the ones I don't.

...As many babies as I want...that does sound heavenly...

Miss H's birthday party

We are so thrilled that this sweet girl is part of our family!

We enjoyed having her friends over. We painted toenails.

We played a water relay where they raced to fill their bowl.


Each little guest decorated their own cupcake.

It was fun!

Milestones

1st day of school

D's baptism

Cousins!

(A couple 4th of July pictures with paternal cousins)

These two are not biologically related- but they might as well be family. We're so glad these friends moved back in state.

Fun with cousins on my side in Illinois...


We also travelled to Ohio where one of my brothers now lives. D is wearing sunglasses b/c he was self-conscious with a puffy eye. But I think he looks so cute in sunglasses. His favorite part of the trip was the air force museum. Miss H's favorite part might have been the ballet basement at her cousin's house. Ben loved everything except maybe the travel. But they were good travellers overall.

It was a nice to end summer on a high note. School starts for my kids next week.