Erin

It was brought to my attention that I never posted any pictures of Erin when she was born. I wasn't keeping the blog up to date and I was too busy with life. So, seeing as how she is almost 9 months, I thought I would give you a few pictures of her as she has "grown up".

1 day

6 weeks

2 months

3 months

4 months (eating rice cereal for the first time)

5 1/2 months

7 months

8 months

9 months (almost)

Pest Control

Every home in the desert has some sort of problem with bugs. Most people have the bug man come to their home to spray insecticide to kill the bugs. Not us, we use a more natural approach. We leave the front porch light on which attracts all the little bugs. Then the bigger bugs come and eat the smaller bugs, and so on and so forth until you get to the top of the insect (or arachnid) food chain. Here is our form of pest control. We have a tarantula that comes and visits our front porch and gets his fill on all the little bugs.

Unfortunately there is nothing in the picture to give a relative size comparison. If I were to judge, he is slightly smaller than my flat hand. It is the biggest of the tarantulas that I have seen on our front porch over the years. I didn't tell Michelle about him because she made me kill the last one that she saw.

Monsoon

On Saturday evening we were just getting ready to run some errands. We had eaten dinner, got the kids ready, shoes and socks were on. We were just about to walk out the door. Then the rain came. And it came hard. We decided to wait until the storm passed to go run our errands. We all ended up sitting on our bed looking into the backyard through the window. We started to count the seconds between the flash of lightning and the thunder and it was getting closer and closer. Then came the 3/8 inch diameter hail. Then there were a couple of times when the thunder and lightning were simultaneous. The whole time the wind was blowing. The kids got to see the effects of a good windstorm as the tree fell over. I love the monsoons in the desert.

FHE

Last night our Home Teacher came over. Then some other good friends dropped by as well. Both times our kids did or said something that was inappropriate or embarassed us or something like that. So, tonight for FHE we decided that we needed to teach the kids how to behave when adult friends come over. We talked about some things and then had the kids role-play what they learned. When it was Rebecca's turn to be the friend and Tyler's turn to welcome her into our home he showed us just how smooth he is going to be. She came in and sat down and he was going to ask her some questions about how her day was. He couldn't think about what to say, so we prodded him a little and here is what he said. "Well, if it's a girl and we don't know her really well we can ask her for her name and then her phone number, and then we can call her up and ask her to come over and then we can do stuff with her." We didn't teach him dating 101, but that is what he came up with on his own. He spent our week at Fish Lake holding his 18 yr old cousin's friend's hand and now this statement from him. Should we be worried?

Back to School

It was the first day of school today. It is hard to believe that the summer is over. It went by really fast. The kids were excited to go back to school. Rebecca couldn't go to sleep the night before, she was so excited. It is going to be a hard year for Meagan. She wants to go to school, but isn't quite old enough. However, all of her friends at church started kindergarten this year so she won't have anyone to play with during the day. We are going to need to find her some new friends to play with.

Notice the bags full of supplies that Tyler's class asked each student to bring. Paper towels, Kleenex, copy paper, crayons, folders, markers, etc. Rebecca's class had a similar list. I don't think that there is any money in the budget for supplies so they are asking the parents to provide.

Erin on the Tile

It seems that we have always taken a picture of the first time that each kid scooted off the carpet onto the tile. Well, it was finally Erin's turn. She didn't make it far off the carpet, but she did finally touch the tile. It took a little encouragement by placing her plug just out reach, but here's the proof that she finally made it.

Climbing

I am going to make an effort to try and keep current on the blog.

This past Saturday I had the opportunity to go climbing with some good friends. We went to an area that had just recently been opened and no one in our group had been to before. The weather was perfect and it was a great day. Michelle was great to let me go and have a good time. She took the kids to go see Shrek the Fourth while I was out playing. I don't think she had as much fun as I did. Meagan was scared by the movie and so the two of them spent a lot of time in the hallway outside the theater.

This is me struggling to get up a route that is much harder than my current ability.
This is Rik...

...and this is Ryan.

I would take a day out climbing with these guys over most other things that I have to deal with. They are patient with my while I am trying to learn and they make for an enjoyable day. Ryan's wife was also with us, but I didn't get a picture of her.