I love this kid.

I haven't posted in forever, but I just found this picture on the camera and knew it deserved to be put up here. This is my boy after church one Sunday, ready to help Mommy prep the salmon marinade for Sunday night dinner. I love him SO much.

Joshua is 4!

Our silly boy turned 4 on December 18th. We had a pretty quiet day, attending church that morning and then having dinner and a little party that evening with my sister and her family and her brother-in-law and his wife.

First off, we took a family picture in front of the Christmas tree:

Maggie (my niece) had a lot of fun with the static-y balloons:
I asked Joshua a couple months before his birthday what he wanted, and all he answered with was, "A red balloon." Wish granted!

Any guesses on what Joshua's favorite color is?

See that big smile on his face? I think he liked his presents...haha

ANGRY BIRDS!!!!

Then, of course, he had to line them up, because he's silly like that. I seem to remember his Uncle Kendall doing the same thing with Easter eggs when he was younger...

What's in THIS one? :o

We have played this game almost every day since his birthday (except for when we were out of town). He loves it.CAKE!!!!

Hah...he looked so thrilled:

And a short video (Uncle Rich took it for us):

Let's see, what can I say about my silly boy? Probably the biggest thing people notice about Joshua these days, other than his size (which is huge--99.76th percentile for height, I think), is that he is an incredibly loving little boy. He gives the best hugs and kisses, says "I love you!" all the time, and loves to cuddle (or lay on people, which doesn't always seem super loving, but you get what I mean).

Joshua has tons of energy and loves to run around. His current obsession is Angry Birds, in case you couldn't tell from the pictures, and he enjoys building things and throwing things back and forth. He loves Play-Doh but would rather watch others make things with it than make things himself. He can recognize the entire alphabet, can write his name and most letters, and he got some beginner books for Christmas that he's learning to read ("BOB Books," I think they're called). He loves to sing and enjoys making up his own lyrics to songs.

We just love him and couldn't imagine life without him. Happy birthday, Joshua Logan!

Thanksgiving!!!!

After four years of hosting Thanksgiving at our house, my sister graciously offered to host, since they now have room to do so. We had a great time! It was the three of us, plus my sister and her husband and daughter, plus our other sister, plus my aunt and her friend. We ate good food and enjoyed each other's company. Good times! Of course, we have to post pictures of the event.

First off, the turkey. I used a turkey oven bag a couple years ago and have decided it's such an easy way to go, and the turkey ends up beautiful, brown, and juicy:

Me and Joshua, anxiously waiting for Uncle Rich to finish carving the turkey and Aunt Brianne to finish with...something (you can see them both in the background):
Our table! Everyone looks so thrilled to have their picture taken...

After dinner, Cody and Joshua played Wii Swordfighting (or whatever it's called). Basically, they throw an object in front of you and you're supposed to slash it a certain way. Cody used a Wii remote and Joshua used his cousin's stuffed giraffe:

Me and my love:

Our family!

The Lees:

The girls! L-R: Brianne, Maggie, Kirsti, Carina, and Jan:

Seesters!

It was a fun day. Thanks to Kirsti for hosting and thanks to everyone for spending time with us. I know it's a little late, but I just want to say, for the record, that I am thankful for my family, my God, and my new life. It's been amazing.

Snow Day!

I'm really behind on blogging. I've had a bunch of pictures that I've been saving and thinking, "I need to write a blog post about such-and-such event and post these pictures." Well, I'm finally buckling down to it, thanks to a little downtime at work (gotta love finals week! It's dead around here!).

So! We had our first (and pretty much only REAL) snowfall a few weeks ago, the Saturday before Thanksgiving. It wasn't much, but enough that Joshua wanted to go outside and play for a little while. Here he is all bundled up beforehand:

See, there really wasn't a ton of snow to speak of...and it was rather wet snow...but to a 3-year-old, it was magical.
Probably his favorite part was walking around making footprints.

He made a snowman! You may have to look really, really closely to see it. But it's there.

The snow was so wet and easily compactible (is that even a word) that it just kept sticking to my boots, to the point where I was suddenly 4-6 inches taller. Platform boots, anyone?

He played so hard that, by the time we got back inside, that kid was SWEATY. And I just love those rosy cheeks.

We haven't had much snow since then, and certainly nothing that has stuck longer than an hour or two, but it was still pretty fun. I'm sure we'll be sick of snow eventually.

I Know the Scriptures are True

Joshua participated in his first Primary Program today as part of the services for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He said his part very well ("We have four books of scripture") and sang quite enthusiastically. And he was very well-behaved, I'm hear...I couldn't really pay attention to him, as I was on the other side of the chapel, directing the Senior Primary kids. But it was a wonderful program--the kids bore their testimonies well, both through saying their parts and through beautiful songs. It was very sweet and I love how precious these kids are.

Here is Joshua, looking all dapper with his hair actually combed (you can guess how much gel we had to use to get it to actually go where we wanted it to...):

Joshua and Daddy:

Joshua and Mommy:

What a wonderful Sabbath day!

Punkins!

We carved our jack-o-lanterns today. I am somewhat proud of them this year, not because they are amazing designs or anything, but because we used pumpkins we actually grew in our garden (technically this was the only thing we grew in our garden, and we didn't even plan to do a garden...Joshua planted these seeds during a Primary lesson at church in February, and somehow the plant just flourished). That's why one of them is still partially green, by the way. We couldn't wait for it to turn orange :) Joshua requested a scary face and a silly face. Results are as follows:

He is SUCH a ham.

I love how this one ended up--Joshua just happened to look to the side as Cody snapped the picture:

Ward Halloween Party

Thanks to my sisters and their creativity, we all had costumes this year! We had already planned on Joshua being a fireman, but somehow we ended up with all in theme. Starting off, we have Joshua's lovely candy bucket:

It's so hard to get him to smile for pictures sometimes...

Can you tell what Cody was? Hint: the rectangles on his shirt are red and blue. And he's holding what he's supposed to be in his hand (and yes, that is a Transformer).

Daddy and son:

Wish I had a full-length picture of me so you can see my white shirt all covered in spots!

Mommy and son:

We had a great time at our ward's Halloween party last night. We had good chili and cornbread, played games, trick-or-treated to the doors in the building, and enjoyed the company of our ward members. Happy Halloween, everyone!