Category Archives: Jonah

eight!

My Jonah had a birthday nearly a month ago.  We had a fun party.  I took 3 of his friends swimming with us at the nearby rec center, then we came home for pizza, cake, and presents.

boys

eight

This wasn’t just any birthday, it was his EIGHTH birthday!

baptism

The Saturday morning after his birthday he was baptized.  My parents and grandma came for a visit.  My dad gave a sweet talk about baptism, and Barry did the baptism and confirmation.

It is so fun to watch my sweet boy grow up.  From the instant he came into this world he has been determined and persistent in getting what he wants and doing what he thinks is right.  I have said many prayers that we can help channel his strong will toward good, and he seems to have a innate sense of what is right and fair.

And he’s super cute.

I love you Jonah!

Trick or Treat!

When Brenna was  tiny I was very idealistic about Halloween.  I saw it as a little microcosm of life– that she could be anything she wanted, and I would help her get there.  Silly, I know, but the dressing up and making was so much fun.  As each new child has entered our family that whole idealism has, well, gone out the window.  Now it is a last minute scramble to get the costumes decided on and all the stuff gathered up.  Halloween ranks right up there with Christmas on my kids’ list of favorite holidays.  At least once a day, ALL YEAR LONG, Logan tells me what he’s going to be for the next Halloween.  I guess there is some magic in the thought that he really can transform himself into anything he wants.  This year he settled on being a pirate:

arrrg matey!

Jonah was an alien:

take me to your leader

Brenna was leopard:

grrrrr

Then there was Buzz– which has been Ian’s everyday uniform on most days lately:

to infinity and beyond

And for the third time we had a little dinosaur.  I made this hood and tail when Jonah was a baby.  Logan was only 3 months old his first Halloween, so he was too little to wear it, but Ian did, and now Hunter:

duh

(Barry took these pictures in the church parking lot during our Trunk-or-Treat.)

The only sewing I did this year was make Brenna a tail and ears to pin on to her sweats– the rest was just paint and hairspray and a good dig through the dress-up and recycling bins.

We lit our Jack-0-Lanterns and did a little Trick-or Treating around the neighborhood too.

all in a row

The Portrait Project

I’ve really needed updated photos of my kids for my mantle since, well, I think the last time I had pictures taken was 2 years ago.  I’ve got lots of snapshots of course, but I needed portraits.  The thought of making an appointment, getting everyone clean and dressed and somewhere on time has been giving me hives.

 I have big windows and lots of natural light in our family room, so yesterday I hung a big brown sheet at one end of the room and snapped away.   Most of the pictures I took turned out like this:

out takes

Out of focus, fake smiles, silly faces, or Ian in the Buzz Lightyear costume he found in the dress-up bin about a month ago and hasn’t taken off since (I had to bribe him with chocolate chips). Click here to see the out takes bigger, if you’d really like.

But the beauty of digital photography is that I could take LOTS of pictures.  I decided to go with black and white pictures so it didn’t matter what color the background or clothes were.  A few clicks in iPhoto, the Costco photo printing center, and $8 later, I’ve got these lined up on my mantle:

hunter

ian

logan

jonah

brenna

Not bad for a day’s work.

 

10 little monkeys

10 little monkeys

Barry’s aunt is a sock monkey making aunt.  Every new baby gets one, and they are well loved.  Even though they’re made from the same brown, white, and red socks, each one is unique– and they’ve got the kid’s names embroidered on them just in case.  The thing that amazes me is that Ian can look at the letters and figure out whose is whose!

 We’ve definitely got the 5 cutest monkeys ever.

The sock monkeys are pretty cute too.