Mona Lisa

My dear sweet Carter had a hard time the other day when he saw this. That is right, The Mona Lisa, it brought him much heartache. The conversation went like this. Carter see's this picture in our van, "Wow, who did that they are really good." Mom replies, "That would be Leonardo Da Vinci." Carter says, "He is really good at people." "Yes, he was a very famous artist who has done a lot of work." Carter starts welling up, "I'm not that good." Mom tries to be comforting, "Well, Da Vinci is an incredible artist, but I do believe he was older than you when he did this and he had practiced for years." Carter is now crying, "I am never going to be that good Mom."
What do you say to that? He went into the house still pouting and I couldn't bring myself to try and do anything to make him feel better. He is drawing a lot and loves learning to draw. However, if you tell him something is good and it's not he will look at you and say, "this is rubbish mom." Today he had scribbled on something and asked if I liked it. I said it was original and creative, he said, "oh so you like just a bunch of scribbles, mom, you can say it is rubbish." Goodness!! I can't win with this situation.

Good Friends

I love what great friends Mason and Carter are becoming. They have a special relationship. They have always been right there with each other and I love to watch them together. This is a favorite spot of their's after school.

One Year

moved across the ocean
had a baby
found a moldy house
moved from moldy house
a child started 2nd grade
another Year 1
potty training
stair climbing
first words
one broken van
one 'new' van
castles, castles and more castles
country side driving
celebrated by going too "Wicked"--it was so incredible!! Fabulous!! Loved it!!

This is not all in order, but I think our first year in England has been a little bit busy. :)

eating is fun

This is a must see enlarged set of pictures. I think we like taking 50 pictures all in one sitting. Brennan decided that he needed to partake of the grapefruit that Taylor and Carter were having at dinner. Lets just say I don't think he will be trying that again for awhile.


We have six weeks until Brennan is one!! That means for this mommy that I am DONE nursing. So the weaning process begins. First, we start introducing the table food to him. He has been doing baby food for months, but when their main source of nutrition comes from what is at the table you have to make sure they are going to get enough. I think Brennan is going to be just fine!! :) Chicken Pot Pie was cleaned up without a problem at all.

Shape Sorter

Brennan is cute, so more pictures of him. He has realized that these toys we keep putting in front of him can do more than be hit and chewed. He found the hole of the shape sorter that is there for this age group and thought he was big stuff. Mike and I make cute babies. :)

Happy Mother's Day

To me!! Okay, and to all of the others out there who are celebrating. My husband scored big points this year by FINALLY getting me tickets to see The Phantom. We aren't going until June because I kept scheduling things on EVERYDAY that he was trying for. Surprises are hard to pull off for me I hear. :)

Yesterday I also took a nap. That was FABULOUS!!! Sleeping never felt so good.

I hope that everyone elses mommy day was relaxing and fun.

Now I need to go chase Brennan who is going up the stairs...again. :) LOVE IT!!

For Kellie

You know why, and now everyone else in the world is curious.

Conquering stairs!!

After a few lessons Brennan has decided that stairs are pretty cool! He went all the way up for the first time and was so pleased with himself. Next week we start lessons on going down. Yippee to independent stair climbing!!

Temple Trip

This last weekend we spent at the temple. They just put Moroni(a prophet from the Book of Mormon) up on the spire about a month ago. Because of the location of the temple they haven't been able to do it until now. If anyone flies into Gatwick Airport we understand you can see the temple and all the grounds on the landing. It was fun to walk the grounds with the kids. They always get so excited about going to the temple. It is fun to see them be thrilled about something that means so much to Mike and I. Mike, of course, was able to put the new camera into action. He got some pretty fabulous shots. I think we will be seeing less and less of Mike in pictures as he is now going to be the one playing with his new toy! :)

New Camera

249 pictures in two days, that about sums up how much we LOVE the new camera. Thanks to our wonderful friends for letting us use theirs until we found just the right deal! It only took 8 months. No one can ever tell us we jump into anything too quickly.

Russische Zupftorte

We said goodbye to another missionary this last week. Elder Wiebel has been with us for awhile and started his mission in the Bury St Edmunds area. We were sad to see him go and had to make a special cake for his farewell. Don't even ask me how to say it because I can not. It translates to Russian Plucked Cake. We made it for another German missionary in December and when Elder Wiebel found this out he has been anxious to have the same thing. We were happy to be able to make it for him on his way out and wish him the best on the rest of his mission.

Parties!!

We started celebrating Saturday and didn't stop until Tuesday. We had a friends party on Saturday afternoon where we had 18 children over to play. One bouncy slide and some face painting was all it took to entertain many children for 2 hours. We loved that they don't open presents or have cake at the party here in England. The two most stressful parts of a party disappear and you are left with pure fun!! You give the cake with the party favors as they head out the door. Fabulous!!! Sunday we enjoyed the bouncy slide as a family and had some great times doing tricks off the top. The kids and the parents had a lot of fun. Then Carter opened his gifts from Mason, Taylor, and Brennan. Lego's and a Power Ranger costume were very much appreciated.

I love the age of three. They finally get why birthday's are so cool. Taylor was shopping with me for Carter when I asked her what she was going to want for her birthday. She doesn't get the surprise part of it, so things just started being added to the trolley. She chose underwear, a notebook, aftershave(I put that back), a ball, and a colorful weekly meds dispenser. I think the underwear seemed cool at the store, but unwrapping it revealed a different emotion. First small picture says it all. She felt very special and her big brothers were making sure that they were making her the center of attention.