Joseph Who?

Sean has a book called "Hidden Treasures of the Book of Mormon" which has pictures behind flaps that you lift. He really likes this book. The last page of the book has a picture of the prophet Moroni burying the gold plates and when you lift the flap it's Joseph Smith taking them out. He knows who these two people are and will tell us that Moroni is also on top of the temple with a trumpet. He's very clever.

So now it's Christmas time and there are lots of Nativity sets around our house. We are telling him who the people are.

Sean: There's baby Jesus.

Mom: Good job, and what's his mom's name?

Sean: Um, Mary.

Mom: That's right, what about his earthly dad. What's his name?

Sean: That's Joseph Smith!

We have been trying to teach him that his name is just Joseph and he's starting to get it. Maybe by next Christmas he'll understand the difference between these two very important Josephs.

Matthew Turns One!

Matthew made it to his first birthday last week!! As worried as I was during the first couple weeks of his life (he wasn't gaining weight or eating very well), he is thriving now. He weighs 23 pounds and is just perfect. He did wake up on his birthday with a fever, but it was gone by the afternoon which helped him enjoy his cake more. There wasn't a great time for all the members of our huge family to get together over Matthew's birthday weekend, so we celebrated twice. Here are pictures from the first party:

He was hesitant to dive in, and actually cried for a minute. We gave him a fork and he seemed to like using it to dig in to his cake.

Blowing raspberries with a mouth full of cake.

These are some shots from the second party the next morning:

I like the full coverage of his hand. He's very thorough.

All done!

Matthew is a serious sweetheart with a huge smile that is super contagious. We love all the sounds he makes. We love how is learning so much every day. He is such a fun little person to have in our family. We love you Matthew!

I can't believe it, I'm crafty!!

When I was in Canada with Lorainne, Nicki, and Bethany, we went to a "Cupcakery" called Pink Sugar or something like that. On the way home from that trip we bought a cupcake decorating book. There are a LOT of summer birthdays in our family and we ended up making cupcakes for everyone. Nicki has some pictures here. We talked about starting our own cupcake club. We talked about having matching aprons and a title for each person. All these conversations started in July, and finally last week Nicki and I went shopping for fabric to make some aprons. We could have just bought aprons, but we thought maybe we could make something super cute ourselves. I saw this apron online and really liked it:

I was able to make a pattern and 3 aprons so far (I have one more to do and then I'm going to try making smaller ones for Nicki and Bethany's girls). I was pretty impressed with how they turned out.

I changed it a little to have one more type of fabric, but I think they are cute. Oh, AND they are reversible (with skirt and top fabrics opposite of each other). Are you as impressed as I am?

Shark Prayers

We usually have a family prayer as part of the boys' bedtime routine. Last night, we were all sitting in Sean's bed and we asked him to fold his arms. He was already lying down on his pillow and holding one of his lovies (the shark this time). He started to help the shark fold his fins to get ready for the prayer (this is something we've done a few times. Sometimes it helps Sean get ready for prayer if he sees all his beanie baby lovies with their "arms" folded). Now, with the shark's fins folded, Sean was ready for prayer.

We asked Sean to say the prayer and he started in a gravely shark voice "Dear Heavenly Father, thankful for this day..." Jon helped him with the next line which Sean repeated in the same shark voice. Jon and I were struggling to hold back giggles, but we made it through the prayer. "Amen!" Then Sean said "The Shark said the prayer!"

We also sing a song to the boys. We asked Sean which song he wanted us to sing and he answered, again in the gravely shark voice, "Child of God." Jon and I looked at each other like, "Ok, why not? It's kind of cute." So Sean, with the "help" of his shark sang I am a Child of God with us. We said goodnight to the boys and left quickly so we could laugh at our very silly Sean.