The Beautiful Girl

Have to share the funny story I heard last night after Eleanor's Back-to-School Night. My friend, who has a little boy in Eleanor's class told me he came home and said he always tries to put his backpack as close as he can to the beautiful girl. He says she is beautiful and she had a beautiful backpack too. The Mom says, "Who's the beautiful girl?", but he doesn't know her name. There are only 8 boys and about 18 beautiful girls in that class. The next day he comes home and says, "The beautiful girl is Eleanor." So cute.

On the way home I casually ask Eleanor, "So, do you ever talk to [aforementioned little boy]?" Eleanor says, "Nope." Ah, young love. I can't blame him though, I think she is beautiful too.

What an Achievement

After two solid weeks of watching the Olympics, we picked up on some very important characteristics of a champion. Traits like focus, confidence, giving 100%, sacrifice and innovation. Characteristics which Gavin had the opportunity to display in the 3rd Annual Bishops & Stake Presidency Pie Eating Contest Saturday night.

I'm so proud ...sniff, sniff. Gavin definitely gives 100% to his calling.

Oh, the Places You'll Go

We've been preparing ourselves for this day for awhile. It was Eleanor's 1st day of Kindergarten. I think it went pretty well. At 7:10am she bounced into our room fully dressed. After breakfast, I'm washing dishes and she says, let's go finish getting ready (still 1hr + before school starts). I say just a minute, and she says, "Well, I'll just go get started." Big role reversal here. I managed to hold her back for a couple of pictures before we headed out to school.





Eleanor with her teacher, who seems very nice. She also has about 14 friends from church in her class. She said she decided after her first day that school was going to be a blast! I'm sure it will.

Garden Lessons

We've learned several lessons lately from our garden. First: Some things are just meant to be together. Cute, huh?

Second: Just because you can't see it doesn't mean it's not growing! Our beans were almost completely hidden under our peas, but when we pulled out the peas we discovered those beans grew just the same. This rule also goes for our cucumbers, some of which looked more like zucchini by the time we found them. Our biggest so far was 2 and a half pounds! I know that's not really something I should be proud of...

Too Easily Distracted

We were watching Olympic swimming with Eleanor the other day (who wasn't?) and she was having a hard time telling the girl and boy swimmers apart. We explained that in that race everyone was girls and in the next, they were all boys. Gavin asked her why the girls don't race the boys. She said it's because they would look at each other and smile and forget to race!

Gavin asked her who would be more distracted, the girls or the boys? She said the girls. We always knew we were in trouble having a cute girl like her. I just didn't think she'd be so easily distracted!

Declaring War

We really like the way our house is situated (except for the North-facing driveway in Colorado) with a trail and cornfield right behind us. There are some downsides though, the biggest being mice! Today, we declared war on the mice that have been sneaking into the basement. Unfortunately, this means taking every can of food off the shelves to clean everything up. We found their favorite thing to eat was a whole bag of butterscotch chips! Can't say I blame them, but yuck!

Here's to Planning Ahead

I was so glad Jamie planned ahead to take some newborn pictures of Michael. Here he is just two weeks old.








What better way to celebrate your pregnancy than to schedule newborn pictures for the spring!