two totally unrelated stories: pictures

here's the pictures: paul's burn lines (there were a couple people that were teasing him about his crying lines, it's easy to see why)

these were taken sunday night, so it had a day and a half to fade:

we had our friends over for dinner last night too, so the girls got to play with the baby again (and feed her a bottle! excitement of all things exciting!) she sure is a sweetheart though!

rayna really liked "holding" the baby too, she really cracked me up with how jealous she got of afton's baby-holding-time. she also kept leaning down and rubbing her cheak against the baby's head. i never realized how often i do that to her!

two totally unrelated stories:

1) yesterday paul completed the Hotter 'n Hell Hundred (HHH), a 100 mile bike race in the texas heat. he has a lovely sunburn line from his helmet straps, but he completed the race in about 7 1/2 hours (including a 1/2 hour stop to get a tire replaced, he literally wore through a tire, and there was a line for the repair), so he definately did better than his goal of under 8 hours. (would have been closer to 7 w/o the repair!)

GO PAUL!!!

2) today in church afton sat still for the whole first hour! this is a first, and by far a record! some friends sat with us on our bench, and they brought a 1 week old foster baby. afton got to hold the baby for the talks during sacrament meeting, she did great, making sure the babys head was supported, tucking the blanket around her (it was really cold), and occcasionally unwrapping her little fingers/toes/elbows/knees/etc to see how cute they were, and then wrapping her back up. it was really sweet, and made me so happy! the only downside was rayna getting jealous... she wanted to hold the baby too, and she was not really very gentle, so paul had to take her out to the hall til she fell asleep, which in retrospect was also nice...

GO AFTON!!!

ps, pictures will follow.

dancing day

this past week we had a dancing day. we were all a bit crazy :)

ps, i have no idea where afton learned to head-bang.

here's afto, mid-dance, yes, i believe she was singing too :)

the end of the party, we were all a bit worn out, but cute too, right? at least we thought so ;)

the science place

last week we went with some friends to the science place museum, it's got some kid-friendly exhibits, and though we didn't get a chance to see everything, there was plenty to see and do. i wish i'd gotten more pictures!

all the kids loved digging in the sand for dinosaur bones (or at least playing in the sand where that was an option)

afton loved the floating ball trick.

bubbles are always a favorite too, though rayna liked them for a different reason than most kids. yum?

the water table was a winner too, complete with rubber duckies of all sizes, and water, of course, really, what more do you need?

here's afton with the funny mirrors:

there's a great play area in the basement for the kids, it's got everything from a "farm" to heat sensitive pads where you can draw like a chalkbord with your finger. there's legos, and a firetruck-shaped slide, bugs, musicial instruments, computers, and make-your-own rubber balls (elmers glue and borax, with a little water and food color)... it was great fun. thanks to our friends for getting us in free, we loved it!

Rayna

lately, rayna has really been making her voice heard. she's really loud, and usually fairly melodic (that's called looking for a silver lining). she still doesn't use much sign, though we keep trying to instill that skill, but she has found a few ways of expressing herself. my current favorite is nodding/shaking her head. she knows what we mean, and she knows what she wants, so usually she will nod yes with one emphatic shake if we say something right :) (and ignore us if we don't say what she wants to hear). this is particularly cute at bedtime. she "says" a little prayer with paul or me giving her ideas of what to be thankful or ask for, and i'm sure she gets said what she wants (unless we forget something) it's sweet. hopefully she'll start talking a little more soon too.

in other news, i'm pretty sure she's finally getting a few more teeth. for the last 3 1/2 months she's only had her front four teeth, so it's nice for her to have a couple more in (the top side, aother front tooth, and i think the other one's a molar), and a bunch more bumps that are sure to come through eventually...

and finally, my favorite pic:

i asked her to smile, and boy did she! (i only wish she woul do that more for the camera!)

just a couple more pics of the girls

in random order: the girls, on the front step, all ready for church last week :)

afton, posing with a potato masher... of course, why not?

aren't we cute?!

brownie batter anyone? YUM!

rayna frequently has her tounge hanging out... unless she's yelling...

BEEP!
(self-explainatory)

maggie, this is all your fault, but rayna sure loves it, so does afton for that matter, and those batteries sure seem to hold up well... and there's no volume control... and they love it... oh well, eventually i'll have no hearing left anyways, right?

paul's got a thesis...

or at least a topic and a go-ahead. paul's had tons of ideas for his thesis project lately, and he's had a couple meetings with his advisor (george) where he's changed his mind, at least it seems that way to me, but i may be remembering wrong. anyways, this past friday he had a meeting where he and george were equally excited about an idea, so he's right on track to finish in five years still (as in 5 total, not 5 more :). he's working on determining how the attitude of the parents and their tone affects children more profoundly than the type of discipline. he'll need to come up with some sort of survey-type "experiment" and the results will need tons of statistical manipulation to determine significance, but it's a project that hasn't been looked into too much, so there's a lot of room to get results (or not, but that'd still be enough for a thesis).

george works a lot with parent-child relationships and discipline, and most of the literature out there is trying to determine effectiveness of different disipline styles (aka, is time-out more effective than spanking... etc), and there isn't much written about how the discipline is envoked (probably because it is a little harder to define)... anyways, we're just glad he ws able to come up with a topic, and its something that's interesting enough to paul to get him excited about doing the research. it should also help with his third year project (a comprehensive literature search--i can't remember exactly what it's officially called), so he will be working on that for a while, and hopes there will be an avenue that opens up to a dissertation topic eventually, though he's really not sure what yet. he's been really good about finding other problems and loop-holes, if you will, in other research he's been doing/reading, so i'm sure he'll be able to find somthing he's really intersted in for that.

yea pablo!