Sara's Here!

Yay! Aunt Sara's here. We've all been waiting impatiently, and the time finally arrived (much like Christmas will, despite Michael's doubts and like this baby will despite MY doubts). She got here early Saturday morning and watched the kids while Stan and I went to the temple. Despite being jetlagged, she took the kids to the park. Gwen wrote a narrative paragraph for English about it -

My Aunt Sara took my sisters, my brother and me to the park. Aunt Sara pushed me in the baby swing. I went down the slide head first with Michael. When we got there, it was really sunny, but after a while it started raining. I felt sad because we had to leave the park.

Speaking of rain, I think Sara brought a bit of Pennsylvania weather with her. We were using the air conditioning in the car on Friday and this week it finally feels like winter is here and Christmas is coming.

Sunday afternoon we went to see Richard and Lorna. We had a wonderful time visiting with them, as always. I was so busy enjoying Lorna's conversation, I didn't get any pictures of her, but here are some from our visit.

Richard got a bearded dragon for Christmas from his boss and the kids enjoyed holding it.

Hopefully, Richard also enjoyed holding them because Michael decided he was his new favorite person.

And...Gwen and Heather decided he made a good horse. Any way you look at it, he was a trooper.

Monday, Sara, the six kids and I ran errands. First we went to Rachel's optometrist appointment. Then we returned 50 library books and checked 35 new ones. Lastly we went to Costco. It was SO much easier to do with another adult to help herd. The amazing thing was that we fit all those books, eight people, 50 pounds of flour and all our other Costco food in the car. Here is a picture of the backseat before we dug Kelly and Heather out.

After we unloaded the car, I went to bring the laundry in and decided maybe I should give up on hanging the jeans and just put them in dryer on windy days.

Today, we are just doing stuff at home, so breakfast was laid back. We all read at the table. You would think with all the books we got yesterday, there would be enough to go around, but I guess not.

P.S. Giggles the hamster wants to be like Samson the parrot, but just isn't quite as patient, so it took three hands and too many picture to count for him to wish you all Merry Christmas!