It's a...

GIRL!

We are surprised and thrilled!  I was sure it would be a boy.  Julia was ecstatic and the boys even warmed up to the idea pretty quickly.  We are excited to meet her in November!

Ethan's birthday

We are going all out of chronological order here, but we will try to put more in as we go through our pictures.  A few weeks ago we celebrated Ethan's fifth birthday, and had a lot of fun.  We went to the zoo to see the new baby polar bear (yes, that is snow that still hasn't melted in the background!), We hosted an army party with his friends with some rigorous boot camp activities and anything we culd think of to burn off preschool energy, and finally had a family party with some cake and a movie night.

He is really growing up!  He enjoys reading and being read to, he loves attempting everything Julia reports to have done or learned in Kindergarten, he is always praying to be a good example to his younger brothers, loves being a superhero and sword fighting with Dad, and doing anything crazy.  I am always impressed with his ability to succeed in whatever he wants to, whether it be learning to do a headstand he saw a cousin perform, memorize an Article of Faith or scripture, hitting the ball, or learning school things.  He is confident and cheerful, a wonderful helper, and silly and fun.  Here is some typical Ethan:  the other day (a few days after we had talked about how the Atonement works), younger brother Christian had hit him, for which the consequence is take a time out in the bedroom.  After I reminded Christian to go to his room for hitting and hearing Christian cry about the consequence, Ethan asked if he could go to his room for a time out in place of Christian.  So sweet--the big brother superhero.

Ethan is starting Kindergarten this fall and is ready to take it on--we love him and are so glad he is part of our family!

Elliott's Birthday

So I know this post is hugely belated, and Elliott is doing all kinds of new tricks now and must weigh a few more pounds as well, but at least I'm getting it on here.  We celebrated Elliott's first birthday back in January, and I think he had a perfect day.  We didn't do anything fancy, just made sure to give him extra attention, let him feed himself some cake, played some chase on all fours, and got out our especially baby toys (as opposed to having him just play with whatever the big kids have gotten out) and I think it fulfilled all his birthday dreams.  He really did smile and laugh a lot, which was so fun to see.  He is such a happy, cheerful baby.  He loves his siblings, loves interacting and playing games, still snuggles a little bit, is a great sleeper, and has lots of lovely chubs to squeeze.  We just love having him in our family, and it is the sweetest thing to see his bright, smiling, little face in the morning as I get him out of his crib.  He has begun to say quite a few words now too, and walks a few steps here and there, although it is not his main form of transportation yet.

We love you Elliott!  Happy Birthday handsome boy!

And the Total Is...

Julia accumulated a total of 12,469 pages this month for her school's read-a-thon. Way to go Julia! Thanks to those that donated!  Julia had a fun time reading to support her school and just for the fun of it.

Read-a-thon

Julia's school is doing their annual fundraiser. Instead of going door-to-door selling candy bars or something like that, they are asked to find people to sponsor their reading. If you are interested in sponsoring Julia, here is how it works. You pledge a certain amount of money (maybe a tenth of a penny, or a penny, or somewhere in between) for each page she reads or is read to in the month of March. We then read with Julia as much as we can. In the end the money goes to the school for things like improving their library collection. If you are thinking about pledging just send us an email. And just so you know she averages about 10,000 pages in a month, but we are really going to go all out this month, so maybe even a little more than that.