Celebrate!!

It's a blessing weekend!  Chopper and I are excited to be blessing William in church tomorrow and are celebrating all weekend long.  My dad arrived last night and Chopper's mom is also here for the weekend to spend time with us and the kids.  Kids.  It's still an effort for me to say "kids" instead of "girls".  In fact, it's still an effort for me not to call William a girl.  Of course he looks all boy and acts all boy, but to this point all my terms of endearment are girly so I'm slowly getting in "handsome" and "sweet boy" rather than the things I've been saying for 4 years now!!

Anyway, I'll get better pictures of everyone this weekend (hopefully when we're all dressed up for church tomorrow), but Grandma Whittacre has just been loving every minute she has with the kids.

She insisted today on taking the girls to the mall and getting them each a Build-A-Bear.  It's hard to see but Megan is holding a Sid (yes the character from Ice Age) and he is wearing a yellow sun dress and has pink underwear and pink cowboy boots.  Abby wanted a rabbit with Rapunzel dress.  They really enjoyed stuffing the animals and washing them but choosing animals and outfits and such was a little overwhelming.

Abby's box was almost as big as her but she wanted to carry it out of the store.

As we were leaving, we saw my brother Jeff -- oh wait, it's just a mannequin.  But my brother looks almost exactly like that -- I'm not kidding -- the one in the dark pants and shirt.  Even my parents thought so!

Chopper's mom brought back the family tree I quilted for her last Christmas and I added William's name to it.  He's officially part of the family!!!

There's his name with the rest of us . . . 

I love this quote but I can't remember who said it -- one of the Apostles I think.  My mom is already chomping at the bit to have enough kids and grandkids to have a tree too!

The rest of the day will be spent watching the Olympics, climbing all over Grandpa, and Chopper of course is smoking a brisket, Texas-style.  Even though it's 103 degrees outside.  Now that's dedication to barbecue!