Ketchup

**What a crazy summer! I have been absent from Blogger for so long I came perilously close to forgetting my log-in information. I had to wrack my brain for a few minutes to remember what I needed to do to get on here.**

I heard an amazing story the other day. I'm sure I'm the only person in the world that is fascinated by this, but I'm going to tell it anyway:

A lady in my ward was pregnant and due in 4 weeks. She went into premature labor and -- no joke -- from start to finish, delivered her baby in 1/2 hour. No typo... HALF AN HOUR!!! The hospital is in the middle of my ward boundaries and she lived only a one minute drive away, but she was alone and with the baby coming that fast, she couldn't get herself there. She delivered her own baby, alone, in the bathroom of her apartment. AND (as if the story wasn't already compelling) the baby was BREECH!! AND (yes, there's more!) the baby weighed 6lbs 6oz!!! Here's some perspective: Buttercup was 11 days overdue and weighed 6.8.

(I think my eyes bugged out of my head as I listened to her tell the story. This is the kind of thing you watch on TLC or Discovery Channel. I mentioned that to her and she agreed.)

Fortunately, the baby is okay. He is being kept in the hospital until he starts eating better, but they aren't expecting any lasting complications.

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The other day Inigo had a friend over. This friend, Bullseye, is one of his best friends. Together they rid the neighborhood of every bad guy, villain, and miscreant they can find. Not to mention, using the Force to defend the Jedi's against Scith warriors. Anything they get their hands on turns immediately into weapons. Typical 6 year old boys.


Inigo and Bullseye came to me, handed me two pieces of paper each and said, "We want to make a tool belt." I believe in encouraging creativity, so I cut the paper into strips, handed them a stapler and said, "Get busy!" "But mom, we want to have pockets on it." Honestly, for the 60 seconds I spent thinking about it, I couldn't come up with a way to make pockets for the tool belt. I was busy working on a slide show of camp for the YW, and felt like my brain was taxed to the limit. I shooed them away and said, "Figure it out."

I could hear them working and being happy but I was busy with my slide show and wasn't paying too much attention to them. I was so surprised when they came and showed me what they made:



How clever is that?

Well, the truth came out after I took the first pictures. It wasn't a tool belt they were creating. It was a weapon belt. They were on the prowl for finding appropriate weapons to fill it with. They had a squirt gun that was small/light enough that it wouldn't rip the paper, but they needed more. I suggested some Popsicle sticks to use as knives and got them some bendy straws as machine guns. They went in the yard and found great big pine cones to use as grenades. Their swords were big bubble wands.

Admittedly, the belts only lasted about 45 minutes, but it was 45 minutes of the best, imaginative play EVER!!

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Buttercup had her senior yearbook pictures taken last week. (It freaked me out just a little.) The photo shoot was at Florin University where they have some beautiful gardens to take amazing photos in, so I took my camera and took some pictures of our own while we were there. The plan is NOT to have to pay anyone to take professional senior pictures... I'm hoping I can just do them.

I am not going to put our favorite picture on here... in case it's the one we use for announcements, but here's a little sampling of some of the pictures we took. I need to work on Photoshop skills to enhance them a bit, but we feel somewhat happy with what we got.