Christmas decorations

Fall decor

This week is the first in a long time, where I felt like I had some free time!  I've exercised everyday.  I've read and played a lot with Blake.  And I got out my Fall decorations.  Today I took a trip out to Gardner Village where I picked up a couple of things to add to what I already had.  The cute owl at the top is from Down to Earth. 

Stinky baby

Lately, I'm always calling Blake a "Stinky baby". Not because he smells, although sometimes his poopy diapers can be real stinkers. I've been calling him that because he is being such a STINKER lately! He gets into everything. These pictures are from when he got into a stamp. He pulls all the books off the bookshelf. He colors on walls and doors and the floor with crayons and markers. He dumps baby powder all over our black leather chair---making it a lovely gray. He also refuses to get in his high chair and won't eat most of the food we offer him! Luckily, he is SO DARN cute. And he makes us laugh and smile everyday. He will say to himself...."Happy Dada", "Happy Mama", "Happy Gigi", "Happy Tawo", "Happy Diw"---which is so cute. He also comes up to me and shows me the paper he is coloring, so proud of it. He absolutely loves Elmo and Sesame Street. He watches an episode everyday, singing along to the "Elmo's World" song. He also recognizes a couple of songs that come on the radio and dances in his carseat and sings along to those, Katy Perry's "Firework", and Bruno Mars "Just the way you are"---he holds out "ourwwww" during that song. I sure love this boy and I know he's growing up fast. I'll read back over this post in a couple of months and laugh, I'm sure!

Pugmire farewell

My wonderful parents-in-law received their mission call to serve in Honolulu, at the Polynesian Cultural Center. Last Sunday they spoke in sacrament meeting in their ward, kind of their "farewell". We got up early that morning, we wanted to be there by 8:30 am to get seats, their ward gets kind of crowded. This was a challenge with the kids, plus I had helped with the Stake Dance until about 11:00 pm the night before. Anyway, we made it up there on time. The roads weren't even too bad (it had snowed a little the night before).

We were all in the chapel when Don and Jo walked in. The grandkids went up in little groups to give them a hug as they came through the doors near the stand. The smaller ones came up first, up to Drew and Maddies. Don and Jo did such a wonderful job speaking. Jo spoke about the three things that hold couples back from serving a mission. She also talked about trials and blooming where you are planted. Jo mentioned about Don, doing so much to make her burdens light. Jo has had Parkinsons for 9 years now. A few months ago she started some medication that has improved her symptoms enough that they felt like they could serve in the mission field. Don was very emotional, mostly about Jo, and how well she just did giving her talk. He also talked about missing the grandkids. They are amazing examples to me, and have been since I met them. They have a very self-less relationship. They've kept their courtship alive all these years. They do everything together and really seem to love that. They have had common goals, and continue to have those.

I will miss Don and Jo so much. I know the kids will, too. But, I'm so grateful that they are willing to sacrifice to serve the Lord. They will bless many lives and will be blessed themselves. I can't wait to hear about their experiences. This is the first time that someone close to me has been in the mission field--since I don't have brothers.

Here are some pictures we took at their house after church.

New computer

At the beginning of last year, our computer went down. We had all the info from the hard drive transferred to a portable hard drive. Then we bought a netbook, which is kind of like a laptop, but smaller. It didn't quite do all that I needed from a computer. It could hardly even handle the picture files that I would load on it. Anyway, we have a new Gateway computer. It is so fast! I am loving it. So, I'm thinking I'll be blogging more these days, and even try to catch up on posts from the past year.

Christmas morning 2010

What a fun Christmas morning we had!

Kids and their pillow pets

Gretchen's Dance recital

Gretchen is taking a Jazz/Hip Hop class right now. We all got to go to her dance recital. They danced to the song, Hot Chocolate from the Polar Express movie.