Damon loves his "Baybay"

For those of you with both male and female children, you know how easily this can happen!  Damon just LOVES this raggedy ol' baby of Payton's and carries it around with him wherever we go.

Noteworthy

With being busy, sick, having our computer in Miami getting a new hard drive, and getting ready to leave next week for our month-long vacation to Colorado, we have been away from our blog.  But we have some noteworthy news to share this week- Brennan's experiment for the school science fair won first place in the 1st and 2nd grade category. We were impressed because Brennan thought up everything on his own and carried out most all of it by himself.

His experiment- does a paper airplane fly further with a pointed nose or a flat nose.  And surprisingly, the results showed that out of two identical paper airplanes, the one with a folded, flat nose flies much further than a pointed nose airplane.  Go figure.... 

I think Payton should have won first place also in her age group for her fun and unique experiment.  Her experiment- is Dora the Explorer's head (proportionately) the same size as a real person.  After taking measurements from many different test subjects, her results showed (if you didn't already know) that Dora's head is way too big for her body! The pictures on the bottom of her presentation show our test subjects if they lived in Dora's world.  

As a side note, this awesome tree house is inside the library at school. The inside is hollow so the children can go inside and take the stairs up to the balcony during library time.  

"Hello" and "goodbye"

One thing about living here, people come and go often, so we have to get used to saying "goodbye" to friends.  But it is fun to meet new friends from all over the world.  

"Goodbye" to Daniel, born in Jamaica but moved to Florida.  

"Goodbye" to Morgan, who moved back to the States.  

"Goodbye" to Sonali, from India, who moved to Dubai in the Middle East.  

"Hello" to our new friends from Curacao, Jillian and Christian.  

One cool dude

Payton's birthday

We had a "low-key" but fun day for Payton's birthday on Wednesday.  She brought a little prize to each of her classmates at school.  In the evening we met at the ice cream shop with a few family friends from church.  Payton shared her cupcakes (and ice cream) with more people than those who were invited, those of you there know what we're talking about.  :)

Elder Blackham really isn't as crazy as he looks.  

The Sowards.

The B's.  (President B. isn't as crazy as he looks either.)

At home we ate Domino's Pizza and since we already had our cupcakes, Payton had a "fruitcake" and blew out her candles.  It is funny that she really does prefer this dessert (strawberries, kiwi, and mango) to a cake.  

She got a few exciting gifts, but this was pretty much the universal look when she opened each one.  

It's someones birthday!

Happy 5th birthday to our sweet-n-sour, always-on-the-go, stand-up-for-herself girl.  We love you.  

Some new faces in town

Two friend's in the branch had their baby girls in the last month and both babies were blessed on Sunday.  Here I am with Jaimie and baby girl (she is wary of internet predators knowing the identity of her daughter, so sorry, no face shot) and below is Shav, who I don't think minds her picture on my blog, especially since she looks so good after giving birth.