Andrew's First Talk

Andrew gave his first talk yesterday. Thank you all for your help and ideas. He was VERY excited to give his talk, he pulled it out during sacrament and was holding the pictures up for everyone to see. Especially the primary president who was giving a talk. VERY CUTE!! Here is a video of his talk and also the line he has for the primary program in 3 weeks.
P.S. Thanks Rachael for the idea of video taping, now we'll ALWAYS remember his first talk.

HELP!!!

Andrew has been asked to give a talk in primary in a few weeks. The topic for the month is prayer, so I thought we'd go with that. When I ask him what he knows about prayer, he says we pray to Heavenly Father, ask for blessings and thank Him. GREAT! But that's probably not enough for a talk. Any ideas? I know it doesn't have to be much, he's only 4, but I'm really coming up blank. I'd really like some help. THANKS!

Old Robe

This morning we went on a hike with some friends of ours. It's called Old Robe, an old railroad that was built by some New York financiers who figured it was just an itty bitty stream and so they would be safe and laughed at the engineer from WA who told them it was a BAD spot for the railroad. Well, it has been washed away by many Northwest winter storms. Silly New Yorkers:) It was a really fun trail. Andrew was really excited to get to the tunnel. It was a pretty cool tunnel, but getting there, was pretty tricky, they've had a rock slide and so we had to clammer(?) over quite a few rocks. I was really impressed by Andrew, I can't believe he did it!! Benjamin couldn't get enough of the scenery. He kept trying to climb out of the back pack so that he could walk. Maybe next summer Ben.

Here's the crew Bob, Benjamin, Jonathan and Rachel Hawks and Andrew who wouldn't let go of Jonathan's hand. Thanks Jonathan for slowing down for us.
Ready for the rocks? This was on the way back.
Go Rachel!!I just had to post this picture to show what a trooper Andrew was! He clammered right over these rocks and didn't even complain or say he couldn't do it. I'm so proud of you Andrew!! On the way back after we got past these rocks, he was on the run! He didn't want to slow down for ANYONE! Lucky for us, Jonathan is a fast hiker and they stayed together while I hung back, moving a little slower. All in all it was a great day. I think we may have a trail blazer on our hands. Now we just have to keep at it! Did I mention the trail was 1.6 miles one way and the first 1/2 mile is a 200 foot drop in elevation? Andrew walked/ran the WHOLE way!!

Puyallup

Finally! After many interviews and over a year of waiting for the right job, it's happened. It's official! Bob just got a new job and we will be moving to Puyallup, WA. We don't know yet how long we'll be there. But we do know this is where we're supposed to be. More details to come when we have some. Congratulations Bob!

Since the last post we've had a lot of fun. Last weekend we went camping with some friends at one of the church sites near here. There was a service project at the camp on Sat and so we went up the night before to get one last night of camping in. Andrew LOVES camping. On the way there he said he wasn't feeling very good and when I asked him if he needed to go home, he informed us that he would feel MUCH better when sleeping in a tent. He sleeps SO good when we're camping, Benjamin, not so much, of course, we don't have a pac-n-play, so he has to sleep on an air mattress, and I wake up every time he moves terrifies he's going to roll off, or something. I think we'll get a pac-n-play before we take another baby camping. Here are a few fun photos of our trip. Bob got their chairs out of the car so that they would have a place to sit, they thought it was fun and were playing musical chairs. Yes, they are sitting in each others chairs. Ben thought it was hillarious! Then they decided to help daddy blow up the air mattresses by making them a trampoline

Here's Andrew with his good friend Trevor. They had a lot of fun roasting marshmallows. Andrew wouldn't eat them, he just thought it was cool to stick them in the fire and make them brown.
Benjamin and Kylie decided they would make soup while the big boys were off helping with the service project. I never made it to the service project and so have no pictures. Bob says he was a really big help taking down the big tents. Andrew said hisfavorite part was riding in the back of the pick up truck. I'm glad he enjoyed the service project. This is something I want to start as a tradition with our family, camping and then helping clean up the camp at the end of the year. Back to Ben and Kylie's soup... I belive there were some rocks and leaves and dirt. YUM!!
This one was just cute, Sunday morning I found Ben in his new favorite place, our shower. He loves to climb in and hide. Andrew tried to get in with him, and he wouldn't let him.

Getting so BIG!!

Yesterday Benjamin had a DR. appt. he didn't really like it, but we survived. He is now 32 in and weighing in at 26 pds, It feels like more because when you hold him, he expects you to support his weight and will sit back on your arm. Little stinker. The Dr. asked how many words he knows, and I could only think of 3!! How horrible of me! And that was because he'd been shoes shoes shoes just before she came in because he was not happy and wanted to get out of there! Well, I'd like to announce, that my 15 month old, is NOT behind, he knows more than 3 words they are:
Shoes, juice, (which is ANYTHING liquid), Please, cheese, car, bus, choo choo for train, woof for dog, cookie, cracker, bye, hi, bath, ball there's also a lot we understand but others may not. LIke igh igh for night night, a stange noise for all done, but he trys to sign it, so we've figured it out. And thank you is just a noise. He's trying really hard to communicate and trying to mimic the sounds we make. So Fun! And of course Daddy which I hear ALL day long, mommy, don't hear it very often, but Andrew didn't say it until after he turned two and that was thanks to Bob's mom. I don't know if she remembers it, but I do. He's getting SO BIG! Andrew got shots yesterday too so that he could go to preschool. WOW! Preschool, somedays I can't wait, somedays I don't know if I'm ready. I have until Friday to figure it out. I love prayer, it makes those big steps in life SO much easier!