Gathering the eggs

 If you ever come to Cleveland you will want to come to  Babyland General, home of the Cabbage Patch Dolls.
 

It is quite the experience

It is a fun, silly way to spend a couple of hours

 It is an experience for all of your senses. The scent of baby powder hits you at the door and the sound of crying babies blaring from speakers throughout the "hospital"

It was great to spend time with Aunts and Cousins!!

 
Dad the chicken whisperer

This poor girl is constantly picked on. I wonder if it's cause she has hairy feet?? I wanted to call her Bilbo...

 I like to call her "The Queen Mother" she's a nasty old thing to the other hens but is quite sweet to me. Well, as sweet as a chicken can get.

 "The Wanna-be Queen Mother"

When we first moved up to Montana in 2004 we discovered the Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle audio books. They are about a magical old lady who lives in an upside down house and helps children learn their manners and to obey their parents in all sorts of odd ways. One of the stories was about a girl who was very rude and was always calling people names. The solution? Give the girl a parrot that only can say annoying or mean things. 

Now as my siblings and I were 2,4 and 6, "stupid" was not only considered a mean thing to say, it was a "bad word". Woe to him who called something or heaven forbid, someone stupid. 

Well in this Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle story one of the parrots' favorite sayings was "Bonjour, Stupid!" When we first heard this our 2,4, and 6 year old selves were tickled pink. We went around saying it in a funny parrot voice for who knows how long!! 

As we have been preparing to start learning French one of my siblings remembered this and brought it up. It provided something for us to laugh about and I realized that it probably wasn't far from the truth. Thankfully  today, during our first day of French- I didn't feel stupid! I was very thankful for being able to do Rosetta Stone for the last couple months even though it wasn't my favorite thing to do. I was very pleased to find that I have learned more than I even realized and I think that we are getting the hang of it!!

Today we learned typical greetings in French as well as some vocabulary and grammar. As always, grammar was my least favorite thing but it really wasn't bad at all.

I would appreciate your guys' prayers as I am working on catching up with school and learning French. I'll keep everyone updated on our progress!

Hey Everyone! Our long trip out to California ended last Saturday after spending a lot of time with friends and family. I'm gonna give you the photo version of the trip, even though not all the pictures are of the best quality!



We started the trip out with going to the Grand Canyon




We went hiking in Sedona with some friends we stayed with in Arizona

My hair is quite long and fluffy when brushed out!

I got my "tresses trimmed" courtesy of my Wonderful Aunt





We brought the snow with us!

Pretty Girl!

We were able to go to Disneyland courtesy of a sweet cousin! It was so special and fun to spend time with their family.

Autopia

 Original Disneyland picture in front of the castle




A fun time with My Grandma, Aunt and Cousins. We all got together at my Great-aunt and uncles house and had an awesome time.



Sadly I was sick during theses couple days so I wasn't able to be with everyone as much as I would have liked to :(  But when everyone went to In 'n' Out they were sure to bring me back some food!

Another pretty girl! This one was also quite sticky,,

We were able to spend some time with some of our dear, sweet friends for a little while but definitely not long enough

Jesse and Ezra made a chariot out of an old stroller and had a ball with it

We were blessed with a night of fellowship with friends that we haven't seen in a long time

Some of our cousins introduced us to the Beatles Rock Band on the Wii. I didn't really know any Beatles songs, so it was fun to be introduced. So for the rest of the trip we had the Yellow Submarine, Hard Days night and Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds running though our heads.

We were very impressed with his heart making skills

The day after we got home was Dad's birthday! Someone brought a 7 lb. chocolate cake from Costco that was to die for!! Death by chocolate! I highly recommend it but it is definitely not for the weak at heart.