Temple song, peanuts, primary program, painting, family history awards, and more

Penny and Diana eating peanuts together last Sunday morning.

Douglas and Penny participated in the primary program at church last Sunday.

Penny waving to us.

Diana helping make banana bread.

Diana using a little school table our neighbor donated to us.

Sam took the children to the library recently. Douglas wanted to check this book out. COVID-19 has even infected children's books! You can't get away from it.

Sam did a painting activity with the children. They loved it.

We visited the home of Granny and Grandpa this week. Sara wanted to take a picture of Ari, Joseph, and me. We tried one with our arms around each other, but it wasn't working.

So, we tried a manly muscle picture instead. Ari has been working out lately and he was happy to show off the results.

Playing our customary (and lively!) game of Rook.

Sara and Denali

Look at all those trump cards in Ari's hand. He lost the first hand, but he didn't lose another hand after that and he ended up wining the game.

Sam helping the children put together some cute jingle bell ball decorations.

The result of their work.

Diana wanted to eat oatmeal with Penny this morning.

Sam came downstairs this afternoon to show me an online award she received. Most people seek after trophies, promotions, medals, monetary awards, and other forms of recognition. My wife, through her love of what she terms her "righteous addiction," enjoys this particular end-of-year award above all of the aforementioned forms of recognition. 

This same afternoon I received an email from Family Search telling me to "take a moment to say thank you to the top contributors to your family tree!" I clicked on the link to see who the top contributors to my family tree are. Lo and behold, the top two are my beloved parents, and my dad has the exact same score as my wife. Oh, you righteous people, you. 😀 (I'm not on the list because I don't do online family history at the moment. I have not yet become addicted to this noble endeavor.)

Las Vegas and Veterans Day

 

I took a work trip to Las Vegas this week.

The fountain in front of the Bellagio Hotel

I enjoyed In-N-Out Burger a couple of times.

Sam and the children sent Veterans Day messages to me today.

Halloween, sliding down the stairs, and a world record for the longest cucumber chew

 

Trick or treating on Halloween

One of our neighbors goes all out each Halloween.

Playing around with a robe I received overseas.

Hanging out in the back of the van watching a rain storm.

One day the children decided to have some fun sliding down the stairs on their bellies.

Down and up they went . . . 

. . . over and over and over.

And then Douglas discovered how much faster he could slide in a sleeping bag. He enjoyed the sleeping bag so much that he decided to use it for his bed the following two nights.

Siblings playing the piano together.

Penny likes to play football out on the lawn.

These two photos will be among my favorites to talk about years down the road. In the top photo, Douglas has a piece of chewed cucumber in his mouth. As you know, Douglas has some kind of mental issue with many foods. It's very hard on him when we give him a tiny piece of almost any fruit or vegetable to eat. On this particular day we gave Douglas a small piece of cucumber to try at lunchtime. We know it often takes him 10-15 minutes to finally swallow his food (unless he's eating cereal, crepes, bread, chicken nuggets, or a few other foods he likes, in which case the food is devoured quickly). In fact, if the food is something he is afraid of, he will usually spend 10 minutes talking to us, cracking jokes, talking to his food, and employing other methods to stall the inevitable placing of said food into his mouth. Anyway, back to the photo above. Three hours after lunch, we were playing downstairs when I noticed Douglas moving his mouth as if he were chewing on something. "Are you still chewing that piece of cucumber?!" I asked. Douglas started laughing and then he confirmed my suspicion. He had the cucumber mush in his mouth for three hours! We've tried to convince him that swallowing quickly is a much better way to deal with the undesired food, but to no avail. We love our funny boy with food issues.

On to dinnertime. Douglas received a piece of lettuce for his vegetable. For some reason, he says lettuce is his favorite vegetable and he doesn't have the same paranoia with lettuce as he does with other veggies. He put the lettuce in his mouth, but this time I wasn't going to let him spend all day chewing it. I made him start eating his dinner (pancakes, which he likes). A minute or two later I thought I noticed something strange. I told Douglas to open his mouth and my suspicions were confirmed once again. He was chewing the two foods on separate sides of his mouth because he didn't want to mix the lettuce with the pancake! My goodness, we sure got a laugh out of that one. As my dear mother says, the boy is a genius, and geniuses have issues. 😀