Monday, June 7, 2010

Visiting Jacob's Family

It was so nice for us to go visit Jacob's family over the Memorial Day weekend. They are such a cute little family and we did lots of fun things while we were there.


The kids insisted that we have Grandpa's famous French toast for breakfast every morning. It required the kids donning their aprons so they could assist in the process.




I loved the miniature "Ben Mail" mailbox that sits on their cabinet. Sure enough, the red flag was up showing that there were letters in there that needed to be sent to Ben. What a cute reminder for them of their missionary uncle who would love to receive letters from them.


It was fun to see Logan again and see how much he's grown since we last saw him as a newborn.




We went to Natalie's school for school lunch--but note how we didn't eat school lunch--and then went to her room so she could show-and-tell Logan to her class.



The kids loved going to the park and looking for 4-leaf clovers--or weeds in Luke's case.




The kids all loved doing artwork. This is Natalie's rendition of herself, her using white board markers to write on the window using the technique given in practicing her spelling words, Emma and Luke coloring and then Emma's finished coloring page.





Laurie even got in on the artwork action when she got busy coloring a draft of where she wanted the placement of various things in their garden to be planted while Natalie colored a very accurate picture of everything in their backyard.



Farmer Jacob had gotten the garden all tilled and then got a little help from Glen in planting the garden.



I really love sitting at their kitchen table and looking out their big windows at the back yard.


They have a great yard and lots of open field space beyond the yard. Omaha is a really beautiful place to live.

Friday, June 4, 2010

It's a Baby!

Just when I was convinced there was a watermelon growing inside Sarah's tummy...


...she proved me wrong. Sarah gave birth to a baby boy today. Eli Excell has arrived weighing 7 lbs. 14 ozs. Congratulations to Jeff and Sarah!!

Thursday, June 3, 2010

Brooke's 3rd Birthday

Today is Brooke's birthday and we joined the Golden family in food and fun at Pirate Island.







Dallas and Rebecca invited us to take a look at their garden plot. Brooke had a great time surveying the area with her pirate spyglass.



Here's the video of Brooke opening her birthday present. It appears she loved the bag more than the gifts inside.



HAPPY BIRTHDAY, BROOKE!!

Winter Quarters Temple

We can now add another temple to our list of different temples that we've attended. We made that our first stop when we arrived in Omaha.



When we got to the Winter Quarters Temple, we noticed that there were lots of missionaries arriving at the same time and I couldn't help but think about our missionary son all through the session.


For some reason I didn't quite picture Benjamin looking quite like this as I thought about him far away on the other side of the world.



I'm just always very happy to know that there are many people everywhere praying for the safety and success of all the missionaries. That gives me great comfort when I see that our son has been walking barefoot through floods and high waters to spread the gospel in West Malaysia.