Seth's birthday pictures

Happy Birthday Seth! He loved the balloons, almost better than the cake and ice cream.

Happiness is a new puppy (toy)!

Denying the new pants, he just wants that puppy.

I made a barnyard cake with a gingerbread barn.

My sister, Nicki, gave me the idea to put our family's brand on the roof.

Approaching with caution...

Digging in!

After we pulled the barn off there was a bare spot on the cake.

Nicki put the animals there and titled it "Overgrazing."

Happy first, Seth!

Our little happy baby is a year old today! Although we (ok, just Felicity and me) were a little nervous about another boy joining our family, Seth Gavid has been a blessing from the beginning. He's almost always happy, sweet and cuddly, and has a huge curiousity that starting to make me a little nervous! He loves his brothers and sister, even forgiving them when they get a little too rambunctious or force their own ideas of sharing on him. It's been a fun year and we're looking forward to the rest of his life.

Not quite what we meant...

So today at dinner for some reason the kids (and Farris) were trying to touch their noses with their tongues. Boys, boys, boys, boys, and Felicity. Anyway, When Joseph asked me: "Can you touch your nose with your tongue?" I told him I couldn't and showed him, so he said "I can!" Then he started toward me with his tongue out. For the record, Joseph cannot touch his own nose with his own tongue, but he can touch my nose with his tongue.

Praying Mantis egg

Yesterday as it WAS SNOWING (sorry, just had to get that out of my system) I was trying to cover our tomato plants and saw something really yucky looking on a tomato:

EWWWW. But then I recognized it, it's a praying mantis egg sack. The gardening store I worked at in Logan actually sold these for use as a natural pesticide, praying mantis are wonderful at eating all kinds of the bad garden bugs. So I thought I'd post this in case any of you find something gross in your garden: Don't smash it or throw it away! I'm not sure yet if I'll bring it in the house until spring or if it's better to leave it outside all winter. Anybody have any ideas?

Exotic destinations, sort of

Well, it's time to upload pictures from my camera again, so here is what we've been up to:

No, we haven't been traveling, this is the local Krishna temple (yup , here in Utah!). Our ward's play group met to feed the llamas. Squeaker squeakin! That means "Demon Llama!" in squirrel. They also had little brahma bull calves, which was pretty cool, ok, I'm a farm nerd, but they were funny little things with their humps.

Seth loves animals so he was pretty happy squealing and kicking and trying to pat their noses. I don't think the llamas appreciated it. He did not want to leave.

We also went to our town's fall celebration, every year they have free kids activities in the park, art projects and balloon animals were the favorites this year. And the suckers, of course.
The concert this year was Nancy Hansen and Peter Brienholt, yea! Farris and I went to as many of their concerts as we could in Logan. It was fun seeing our kids dance to "You Wore Flowers" and "Birken Street" while we sang along. I loved hearing their music live again.

On Thursday, Caleb had his first ever Class Field Trip, with A Bus (yes, capitol letters are needed here, just talk to any kindergartner about a Ride in a School Bus, and their voices capitalize it). They went to an apple orchard and we decided to tag along.

Yum! Natalie and Caleb enjoying their Freshly Picked Apples (capitalized again).

Here's Abbie, I think she was a little surprised to see Sister Child, but hey, I came for the free apples.

Joseph and Hyrum enjoyed their apples, too. But the favorite part was the doughnuts, they even had SPRINKLES!

There wasn't any school on Friday so Farris stayed home from work and we decided to check out Strawberry Reservoir. So we did. And it was really cold and windy, so after eating sandwiches in the van, watching other people fish, we turned around and went down a couple thousand feet in elevation to another lake and then we played.
Seth loves water, even though when you crawl in water your belly gets wet before your bum does. And it did, and he was very!

I love pictures of feet in the water and his toes are very cute and little.

Before we took off, we rented a canoe from BYU, how much fun is that. The kids loved it, but Caleb did comment that daddy took them out faster than I did. But, hey, I didn't do too shabby, thank you Cindy and Julie =) We all got wet, Joseph got stripped down to his underwear, Caleb found lots of, ummm, cool rocks and sticks (you'd think he got enough of that in Arizona, but no), and Felicity formed a new Club (with Joseph and me as members) complete with a special tree to meet at. Fun was had by all.

#4

Seth said Momma!! I'm right behind uh-oh, ball, and Dadda. At least I'm better than "Ice Cream" or "chocolate," right?

A bad bug

So our computer got a really bad virus and shut down, and it took about a week and a half to fix it. Yikes, I really depend on the internet and Microsoft word to get so much stuff done. I couldn't even look up diseases of plants for my neighbor or a recipe for dinner or to see how everybody is doing (or how everybody is wasting time on Facebook =) ). But the great computer people fixed our computer up after gutting it out and doubled the RAM so now I can do more fun things, including upload pictures from y camera! Hurray! I'm still trying to figure the program out, but for my first picture, here's Seth attacking one of our garden tomatoes:

And here's a video I've been wanting to share for awhile:

Isn't that awesome! I'm not sure we could get him to do it in Sacrament meeting, or if it would even be a good idea, but it would be memorable!

Now, back to business, first I want to brag on Farris for a minute, 'cause after all this is my blog. He's amazing! On Saturday, he bottled beets, dried pears, froze tomatoes, and jammed strawberries. Wow! I did help a little, but he did by far the majority. Definitely a keeper. And the homemade strawberry jam is my favorite thing of all time. It balances out the pickled beets.

Let's see, what else have I missed...Seth has three teeth and he might wake up with two more that are coming in fast behind. He's also really fast now and is standing up and is just starting to cruise. He has also learned how to become a hall pass in church by being really loudand last week was nabbed in a daring escape during the closing hymn by Nikki. Thanks again! We thought we had blocked his path, but he's getting crafty. He's already 11 months, whew, it's time to start thinking birthday celebration.

Joseph is busy all the time still, today he filled my water bottle with lemon juice concentrate. Yeech. I think he's enjoying the time when Caleb and Felicity are in school and Seth is sleeping, he likes a little cuddle time. It's good for me, too, that means he's not doing something crazy!

Caleb loves school, will even do his homework (usually) without complaining. He's ridden his bike to the school a couple times and at home he's always zooming around. If any of you are walking past him, ,be careful, he's still not hte best at watching where he's going. His legs and elbows are bruised and scraped, thank heavens for helmets.

Felicity's newest thing is turning her room into a zoo. No she's not putting her brothers in cages. Yet. That I know of. But her stuffed animals get put into whatever cages she can make up and then she makes tickets to hand out. She was going to charge a penny a ticket, but she didn't get any takers. I guess we're all pretty cheap.

I'm not sure what else has gone on, some days are just blurs. Oh, but happy 19th wedding anniversary to Chad and Tarilynn! Chad, you are a very lucky guy =)