Happy Birthday Marc!

Guess Who's Three?
Marcus!

Marc had his third birthday on April 19th! He was so excited about his train cake. This was my attempt at culinary creativity. I thought the idea was great, but the final product could use a bit of improvement, but luckily three year olds don't really care as long as it looks half decent and tastes good.
Everyone seemed to enjoy the cake. It didn't eat any because it had three things in it that I can't eat: Milk, wheat, and refined sugar.
He was blessed to have his grandmother "gran", his great-grandmother "grandma", his auntie Lisa, and his Uncle Troy come over to help celebrate his birthday! That made him happy, but aldo sad that he couldn't "ride in Gran's car." He wanted to go home with them. :(
But, while they were here we had a good time. Gran brought a pin the tail on the donkey game for the children to play. They had fun with it, although, they didn't really "get" it.

Oh, the things people say

When I took all four children grocery shopping the other day I got quite the reaction out of several people. One guy had his daughter with him who looked about 6 or 7 years old. He saw me pushing a cart with four toddlers he just stopped and stared. I smiled at him and with an astonished look on his face he said, "And I thought I had my hands full!" then he continued to stare, so his daughter counted the kids and said, "four, Dad, there's four." He said, "I know, I can count. Wow!"
Another couple watched me as I was bagging our groceries. Three of the children were trying to "help" but it was making things go slowly. Anyway, the wife asked how old the children were, and I told her. The husband said, "How do you do it?" I said, "A lot of patience and a lot of energy."
One lady that I had seen in a store last week and also this morning said to me that every since she saw me last week she just kept thinking how does she (referring to me) get anything done? I told her that's all I do is take care of them.

Another lady saw me and said with a little disgust, "Please tell me they're not all the same age."

An older cashier at wal-mart just assumed the older three were triplets and was telling me all about another set of triplets that comes into the store.

As I was leaving the WIC office one day I heard people talking behind me saying something like, "she sure has her hands full, but she's got a lot of patience too." That was nice to hear after wrestling with four toddlers through a WIC appointment I was about ready to pull my hair out inside, but luckily was staying calm on the outside. It was nice hear someone notice that I was doing a good job.

Annual Spring Ritual...Playing in the mud

How muddy can four toddlers get?

Not bad...

His pants looked worse than his face...

Okay, that's more like it, Marc!

But, Hyrum takes the cake, snotty nose and all.

Easter

We had a great Easter!




Brigham, Rebekah and I died eggs.

The Saturday before Easter we gave the children a little Easter egg hunt. They seemed to enjoy it. Sunday we enjoyed conference and family time.

and then there were four...

This little family that consisted of a dad, mom, and three children has just been expanded-whether temporarily or forever we can't be sure. (sorry I post a lot of bath pictures, it's so much easier to get them to stay in one place long enough for a picture when they're contained.) :) Last week we received a phone call asking if we would take a little boy (who used to be in our child care) as a foster care placement. I couldn't get a hold of Timothy because he was in class and the case worker needed to know within the hour. So, I said yes and an hour later I was the mother of four toddlers. Timothy came home to a surprise. "Congratulations we're going to have another child- he's already joined our family. Is that okay?" (Not that there was much he could do about it by then...but luckily he was fine with it.)
Meet Marcus: He is an almost three year-old boy who loves balls and fruit. He likes to play outside and play "with chickens". Marc (as we like to call him) has been in our child care off and on for about 2 years. So he is familiar to us and has made a fairly smooth transition into our family. Still, as you can imagine, he was pulled away from his mother and hasn't seen her for over a week and misses her and his other family members. He had a hard time going to bed and sleeping the first two nights with us, but is doing well now. Luckily his grandma sent his favorite blanket along with some of his other stuff two days after he was placed with us. He is attached to his blanket and likes to chew on the corners. As you can probably see in the picture below, the corners are black (but clean) because he chews on it so much. It has been a bit of an adjustment for all of us adding him to our family. It's also hard not knowing how long he's going to be with us. But for now he's ours and we'll love and take care of him.

Together forever

On Saturday, April 10th three beautiful children dressed all in white were brought into a beautiful room in the Portland Temple where their grandparents, aunts, uncles, and friends were waiting to witness the miraculous power of God bind these children to their loving adoptive parents for time and all eternity.

In the temple we caught a glimpse of eternity.

It was truly a beautiful experience.