Substance of Faith: Everything but Dave's Birthday...

It's been another exciting week with the G's. I need to start writing this stuff down on my planner so I can remember it... We've been able to pepper in a bunch of fun things this week. First off, let me say that it has been BEAUTIFUL! weather. The kind of weather where I can leave my windows open all day and not have the A/C kick on. I love it! It has meant a lot of park trips and being outside. With such good weather, the boys and I went up to this totally awesome park in Kaysville known as "Castle Park" on Thursday. It was amazing! Apparently it was designed by Elementary school kids (who else can better design a playground?). The park had play structures for both older kids and a "tot lot" for the little ones. And it was the kind of play structure that would be fun for me to run around and play on as well (with the boys). We met up with a good friend of mine, Kim, and her kids. It was great for me to have an adult to talk to, and Ethan had kids to play with. It was interesting to see Ethan with other kids- he's really good at watching out for others (usually he's a really good big brother, it was nice to see that it carries over to other kids). We spent the whole afternoon at the park before we had to go back and pick up Dave from work (a record for us). Anyway- check out how awesome this park is!

The rest of the week has been filled with a bunch of small, but exciting things. Ethan went to his second day of preschool on Tuesday. He loved it. I could tell right away what letter he had been learning- A. When I picked him up, Ethan was telling me all about ants and alligators and apples and "ah ah ah." It was really cute. He was super excited about all of his new friends and what he was learning. It was fun to talk to him about his day as well. We also filled out his first book order. Dave and I were thinking we'd let him pick a few books from the book order (each book was about $3) to get him excited about them. So naturally, the book that Ethan absolutely wanted was the book Dinotrux (dinosaurs and robots- what little boy would want anything else?). It also happened to be like the one book that only came in hardcover and was full price (DOH!). So we'll get that for him for Christmas and we ordered him a few other dinosaur books instead. Thursday, as Ethan was getting ready to go to school, we found out it had been cancelled that day due to an emergency for the teacher. I passed the message along to Dave who had to break the news to Ethan. It was pretty heartbreaking to listen to Ethan cry because he couldn't go. (Let's hope he keeps up that enthusiasm for school in the future). He had been so looking forward to going. (And Dave was looking forward to it as well). Instead Dave packed the boys up and took them over the Village Inn by our house and took them out to breakfast. That seemed to perk Ethan up a little bit, but he didn't miss the chance to tell everyone about how he wasn't able to go to preschool that day.
Wednesday, the boys had their first "special" portraits taken. Our neighbor, Brittany, is a phenom with a camera and she offered to take some pictures of the boys. They turned out amazing! So amazing in fact, that I got them printed & framed and gave them to Dave for his birthday (which he loved). Ethan was a ham for the camera (as always) and we got a ton of pictures of him smiling and looking at the camera. Emery was a bit more difficult, but we still came out with a few good ones... Here are my favorites-

And have I mentioned that Emery finally has a 5th tooth? It's coming on the bottom, near the front 2. He's finally sleeping a little bit better now, so I think the worst of the teething is over (until the next one comes in). Emery is also becoming quite good at coloring. It used to be that he didn't really care about drawing, but in the past week Emery has become really good at holding colored pencils & the picture he brought home from nursery actually looks like he was attempting to color the picture. Emery has also become quite the climber. He is almost unstoppable. If you sit down for a moment, Emery will attempt to climb you as well.
And for baby #3... not much to report. I'm tired, I'm getting fatter (more uncomfortable), and I can feel him move a lot more often. Those movements are also getting easier to feel from the outside too. Now we just need to work on timing so the boys can feel him move.
I felt like Dave's Birthday deserves it's own blog post, so check that out next...

And now for a bunch of random, silly pictures. For family home evening on Monday (one of the rare times we actually have a structured evening) we played games with poker chips, which basically involved the boys stacking and throwing them. Or in Emery's case, putting them on Daddy's eyes... Emery also took the opportunity to try to beat up on Dave.