...so does everyone else!

Some more random (but lovely) photos, mostly of the other children, again from the past couple of months....

Hannah, making something as she loves to do.

Sarah, with a bit of a toothy grin - a huge happy one at that though - the kind she's so good at, ...

... and discussing a Faith in God goal with Mum one Sunday afternoon.

Sparkly Peter!

Rebekah was helping me by finishing off drying one of our washing baskets that had had to get cleaned and had been drying in the sun, but not got quite dry enough. It turned into a really fun game for Peter and Samuel as they saw what happened to tissues as they threw them into the hot air and watched them blow back up again and all over the place. :o)


All together,


and one each.





To finish off, here's Rebekah with her lovely wall. :o)

Samuel just keeps on growing

In just a week Samuel will be 18 months old! Here are some random pictures of him (and others) over the last couple of months.

Samuel and me going for a walk to post some letters (Michael snapped us from behind just for fun). He forever says "door", as in "I want to go outside through the door please!" and when I carry him outside he'll direct me to where he wants to go, so any little errand includes Samuel whenever it can!

He loves to read books and will sit down anywhere with a book and become completely absorbed in it for a while. Very sweet!

He loves his sisters, and luckily they are normally pretty taken with him too.

He also LOVES his big brother Peter, will copy him the best he can in EVERYTHING Peter decides to do (movements, actions, facial expressions, ...) and of course he LOVES to play with him. Peter has fairly recently been over the moon to have Samuel move in to share a bedroom with him. The first morning Samuel woke up very early for food as always, so Michael took him downstairs to eat. A while later I found Peter curled up all sad on Samuel's little bed - because he had wanted Samuel to come and wake him up. Luckily he has done a fair few times since. :o)

Samuel also LOVES babies. His little friend Isaac goes by that name, and Samuel will often point him out at church and want to go over to him. He saw Isaac being pushed in his pushchair out of the door one Sunday after church and went off pointing and calling "baby" until he searched out which room he'd been taken into. If Isaac is down on the floor, Samuel tends to want to have him on his lap - that's what's happening here. He's very lovely with him, sat rubbing his back gently.



My outdoors boy. :o) He and Peter were having a lovely time playing outside, ...

which wherever possible has to include...

hammers of one kind or another (a stick will do if needed),


and of course digging!

One other thing Samuel REALLY LOVES is water! He loves to take a bath each morning, and does at times go to climb into the bath (he's awfully good at climbing anything and everything!) before remembering he needs to get undressed first. I have always managed to remind him, apart from the once. That morning I was getting his clothes out to put on afterwards and he was so quick I had no warning until Peter said he had climbed right in - clothes and all!!! I was right behind him, but he was so quick he must have jumped in (either that or I'm getting a bit slower, hmmm)!

Ready for battle!

Again from September, we had a family home evening on putting on the armour of God. It is always better being a bit more active if possible, for Peter's benefit especially.






Everyone wanted to make some of their own armour in the end, which they did with a lot of boxes we'd cleared to go for recycling. Then Peter wanted Dad to make him one too.





Peter was being Captain Moroni (from the Book of Mormon).



A little bit of battling later (not quite the plan, but what could we expect?!), we needed a way to end it all, so ended up being anti-Nephi-Lehis, burying their weapons of war!

Yum!

Catching up a little, probably with very little text, but plenty of images. :o)
(All photos have been stuck on a very stubborn/poorly (can't decide which) computer. These are the first lot to get onto Michael's laptop instead, and they only just made it there today. So here's a few quiet but visual catch-up posts from the last couple of months...)

In mid-September we had some blackberries to use from the common ground round the corner from our house, plus some of a church member's windfall apples from their garden, so I made a pie...
YUM!















Michael came in just in time to share in with us.:o)
Did you see how desperate Samuel was in the group photo? He wanted the server, and he REALLY wanted the food! "Munna, munna!" (his latest word for food - and for a while all we seem to have heard all day, every day as this little boy demolishes all edible things in sight!) Do you see his little smile later on, and how contented he was with his food? :o)
It was gone in minutes, and we really wished there were more! :o)