Elder Russel M Nelson

Elder Russel M Nelson of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles

Last Sunday, we had the privilege of having a special stake conference with Elder Nelson. It was a very good experience. I don't remember a lot of what was said, but I do remember that the spirit was strong. I know that this man is an apostle of God.

After the meeting was over, we were able to get in a LONG line and shake Elder Nelson's hand before we headed home. It's neat getting to meet any of the church leaders. We were also blessed to have Elder Larry R Lawrence of the seventy there for the conference. I was hoping to get a picture of the kids with Elder Nelson, but he was greeting people in the chapel... can't take a picture there, so this one above will have to suffice.

Just for my own memories, I wanted to record the events of the day. Peter was asked to help with parking at the stake center, so we arrived 2 hours early. We saved our seats, talked to some of the people around us, and went for a walk. We ended up in the nursery to play with the toys for a while. Then about an hour before the meeting started, the family in front of us came and got me because we almost lost our seats... they were really trying to let as many people sit in the chapel as possible. So, we got to sit in the chapel for nearly an hour BEFORE the 2 hour meeting. I thought it would be really rough. But the family who sat in front of us needed an extra seat, and we had a bit of room, so one of their daughters sat with us and helped play with the kids. It was SUCH a big help. One amazing thing about the meeting was that the kids were very well behaved the entire time. Not just mine, but all of them. It was relatively quiet for the whole meeting. During Elder Nelson's talk, he had all the primary kids stand up and sing "I Am a Child of God."

Overall, we had a really good experience and are very thankful we were able to be there.

Jessica over the past couple months

I have been really bad about posting for quite some time now. Probably since Jessie was born. We'll see if I ever recover enough to catch up. :) Since I'm so far behind, I think I need to do more combination posts... posts that involve several stories and pictures at once... so I can get caught up more quickly. I'm also losing the stories. I look at the pictures now and wonder what I was thinking at the time, so we need to get going on these.

I noticed that I had several pictures of Jessie just hanging out, so I thought I'd give you a quick look at how she's grown over the past couple months. It may be hard to see in the pictures, but she is still quite big. She is 7 months now, and weighs over 20 lbs. I sure get my arm workout with this one.

March 25 - I think I was just getting a picture of how cute she was picking up her head and smiling at me.


March25 - Here's a picture of her scooting. She would scoot around with her head on the floor. It's amazing she didn't end up with rug burns on her forehead.

April 3 - Jessica and Mommy - This was on Easter and I wanted to make sure she had a picture from Easter even though she didn't get to decorate any eggs

April 7 - Jessie loves flipping through the little book on this exersaucer. I think she's really working on figuring it out. Of course, now, we have to make sure there are no books on the floor when she is down there, otherwise, that is what she goes for. She prefers the paper style so she can eat it and tear it. So much fun... isn't that what books are for?

April 17 - Our first trip to the pool. It was cold. The air was warm, though. I didn't get in, but no one else seemed to mind. I've always known Jessie had significant rolls, but this picture was the first time I'd ever noticed how much she really does resemble the Michelin Man. So cute... on a baby.

April 19 - Jessie was starting to sit on her own very well. Now she's quite proficient at pushing herself up to sit on her own. In fact, she's now starting to crawl a little. She'll crawl a couple steps, and then needs a little break, so she'll sit herself up for just a moment before continuing on. If you had to move that much weight (at 7 months old), you'd take a break, too.

April 25 - I was trying to get good scooting pictures here as well. At this point (6 months) she was getting up on her hands and knees and rocking, then plopping down on her belly. Somehow, she always seemed to make forward progress.

May 12 - I was trying to catch her in the process of sitting up, because she had just started to push herself up to sitting at this point. Now, she sits up and is crawling all over the place... though the crawling has barely started, so it is still a little slow. It will speed up by next week, and I'll have to be more attentive to make sure she doesn't disappear somewhere in the house.

Colorful hair?

I took the following pictures. However, I was not in the room when all this began, so I don't have a story for you. I'm going to have Peter fill us all in on this when he gets a chance. But for now, enjoy the pictures. They are amusing. :)

Emily needed a little help with the process. She wanted to get it just right.

Reminiscent of Raggedy Andy, don't you think?

Could she be any happier in green hair?

Here's the miniature version of the Raggedy Andy Datin

Testing on the House

For those of you who don't know, Peter is doing research on a 1/3 scale model house he built. Back in March, he had to move it to put it in front of the hurricane simulator... which is no longer called a hurricane simulator, but I'm not sure what it's called now, so we'll stick with hurricane simulator. :) The kids and I were able to go see them moving the house from the lab to the simulator. It was quite the ordeal, so I thought it would be fun for the kids to see. They also ran the simulator and did a test while we were there.

Here are the kids just waiting for the action.

Here are a couple pictures of the house as it was being moved. Not an easy task, by the way. 1/3 scale does not mean small.

Another angle.

The simulator is made up of 8 large fans... Here is the fan part.

And the air intake...

And the diesel engines that run the simulator. They have mufflers on them because they used to be so loud the neighbors got a bit upset.

Josh turned 4 - about a month ago or so

On March 2, Josh turned 4. Wow! I can't believe I've been a mom for 4 years. Time just really flies. He is very excited about being 4. He talks about it all the time. Most of the time, he asks to get 4 of anything... because he's 4, so he gets 4. Makes sense, doesn't it? Here are some of the pictures from the day.

Josh has gotten the opening of presents down pat. Here he is opening his Hungry Hungry Hippos game. This is certainly a fun one. Both of the kids love it.

Can you see the huge grin on that face? This is the game he consistently asked for. He has a friend who has it and has shared it with him. It's basically a glorified Jenga game. But the important difference? It has a motorized jack hammer. What could be cooler than that?

The kids with the cake I made. It's supposed to look like a space shuttle. I suppose it's fitting since this is the last year they have any launches planned for the shuttles. Josh loved this cake. And for a fun birthday activity... though not on his birthday, since it was mid-week... we went and shot rockets at the park.

Blowing out all 4 of his candles.

"I Emily"

I've always known that Emily is very strong willed and has opinions of her own. The other day, she showed me just how true this is. I like to call her things like "Em," or "Emilily," or "Emililia" just for the fun of it. I actually really like "Emilily." It combines two names I love. Emily and Lily. Anyhow, the other day, like I said, I called her "Emilily" just for the fun of it. She turned to me and said, very sternly, mind you, "I not Emilily. I Emily." It's funny because since then, she has correct us several times. Oh well. I guess my Emily likes her name, so there's no more Emilily.I guess that's a good thing. We should all be able to like our names.

Forgotten Pacifiers

Every pacifier package I have seen instructs the parents to boil the pacifiers for 2 minutes to sanitize prior to use. Ever wonder what happens to said pacifiers when they are forgotten?

They catch fire! And not a small one at that. Josh didn't stop talking about the fire for days on end. He was pretty concerned. I try to be more careful now. Now, I try to only boil pacifiers when I am cooking other things so I will be in the kitchen and not as likely to forget.

They look interesting when melted, don't you think? If you look closely, you can see that the plastic part of the pink pacifier actually went into the nipple when it melted. Isn't it amazing that those silicone nipples survived? Needless to say, we don't use these pacifiers. They had an immediate burial in the trash can along with that pot.