Mary Crookston

January 28 I flew to California! One of my favorite places in all the world - Scott and Beth's house! We had a great weekend! Friday morning the boys and I all got up early and made waffles, they are super helpers and they were very excited to eat them.

All weekend long we had to dodge, look for and buy Nerf gun bullets for all the guns the boys got for Christmas. Every member of the family has one, Sarah had to get one just so she could survive in the house! (She didn't have to get the one that shoots ten rounds, but she did just so she could one-up William - maybe we shouldn't focus on the fact that she is competing with a first-grader!)

Ryan is the sweetest, most handsome little baby boy and everyone loves him! Especially Thomas, who Beth has to watch every minute.

You can see why, the look in Thomas' eyes is enough to put you on guard, but the look on Ryan's face says even more.

Understandably Ryan spends a lot of time up high, and he is starting to get used to the constant holding.

Sarah amazingly found time to sew a new baby bag, I must say it is one of her best yet.

I spent a good portion of the time in CA taking pictures - not surprising I know. We did an extended photo shoot with all of the boys, together and separate, pictures of each of the Lamb grandchildren to update Mickey's wall, and infant pictures of Ryan, plus blessing pictures. I have posted a few of my favorites on my other blog. When we took all the boys to the park for pictures of them together this is what we were dealing with! William and Sam were all over the place.

Of course we had only taken a few pictures and William and Sam trip up and Sam face plants it into the pavement, skinning both hands and, of all things, his forehead, on the photo blog I had to photo shop his head in most of the pictures but you can see from this one that his head has a goose egg and he is not happy about the fact that the photo shoot continued.

Among our other obstacles we had Bossy and Brainy here, but we survived and some of the pictures after a few weeks of late night photo shoping came together nicely I would say.

February 1st we all got dressed up and ready for the blessing. Even with early church we found some time for some more pictures - I'm surprised that the boys would even smile for me at this point (the trip to the candy aisle at Food Maxx helped a lot!).

Ummm... Can we say "Family resemblance!"

The boys were ready and waiting so we took a few pictures with Grandpa and this one ended with a bang- I did not ask Dad to kneel - but he did and then when trying to get up he feel over - I guess the hip still needs more healing before we can do lunges dad - hope the shoulder wasn't bruised to badly.

A few quick family pictures out front.

Thomas, William and Sam all help to make it last a few minutes longer than necessary. William moon walked away and back, Sam, who is sick (probably has a headache from the day before), frowned in most of them, and as you can see Thomas had a Itch he just had to scratch. I also tried to photo shop the neighbors house, cars and trailers out - but I'm afraid I will have to do a better job later.

After the blessing we went to Mickey and Keith's for a lunch. Beth, Sarah and I stayed up the night before making banana cream pie, cherry cheese cake and potato casserole. All of that added with what everyone else brought made for a delicious dinner!

Dad, Aunt Louise and I all take time to pose with Ryan before we head out off to Arizona. We left at 3 pm and made it to Tim and Rosa's around midnight, where I crashed on the couch before heading out in the morning for the last leg of my journey back to Tucson.