Elijah's birthday...and other news

I have been meaning to post about Elijah's birthday for a couple of weeks. We can hardly believer he is 5 years old already. He was so excited for his birthday and disappointed when he did not get to go to kindergarten the very next day. Elijah is such a sweet boy... we love his smile and laugh and soft spoken nature. He has a very tender heart and always wants to make the people around him happy. We had a fun family night on his birthday, then he had a party at a place called "The Wild" ( similar to Bouncing Bears) with a few friends. He wanted a Super Mario Brothers cake and although it did not turn out as cool as the cakes Dad always made, it wasn't too bad!

In other news....Caleb made it through his first real cold this week. He started developing a cough on Monday and I brought him to the doctor right away

, but o

ther than a few long nights with his cough, it never turned in to much and he is over it for the most part. He is growing quickly. He can almost sit on his own now, though he still needs help to balance. He still charms us all with his constant smiles and laughs.

Courtney and Aubrey are in the middle of girl scout cookie sales. We just broke off from our troop, and became a sister troop, so now I am one of the leaders of a very small troop along with the other two moms. Along with doing door to door sales for the last couple of weeks and the rest of this month, we will do booths outside of stores throughout the month of March. I will be glad when it is over and the girls are able to plan something fun to do with the money they made.

Mark has had a busy couple of weeks. He was called in for jury duty and actually was in the box for three days and it looked like he was going to be on the jury. It was a homicide case expected to last 4 weeks. So, we were making all the necessary adjustments to our lives and his classroom. However on the third day, the judge declared a mistrial and he was dismissed.

I have just been busy keeping everyone going to their various activities. I took the kids down to the LA Zoo this week and got to meet up with Addie, one of my favorite mission comps. She lives in Arizona, but her inlaws live near LA, so we had a fun day visiting with her and her two little girls. She is a photographer and took a few informal shots of Caleb, so we'll see how they turned out. I am also excited ( sort of) that I will be getting braces on tomorrow. I should say I am excited for the end result in 12-15 months, not so much for what it will take to get there.

I think that's about it for news from bakersfield...love you all!