Reid and Stefani Adopt

So summer has already ended. School starts insanely early here.  Nonetheless, Isaac was VERY excited to get to go to preschool.  Our last hooray of the summer was to go to a party at Reid's work with the kids.  They were pretty cute walking up the sidewalk together holding hands. Then we had Isaac get a haircut so he could look sharp for the new school year.   We had a special family home evening lesson in which we taught the kids that they were on "Team Archibald," and that they all needed to do their jobs to help us be a successful family.  Then they were given their own job charts to do in the morning to help us get ready for school on time.  Wednesday we got to take first day of school pictures.  Isaac had no problems saying goodbye to Mom and Dad as we dropped him off at school for the first time. Esther and Mom got some one-on-one girl time, which was nice.  She and I got to do her own "homework" while Isaac...

   Isaac was one of the last kids in his cohort to turn 4.  He felt so left behind. He's very proud of the fact that he is now four.  In fact, he keeps telling everyone the reason he can do this or that is because "now I'm four."   I hope he doesn't become super disappointed when, in 5 months, one of the girls in his group has her 5th birthday.    He originally wanted a white cake with pink dots, but daddy nixed that idea.  Luckily for his daddy, Isaac was equally excited about a minion cake.  We had a birthday party at the community pool.  I didn't get a lot of pictures because I was running around trying to get cake and food to everybody, then clean up.  But Isaac had a ball.   We also had a little mini family celebration 2 days before his party on his actual birthday.  He got to choose whatever kind of cupcake he wanted at the grocery store.  He chose mini muffins, and ate 4 of them.  Then we went b...

Aw, Memorial Day.  Our hearts were turned to the one little grave we left behind in Michigan when we moved to Florida.  Thankfully, we have a great friend there who also lost a baby around the same time as us, and she has been our hands on memorial day.  This year, I asked a special request that, if she could find them, I would like baby's breath and forget-me-nots to be planted next to Rachel's grave.  I knew that was a strange pick in flowers, and that they might be hard to find, but she took the trouble and then sent us the picture below.  I am so grateful to Lisa for doing this for us.  It is a great consolation to know that the little one we buried was not forgotten this year on memorial day. Baby's Breath (left) and Forget-me-nots (right) Memorial day weekend was not all re-visiting grief though.  We like to mix a little sunshine in with our tears and watch life sparkle, so we took a trip to St. Augustine, FL.  We got to see th...

We were just living life this week.  Reid mowed the lawn and then ate a popsicle with Isaac.  Isaac helped me build a 9 cube organizer to put toys in.  We did go to the beach on Saturday too, then went for ice-cream.  The bath tub was full of sand, and the kids were happy.  Can't ask for more than that.

This past weekend we got to go camping with some members of our congregation and other congregations of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints at the Deseret Ranch Campground in Florida.  It is beautiful there.  The purpose of this shindig was to do some service for the camp Saturday morning, but since my kids were a little too small to paint the cabins, Reid went to go paint and I watched the kids.  I had a great time playing with them.  We got to swing, play in the leaves, and climb trees.  It was a lovely campout.  This first little video was on the way there.  The kids were so excited for this campout.  

I can't count the number of times I felt humiliated by the very dramatic tantrums that Isaac throws, usually in public.  But today, I got a little love reciprocated back from Isaac that melted the humiliation away, at least for a little while.  Today we were doing the laundry together and were singing the song, "My Daddy is My Favorite Pal," from the primary children's song book, when Isaac spontaneously made up his own version of that song just for me. Here's a transcript of the words he is singing, just in case you can't understand him: "My mommy is my favorite girl and I always help her every time.  And I always do love her and I always help her with the laundry..."

Isaac has had a stream of unfortunate events that has kept us from getting updated family pictures.  In December, he got lice, and we had to shave his head.  I wanted his curls in the family pictures, so we waited for his hair to grow back.  Then, when his hair was finally coming back in, he was jumping on the couch and split his head open on the coffee table. (Note to all readers: We do not condone or encourage jumping on the furniture.  However, despite all parental attempts to plead, beg, and threaten our very active 3 year old to please stop jumping on the furniture, he insists on acting out the very popular chant "No more monkeys jumping on the bed.") Thankfully, it was a very small split and could be bandaged with a small butterfly bandage, but still, our family pictures were postponed again.  Finally, at the very end of February, we were able to get family pictures scheduled and taken.  Our friend, Jessica Gibson, was kind enough to take these pi...