Church and Short Sentences

Lately Nathan claims to be an author. He has been spending time writing animal books. Each page has the name of an animal and his illustration of the animal below. I am grateful that he is practicing his writing. I decided I needed to encourage him to expand his writing and really be an author. So I suggested he write a short sentence on each page. At first this seemed to be too difficult a task - as Nathan thought it was taking too long. Now he enjoys it - the pages now consist of the animal name and what that animal eats, i.e. The american bison eats grass.

At church today the final speaker was giving a talk and trying to include the younger children in the congregation - his topic focused on animals. The talk went on for about 20 minutes. When the man finished Nathan asked if it was a long talk. I quietly nodded in agreement. Then he blurted out, "Those were not short sentences!" If you know our ward's high council representative, you know exactly what Nathan was talking about!

Elysse's Baby Shower

Though I insisted that we did not need to have any baby showers for Elysse, the paralegals from Ryan's office insisted that we DID need to have a diaper shower. The kids and I went to Ryan's office at noon today and we had a beautiful baby shower. Both Nathan and Audrey felt so special.

Nathan was working hard on writing a book (all about animals) and several people asked him questions about his book and the animals he was interested in. Nathan is very shy in groups and with people he doesn't know. Yet, he was able to answer their questions and really talked to one of the paralegals, Amanda. Everyone was so impressed with his love and fascination with animals as well as his vibrant imagination.

Audrey is and was anything but shy. She walked in, went up and talked with several people and kept the crowd entertained. In fact she had to sneak out for a potty break and everyone was wondering where she had gone.

This is only the present portion of the shower.
We were also given several gift cards and cash gifts.

The cake was delicious white on white our personal favorite (though Audrey is a chocolate girl and may be persuaded to side with both of her grandmas' taste in cake).
They used Elysse's birth announcement to decorate the cake!

Elysse's first flowers. These came from the home garden of one of the attorneys at the firm!

From the Mouths of Babes

I received a package in the mail from our Venice, Florida friends the McGees. One of the things contained in the package was a small journal type tablet titled From the Mouths of Babes. It is a book to record things that the kids say. (I have done a fairly good job of writing down and keeping memories of the funny/strange things that Nathan and Audrey have said. I have included some in journals that I keep and posing them to the blog.) I really enjoy this tablet because I can carry it in my purse or diaper bag and catch the things as they are fresh in my mind. So far I have two entries.

Nathan: Mom do you want to hear something true?

Mom: sure Nathan

Nathan: It pays to discover.

Mom: Where did you hear that?

Nathan: A commercial during my Life video.

(Nathan is very into animals and seems to think that you can get paid to discover animals).

I was changing Elysse's diaper and as always Audrey was looking on. Her reward: to put the dirty diaper in the diaper pail. After my job was finished Audrey happily put the diaper in...

Audrey: Poop stinks.

Mom: Yes Audrey, it does.