Happy 3rd Birthday Jensen!

Jensen turned 3 years old last week. It is so fun to watch little kids on their birthdays. It's almost as good as watching them on Christmas...almost.


Dancing with excitment for his new batman clothes!

Birthday boy complete with birthday crown, compliments of Luke.

Austin spent 6 hours decorating this cake for Jensen. It was very awesome and loved by all.

One of the birthday chefs. Thank you so much Grandma Flake for the aprons! You've saved so many shirts!

Austin bought this little doll for Eliza when he found out he passed the boards. She LOVES this little thing and carries it with her everywhere, holding it close to her. It's so cute!

This "tongue" picture is for Whitney, who ALWAYS seems to have her tongue out in all her pictures. Get over your tongue, Whitney.

Look at those eyelashes!

We made cupcakes for Jensen to take to his preschool class. They were a hit with all the kids, especially Jensen.

Per grandma's request, Eliza walking...

Civil War This Way ------->

I just can't believe this cute little girl is mine! I kiss her a million times every day! I just can't get over her!


She went down her first slide and loved it!

Look at that cute wispy hair! She's such a happy and sweet baby.

Luke started pre-k this week. We are excited for him and he loves it! He started yesterday but already he's made a friend. We went there earlier this week for the open house. The teacher had a fun scavenger hunt for him to do. It ended at the school's new playground, which was really fun.

Jensen and Luke are best friends and Jensen is having a very hard time adjusting to Luke being gone for 3 hours a day. It's kind of cute and kind of sad. Today he cried when we dropped Luke off. I'm sure it will only take another few days for him to adjust. He's a good little boy and attends an art class at the YMCA. It's once a week for 45 minutes.

Jensen got a new shirt and new backpack for his first day of "preschool" at the YMCA. He is obsessed with super heroes so it was easy to find his new favorite shirt.

Luke wanted a darth vadar shirt for his first day of school. Those are pretty hard to find. Once we did find it, a few weeks ago, Luke has shown it to every single person who has walked through our door. It's pretty funny. He's shown it to visiting teachers, home teachers, missionaries, and other vistiors.

Luke and Jensen at the open house at Luke's school.

Luke's "locker"

Last Saturday we drove to Lamoni, IA. It's a small town on the border of Missouri and Iowa. The RLDS church used to be headquartered there. They have a university there, Graceland University, and give tours of Joseph Smith III's home. Pretty neat. Anyway, every Labor day weekend Lamoni hosts a civil war reinactment (totally free). People come from all over the country to participate in this. It's really popular. They have signs all over the town to show you where to go "Civil War" and then arrows pointing. I think they take the reinactment a little too seriously! It was really neat and the battle was amazing. Luke loved it, Jensen was kind of scared because it was so loud. Neither of the kids could wrap their brains around the fact that it was fake. They both thought we were actually watching people die on a battle field.

Did you know Abraham Lincoln had teeth like this?

Honest Abe. This guy recited a bunch of excerpts from some of Abraham Lincoln's speeches. Pretty interesting.

Look at how the women were dressed. It was so hot that day too. Neat dresses though. I have to admit I've always wanted to wear one. The host of the event said the average person there spends $1200 on their period dress and accessories. Pretty expensive hobby!

A few Saturdays ago we went to the downtown farmer's market. Living in the midwest, about 95% of the land in Iowa is farmed so every day of the week there is a farmer's market somewhere. The one downtown is the most talked about. It is really popular and trendy here and it did not disappoint. They had all sorts of farmers, including some Amish farmers, and vendors selling all types of foods and homemade jams, jewlery, elk meat, and on and on. Everyone had samples too of free, fresh watermellon and cataloupe and elk jerky and Indian food samples and on and on. There were tons of entertainers too playing music or free crafts for the kids. It was a lot of fun. We were there until it closed (about 3 hours). Eliza loved most of it, but passed out from all the partying.

They had a magician there doing free balloon animals for the kids. Luke got this weiner dog.

Jensen had an orioles had on so he got this bird in a cage. Really neat. These farmers markets are definitely one of the perks about living in the midwest. We can't wait to go again! Austin is already out of the homemade black raspberry jam we bought last time. Yum!