New Year

A new year of Preschool has arrived.  The local school does a preschool for 3 days a week (full days). In Iowa, Kindergarten is full day so I guess they start early here.  I was a little bit nervous for a full day for him, but the last two times have been kind of nice to enjoy some alone time with Mercedes.  He loves it and I think he learns a lot at school.

 His new teacher Ms. Croll.

He is getting so big and independent I don't even know what to do anymore.  I love this kid so much and hope that I am teaching him the right way.

Family Reunion

Todd and I were pretty blessed this summer in that we had family reunions on both sides of our family.  So we got to see almost all of our family in the span of 2 months.  The second reunion we had was a Sloat family reunion.  So it was for Todd's grandmother's posterity.  We decided to have the reunion in Nauvoo, IL since it was kind of a mid point for everyone and it would provide a chance for people to see LDS church history sites.  We stayed at a place called Camp Nauvoo.  There were cabins with electricity and air conditioning, but terrible beds.  There was also a nice lodge that we spent most of our time at anyway.  On Thursday we did a little touring and saw some of the pioneer things.

 Watching how rope was made.

 These three were always in cahoots and defending the kingdom from the bad girl Payton.  Poor girl she is the oldest girl and the next oldest girl is 3.  So she gets to play with the boys a lot.

 Just hanging around while everyone is trying to catch up on each other's lives.

 Stuart did a devotional for us the first night and talked a little about his mission.  He also talked about how Gram's decision to join the church affected so many people.  I'm not sure of the number of people there are (it was figured out and told to me but I don't remember) but it is quite a bit.

 Two of my favorite people in the whole world.  She really loves her daddy.

 We played this game called "Kup" (I think) sounds like coop.  Anyway it sounded like fun (I didn't actually play so I am unaware of all the rules).

 Cute Dallin.  We had three babies at the reunion.

 Playing with the playdough while the adults played outside.  Anne and Reed brought some fun things to do while the adults did other things.  The kids played them and ran around the camp as well.

 I love Naomi's picture in this.

 Anne with little Dallin.

 She loves to "cuhder".  So she was in heaven with the sidewalk chalk.  She had it all over her most of the time.

 Sweet Eli ended up with Hand and Foot disease during the trip, which we didn't know until after the trip.  Poor guy - they thought it might be Chicken Pox at one point.  I think he only spread it to 3 other kids, neither of mine got it, so that wasn't too bad.  He was happy anyway though.

 As I might have mentioned before to "sing" is her absolute favorite thing to do.  A must when we go to Papa's house.

 

 I was on the Activity Committee for the reunion and so put together a jeopardy game of family trivia.  It was a fun activity and we got to learn some facts about people we didn't know.

 A group shot of everyone that made it.  We missed a few of the Dow's

 We had a talent show one night and Todd got to be the MC.

 The Murry family singers.

 Hyrum telling a joke.  (Kason also told some cute jokes.)

Todd's Uncle Bart singing with his grandkids.

 Grammy sang some songs that Gram Call taught her when she was little.

 Mandy played the piano.

Justin, Rheanna and their children sang a song for us.

All in all it was a great time.  We had a lot of fun seeing family and hope that someday we will get to have another reunion.

Disneyland

My summer has been crazy. So I never finished about our trip to California.  We spent the majority of our time in Anaheim at Disneyland, California Adventure and we even traveled up one day to Hollywood Studios. I am not the best picture taker and so I stopped taking my camera after day one at Disneyland.  (Don't worry my mother has a ton of pictures somewhere.)

 Disneyland parade.  We had so much fun watching the floats and the acts.  They were really well done.

 Some of the characters we met.  As you can tell only Lincoln would stand by them.  Mercedes was terrified of the characters.

 A group shot at our Character breakfast.  We saw most of the characters here and I am glad we spent the extra money for it.  Since I know that if we ever go again Lincoln will be too "old" to care about these guys.  I was pretty sad that the Cars Land opened up 13 days after we left.  Lincoln loves Cars right now and would have enjoyed that so much.

 Mercedes at the thought of getting too close.

 Very apprehensive.

 A nice water area we found for the kids to play in while some of the adults went on a ride.

A little family picture outside of the Frog and Toad ride.  All in all it was a fantastic trip and we are glad that we got to share it with some family.  Now Lincoln wants to go to Disney World (Todd put that one into his head.)  Anyone up for a trip in a few years?!