Strange Parents

So the pictures of Samuel and I on this blog are usually boring, so today we decided to spice things up. Samuel hid in Seara's crib under her blankets and as she came in the room he started calling her name. It was so funny because Seara was looking under the crib, in the closet, out the door - she couldn't figure out where he was coming from! Once she found him she took advantage of the situation and got him to read her a book. So that explains that picture. The one of Lije and I is just being weird. He thought it was pretty funny! Then we have Sam making Elijah laugh, and Seara eating popcorn and laughing at me singing to her.

Well, we planted nine trees and three shrubs yesterday! I am so excited because our house is starting to look like it is lived in! Our backyard is still a lake, so we can't do sprinklers, topsoil, fence, or sod yet, but I'm crossing my fingers that our backyard will be leveled in the next few weeks. Soon enough we will have a beautiful yard! And when we do, I'm going to take a picture and put it on the blog next to a pic of the house before landscaping. I'm not doing any pics of the new trees because I want good shock factor with the comparison. Just you wait!

Our calling in the ward is as Spanish-speaking Ward Missionaries. About a year ago the stake president disintegrated the Spanish Branch and in the area where most of the Latinos live, he turned the ward into a bi-lingual ward. Well, since our area is new, as we grew the Latinos here went over to that ward rather than our ward. Now, however, there are about 20 active families in our neighborhood going to that ward, and the stake pres and bishop want us to make our ward bi-lingual as well. So, Samuel and I began a Spanish Gospel Doctrine class and we've been teaching that for a few months. Last week the Bishop called a teacher for our class, so now we'll teach Gospel Principles when we have investigators coming to the ward. The Bishop also called four translators who will be trained over the next couple weeks, and soon we'll have sacrament meeting translated into Spanish. We're also working with the couple who does the Sacrament Program to make it bi-lingual. Pretty exciting! Our only problem now is getting those families to come back to our ward - they now have callings and friends, so it makes it hard to leave. We have three that have transitioned over and are working on the rest. I'm excited to get all this in place, though, because once we have a solid base in the ward we'll be able to actually do missionary work and have somewhere secure to bring them!

Well, let's see ... Seara is getting to be a bit more of a tantrum-throwing toddler, but she still answers yes more often than no, so its not too bad yet. She likes to make deals and have you say "Okay?" so she can answer back, "Okay!" She also loves buttons, which she carefully annunciates as, "buh-Tons." Her greatest treasures are rocks. She gathers them whenever we go on walks, and when we get home she insists on keeping one and walking around the house with it. Yesterday our Home Teacher came to help plant the trees and brought his two year old daughter. I'm not sure how she did it, but Seara managed to get that poor little girl to stand there with her hand stretched out in a cup shape, while Seara filled her hands with rocks.

Elijah is rolling over quite a bit now. He only goes from stomach to back, but he's almost ready to go from his back to his stomach. He really likes to play with Seara, although I'm not sure why. Yesterday I was cleaning my bathroom and I had laid Lije on his tummy on the floor in my bedroom while I did the toilet. Well, when I came back Elijah had rolled onto his back, and Seara had stacked all the pillows from my bed on top and him and was trying to climb up on the pillows. Poor squished kid! And, when Elijah is in his swing, Seara always runs over to stop the swing. She'll stack up all these toys on the tray right in front of Lije, and then get upset when he touches them! Funny kids!