Jacob Thomas Selim

Jacob was born four years ago!  Jeremy likes to tell people it was an easy delivery because we got to the hospital at 9 something in the morning and Jacob was born at 11:30 ish. But, it was a crazy intense one! And it started long before we made it to the hospital! :)

 I am so glad he is our son and he is getting so big and so smart. He made his name out of train tracks, I only helped with the 'B'. 

His birthday was April 16th and it was a bit of a crazy day.  I performed a play for the first time in seven years at a nursing conference in Gilbert

 which is about 2 hours from here. My wonderful sister in law watched the boys for me. She lives only minutes from the hospital where we performed. It worked out perfectly. Thank you so Emily! This way I only had to leave the boys for the time I was at the performance rather than the four hour round trip plus the three hours I was at the hospital.  And Emily made Jacob's birthday fun for him.  We drove back and 

met up with  Jeremy and Andrew and had Taco Bell for dinner. Jacob wanted cheese roll-ups for his birthday. The birthday boy always get to pick what we have for dinner and this made it pretty easy for me. :) He even included it in the birthday wish list: I want a 5 button race cars, a dump truck, a cheese roll up, etc..

They also get to pick what kind of cake they have. At first,  Jacob wanted a circle cake with numbers like a clock and a dump truck in the middle. I managed to convince him that it might be more fun for it to be a big dump truck

cake instead.  Sometimes, convincing him of anything can be a hard job. He has very strong opinions and ideas!  He helped me do the food coloring for the icing and he helped with the black icing details.  He is a really great helper.  We sang him happy birthday and blew out each candle one by one. He told me that when you are four years old that you don't have to eat food anymore. When you are so many years you don't need dinner, you can just have candy and cake. :) He is so funny. 

We gave him a big dump truck and

 he loved it. He loved all his presents and Thank you so much to all his aunts and uncles and grandmas and grandpa that gave him presents.  We met Lynne on Saturday at the half way point between us to continue the celebration. We watched Monsters vs Aliens and then went to Peter Piper Pizza for lunch. Everyone had a really fun day.

4 things I love about Jacob:

I love to talk to him - his logic gets him out of trouble all the time. I love the way he can explain himself and make me understand what is happening in his brain.

He loves his brothers. He is so good with Michael and loves to play with him and help him. He and Andrew are such close friends. They play together so well - most of the time!

He is a great helper. He tries to help me everyday. I can't make a meal without him      

pulling up his stool to watch and help. He throws away the dirty diapers outside and is pretty good at putting away his toys. 

He is so smart. He is a great counter and is learning to read. He is a pro with the computer games on PBS Kids. He is going to be really ready for Kindergarten.

Easter

We had a great Easter this year.  A little crazy, but still great. I had a rehearsal on Saturday morning and then Jeremy had a last minute meeting, so our great plans were pushed back. It still turned out to be a nice plastic egg hunt and dinner over at Emily's and then over to Lynne's for bedtime. We woke up on Easter and opened presents from Lynne. She gave the boys a movie and a book about Christ's life and resurrection. When Andrew opened the book he said, ' I got Jesus!' That is what Easter is all about, right? I am glad that we all can open that gift and be grateful for our Savior. 

This is a little silly, but I wanted all the boys to match on Easter. So, it took a bit of arranging to have three of everything, ties, shirts, pants, belts, etc for church.  But, I managed it by the time we left on Saturday. So, they were all dressed and ready to go and about to head into Lynne's family room to take pictures when Michael decided he wanted to stand out and be an individual. He had a crazy explosive diaper which thankfully only knocked the pants out of commission.  I did not have a back up pair of navy church pants for Michael or any suitable pants at all, but my ever prepared husband reminded me of the back up clothes we have in the car (we have a complete change of clothes in a big ziploc for each of the boys). It turned out Michael's emergency pants were a little casual, but served in a pinch.  I was a little disappointed about the now not quite matching outfits, but that is how life goes.  No great family picture this year, but I tried to include some so you could see their ties at least.

We decided that the Easter Bunny would come while we were away for church and we would do the secular parts of Easter after we had focused on the Resurrection and Atonement. So, the Easter Bunny left church for a bit to run home to Lynne's house and hide the baskets and eggs.  He did a great job hiding everything and then wrote a note for the boys trying to tie in the Easter egg hunt/Easter bunny with Christ and went outside to put it on her front door for them to find. Unfortunately, the door locked behind him with Lynne's house keys inside. Thankfully, he had his keys still with him and headed back to church.  Emily had a spare key to Lynne's house, so we only had to wait about 10 -15 minutes after we got back from church to make it in for the big hunt. Thanks again, Emily!  The boys had a great time and loved their baskets, thanks Lynne for all your contributions, and even Michael began to get it a little. He certainly understood there was chocolate in his basket and nothing, not even the foil wrappers were going to keep him from eating it. :) We had a wonderful Easter dinner and a fun time all weekend, even with the hiccups. 

We have been talking about Resurrection for a little while, leading up to Easter, reading the New Testament, etc.  We talked about how the spirit leaves the body, the body is buried or put in a tomb or cave like Jesus was and then later the body and spirit are brought back together and then Jesus went back to Heaven with his body.  Over the same period of time we have been talking about, Andrew and Jacob have found two little dead baby birds in our back yard. We have a great big Saguaro cactus that I am sure holds a myriad of nests.  So, we buried the baby birds and talked about how the spirit left the body, etc.  A day later Andrew comes in and says Heavenly Father must not like this baby bird, his body is still here, it is still in the ground.  Why isn't he up in Heaven? At least resurrection is a concept we are beginning to understand. I am grateful for Christ's sacrifice so that we can all be resurrected one day and live with our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ again. Hopefully, He will like us. :) I know He will, even if we don't deserve it.

Random Pics

I decided to do the sixth picture of the sixth folder tag, but this computer doesn't store photos that way, so I am going to try to find 6 random pictures to post. :) Then, we had too many pictures, so I had to keep going. I think now there are 10 random pictures. :)

Camping!

On Friday, we took our family camping for the first time. We loved it and decided it needed to be repeated, even though the Bear Warning sign kept Andrew a little too on the alert. :) The kids went to sleep well in the tent and Michael even took a nap in the tent on Saturday. We went hiking , made several fires, roasted hot dogs and marshmallows for s'mores. Jeremy woke up early on Saturday and went out for more firewood and made us all breakfast. It was so fun to watch Jeremy teach the boys how to make a fire and put up a tent. The boys and I did some serious rock climbing where Andrew's shoe fell off and we saw several wild animals. We saw crazy chipmunks and Andrew kept trying to talk to them, several really brave and beautiful birds, Jacob saw a rabbit, the boys both saw different lizards, I went to the scary bathroom and had to search for courage to enter after watching a mouse scurry away. Then after the boys were all sleeping, Jeremy and I were sitting by the fire and we heard some rustling sounds. Jeremy shined the flashlight near the noise and we watched a skunk(!?!) casually walk by! Oh, the irony, because our bedtime story was Curious George Goes Camping, in which George meets a skunk, puts out a fire and takes a bath in tomato juice. Thankfully, the skunk is probably pretty used to having people around, so we had no need for any tomato juice.

It was nice to be surrounded by trees and the weather was beautiful. I ate way too many s'mores, but we all had a great time. Jeremy is really excited for when the boys can help carry the load. Poor guy, we all tried to help, but Jeremy carried the brunt of it all. He is a great outdoorsman. He makes me feel safe and taken care of.

Texas!

I just returned from the land of my birth (I was born in Houston a little more than 29 years ago) where I celebrated my birthday a couple of weeks late with my family there. I took a trip all by myself. It was a little surreal the whole time, I only had to take care of myself, no little boys! I missed them, but it was really nice to sleep in! I took advantage of the no children situation I was in and tried to do all the things I usually had to get a babysitter for. I had my hair done, I went to lunch and shopping with Alexa (it was so fun to catch up and see her beautiful house and feel so at home with her), I went to the temple, went to Time Out for Women on Friday night and all day Saturday. We went out to great restaurants where I didn't even have to look at the kids menu or keep little boys in their chairs. I stayed up late talking with Donna, I enjoyed all the green grass and plants that Arizona doesn't have (hooray for bluebonnets!). I loved spending time with my Mama and my sisters. I ate Texas BBQ and even took some home to Jeremy. I read two books. It was a wonderful trip. 

Before I left, I tried to prepare my boys. Jacob told me in a very determined voice, We are coming with you! When I told him that I only had one plane ticket, he said, "Okay, then we will be the men who fly the plane!" Jacob was very brave when I left, but Andrew and Michael were sad. I talked to them on the phone a couple times and via the web cam once. They had a great time without me. :) I came home to a welcome home banner made up of drawings from each of my boys and beautiful tulips. I am happy to be home and ready to be a even better wife and mother, completely rejuvenated.  Michael is not sure what to think. He didn't want me to put him to bed last night. He is really confused. I think a little mad at me.  I think our relationship will recover. :)

Change

                                                                                                                                              I have just been looking at my children and thinking how much they have grown.  And then they will do or say something that seems so grown up.  A trip down memory lane was in order. The boys and  I watched as they slowly grew up in iPhoto. And we came across these pictures of Michael's first real bath right after we took some other bath pictures. It has been 20 months and looked at how much they have changed! 

Tax Return

Just a cute picture

After

Before ( with a crazy Andrew)

I think our television could sense the extra money in the form of our tax return that was now resting comfortably in our savings account.  Our bank account was not quite accustomed to having so much there. So, our television decided to take action and turn colorblind or make us all feel colorblind. The color just went out. Jeremy said that it didn't look all that different to him.  We say thank you to Costco for giving us a good deal and broadening our viewing pleasure.

This was the first TV Jeremy and I have ever bought. Our first TV was a gift from Bob and Laura - they had decided they didn't want a TV, so they gave us the one that was in the house. :)

Then we inherited the one that just decided it wanted to think in black and white when Grandma died. So, it was kinda fun to buy one together. We really like it. I know that it is a little funny to post about this. :)