Nathan's Busy Two Weeks

Whew! Nathan has had a lot of activities that put him smack dab in the middle of the spot light. Nathan is a little guy in a big family...it's good for him to get all the attention for a change.

Nathan's birthday was on Groundhog's Day. Not many people know when Groundhog's Day is, but Nathan does!! Nathan is the second child, the second son, and he was born on 02/02/02. Even more fun, he is part of the 2020 graduating class!

This year Nathan turned 8. We had a family party with presents and frosted brownies. (Nathan didn't want a cake and I was glad to be freed from the task of creating something fabulous.) Our family tradition is to go out to eat at the birthday person's restaurant of choice. Nathan picked a place called "The Hard Hat Grill."

Pictures of the party are below.

The brownie cake. I haven't put this little effort into making a "cake" in a long time! It was nice.

Presenting the "cake" while everyone sang "Happy Birthday." No, I'm not pregnant...too bad my gut doesn't know it.
We get to cut our own cake on our birthday. No one was going to rob Nathan of that privilege!

Daniel was the official videographer. It's nice when the kids start to be HELPFUL. But why do they always have to sit on the table?

There were some characters there, too.

Leah: Nathan thinks he's in charge, but I'm really the one running the show. Why does he think I sit by him, anyway?

Rebekah: Put some brownie right here!

Sarah: I'm telling you, I KNOW I'm ready for chocolate!

There were presents.
Some were easy to open.

Some were near impossible.

Joseph took advantage of his small size to sneak away the best presents!

Nathan also had his first birthday party ever. He's a deprived child, I know. I had to talk him into this one as it was, then I had to convince him to invite more than one friend. He invited 5, 4 came. You'll notice Joseph at the side of the picture...plotting the right time to sneak away more presents.

Since I narrowly avoided making a birthday cake, I was more than willing to buy one for the party. It was handy that the Super Bowl was the next day. I found a cake/cupcake combo with football rings and a goal post design. When we were picking it out, Nathan didn't recognize the design and said, "But I'm not 4." We are not a big sports oriented family. :)

And of course, turning 8 means getting BAPTIZED! Nathan has been looking forward to this. Yesterday was his big day. Our stake doesn't host baptisms; it's up to the individual families. We started at 11 AM and were done in 30 minutes. It was a nice, quiet, unhurried event.

This was our best picture from the morning. It's getting harder and harder to get a good shot with these crazy kids! Pay attention to what Sarah's doing and you'll know what part of our problem was.

Or you could just look at these snapshots.

Four of Nathan's five grandparents were able to be to his baptism. We got some shots with them and now he has their pictures in the back of his BRAND NEW SCRIPTURES!

Some shots as we waited to begin.

Joseph woke up with a fever (102.6) that morning and wasn't feeling too social. It climbed to 103 before the day was out. Rebekah was sick, too. Her fever was a lot lower; it hovered just under 100.

I stayed home with Leah, Rebekah, Joseph and Sarah today while Chad took Daniel and Nathan to church. Rebekah and Leah sound sick, but Joseph really is not feeling well. He hasn't eaten and just lies around, crying. Poor guy. He can't keep anything down (and all he's really had is water) - Chad and I have both been thrown up on.

Hopefully, tomorrow will be a better day for him. I'm hoping it is better because there is no school tomorrow and these kids CANNOT be in the same room without something going wrong. (Like just this second. Anyone need a 9-year-old boy and a 6-year-old girl?)