Henry turns 8

What fun we have had this week. Henry turned 8 on the 11th and we had both sets of Grandparents here for his birthday and baptism. His cousin Amanda came from Utah and his Aunt and Uncle came with their child from Detroit. We are grateful for such a supportive family and thank those that were able to come.

Henry's Birthday
The cousins




Mom, Henry and Dad...could I be bigger? Of course I can, I still have 14 weeks to go.

Sadie

What's the deal with this pose?

Thank goodness for Digital Cameras

How mad would I have been if I had developed a roll of film and this is what was on it? 30 pics of this....

I think that I will remember what my computer looks like in 30 years (or are they documenting some high score?). I also don't think that my messy computer room needs to be documented. I do think the antenna toppers are cool though...

Candy Chains

Ben's family has a Christmas tradition of making candy chains. One piece of candy a day for the month of December. My mother-in-law is nice enough to count out the candy, cut the ribbon and send it all to us. Last night we constructed ours. Henry wasn't crazy about some of the candy options, so he pulled out his Halloween candy and put some of that on instead. Whatever works! Thanks, Annette.

Washington DC

Thanksgiving this year did not include a turkey, trimmings or any of the other usual festivities. This however is not unusual for us. I often plan a road trip over Thanksgiving. I have been promising the kids since we got here that we would go to Washington DC. I got tickets to tour the Capitol. Henry was in charge of taking pictures there. Here are some examples:


The last one is in front of the Capitol where they are setting up for the inaugaration. We also went to the National Air and Space Museum. The kids, and Mom, were pretty tired after this (it was only about 1:00) and we called it quits and went back to the hotel. I fell asleep and Ben took the kids to the hot tub. Saturday we went to the newly re-opened National American History Museum. This is one of my favorite museums. The have put in a couple of hands-on areas, which is where we spent most of our time, but we also went and saw The Star Spangled Banner flag in it's new permanent display. We also went to the National Archives and saw the Bill of Rights, the Constitution and Declaration of Independence.
Sunday all we did was Sacrament meeting. I was beat. Monday morning we went to the Washington Monument, where the kids were relieved to find out that they didn't have to walk up all 898 steps. We spent the rest of the day retrieving the car from my mom's cousin's house near Georgetown, getting new tires (one blew out on me when I was driving it to park...thanks AAA.) and getting home. I think that we were all pretty tired. I'm glad we went though.