President's Day

Shawn had the great idea to take the kids over to Jackson Hole and go swimming at their recreation center since there was no school on Monday.  I love escaping with ALL of my kids - having everyone  together all at once is getting to be more and more of a miracle all of the time!

At Pizza Hut afterwards:

There's nothing quite like blurry phone pictures;)

Valentine stuff

This post is about some of our Valentine stuff!  (At least what I took pictures of)

It's about a Girl's Choice Valentine's dance the day before; Caden went with Hannah Griffith:

Hannah was super fun and even made her own boutineer!

Cute, cute, and so sharp, both of them! I sewed Caden a bow tie and cumber-man, and was disappointed that they looked black instead of green that evening:(  They next day he wore them to church and they were green again.  Whatever......(sigh)

I posted a lot of love notes for Shawn:

And, as our tradition goes, my cupids delivered cookies to the neighbors:

We may not have cupids for very many more years because Abe is right on the verge of saying it's too embarrassing.  But how cute is this little face?!:

Our Hummer

So.... we have been waiting for a loooong time to hear what Pace is thinking:  meaning he still can't talk!  He has developed his own system of sign language, which is very effective for him and that helps everyone in the family talk for him.  He also "talks" on and on to us with a sound that is very much like humming.  This is intermingled with his sign language to add emphasis to what he says:) One day a couple of months ago, he looked at Shawn and I and started humming.  He would hum for a really long time for a long "sentence" and do shorter hums for shorter words or sentences.  He would laugh after some of the things he would "say".  Shawn looked at me and said, "He really thinks  he is talking to us!"

A month ago, I finally talked to a speech therapist about this. She said to start with getting his ears checked.  I did, and they were just fine!  So Pace is now going to speech therapy.  His therapist says that she thinks the problem is that he is such a perfectionist that he doesn't want to say anything until he can say it just perfect!  Unfortunately, that does indeed sound just like one of our kids.

Pace at speech: