Baby Eric is Five!

Eric just celebrated his birthday by driving for 19 hours to Island Park, Idaho. Actually, he loved his birthday. Grandma LuAnne found out about his obsession with the local infomercial for pancake puffs ("Mom, if you love pancakes, you'll certainly love pancake puffs!) and bought him an Aebleskiver pan as a gift then made some for him the morning we stayed with them. Then we spent two wonderful days in Idaho with my family--Thanks for letting us use your cabin Aunt Jane! On a more serious note, I can't believe our baby is five! He starts kindergarten this week and I am in complete denial. He has been such a wonderful child. He loves to joke around--our family all heard more than their fair share of "You're a mustard and mushroom sandwich" jokes this week. He really tries hard to be obedient and he loves to be helpful ("Whew, mom, I'm just getting too useful!"). He is a great big brother and a very loving boy. We love you, Eric.

Phone Exorcism

Apparently our cell phone has been dropped one too many times. For the last couple of weeks, it has been beeping at odd times and for no apparent reason. We think it may be possessed. We have had people call us claiming that they received a call from our cell phone, calls that we certainly did not make! The beeping is getting worse and worse. In fact, to add credibility to the idea that it is haunted, every time I tried to capture it on video, it would suddenly go quiet. This morning was the last straw. The insistent beeping woke me up, so I turned it off completely and started getting ready for work. Then....I heard the beeping again and this is what I saw when I opened the phone...

Can you read the word at the top of the screen? M-U-R-D-E-R! I think we had better hire a good phone exorcist (or break down and buy a new phone) before it kills us in our sleep! Seriously, everything in this post is true except the Murder part.

Thank you, Erin

My Friend Erin made a dress like this for her daughter and it inspired me to dust off the old sewing machine (which I seem to only use around Halloween), and give it a whirl. It is made out of a man's dress shirt! Clever, eh? You use the buttons on the shirt front for the back of the dress and the front is the yoke. I wish I was clever enough to think of this myself, or even just find the website, but I am a dang good idea thief. Anyway, Lils loves it and it cost about 8 for the shirt and trim. I'll put the link here. Oh, and I didn't pose her with the flower, she is just a natural poser. You should see her preen herself when someone is looking at her!

Mind Reading

Let's play a word association game. Write down the first word that comes to your mind after reading each of these words:

Fruit

Animal

Arizona

Honeymoon

Your mental energies are strong. I can even read them through the fiber optic cables of the internet. I see:
Fruit--"Apple", Animal--"Dog", Arizona--"Monsoon", and well, I'm not going to type that fourth one.

What? Monsoon wasn't the first thing that came to your mind when you thought of Arizona? It wasn't the first thing to come to Jen's mind either. She thought we lived in a desert . . .

BEFORE meeting an Arizona monsoon firsthand

AFTER . . . and it was only about 30 ft. from the car to the door.

Pretend Voice

This is a short clip of Lily talking to her "baby." The baby is a wooden peg that was wrapped up in a cloth to represent moses for a Home Evening lesson. Lily took to carrying it around and playing pretend with it. In this clip she is telling the baby not to worry, because she will be right back.