This is what happens when your kid takes video clips with your camera

Jacob's Baptism Day

I took a bunch of pictures of Jacob to put on his invitations and program, and this is my fav

Jacob posing in his new "dad" suit


Our family on the baptism day

The whole extended family

Jacob blowing out his candles on the cakes his aunt Carrie made him

Jacob's baptism was on June 5, 2010. What a wonderful day it was. I have been to several baptisms over the past four years since I've been serving in our ward primary presidency and as a primary teacher. I thought I'd be prepared for what to expect, but it's just not the same when it's your own child being baptized. It was a powerful and spiritual experience to have Dave baptism our first born child and confirm upon him the gift of the Holy Ghost. Dave was moved during the baptism prayer and got a little choked up, which in turn got my tears flowing. Then when Jacob came up out of the water he was grinning from ear to ear. While they were changing out of their wet clothes Jacob told Dave that he felt really warm. Dave said you mean it's warm in here? And Jacob said no, he felt really warm inside. That's such a special moment when your child feels the spirit and can recognize what it feels like.

The program for his baptism was chosen by Jacob and he wanted his two cousins, Spencer Yates and Gracie Adams, to give talks. They both did a great job, Gracie talked about the ordinance of baptism and Spencer talked about the Holy Ghost. We also had some cousins, including Kera, sing "When I am Baptized". After the baptism we had everyone over for a BBQ and to celebrate Jacob turning 8. It was a great day. We had most of our families here for the baptism. All of Dave's family flew in from Texas the day before, and all of my family that lives here in Utah were there, including my grandparents.

The Big Birthday Bash

I thought I'd be nice and get a new post on here quick so you don't have to see the title "Stomach Bugs" and get that image in your head of me being sick every time you see my blog update come up.

So here are pictures of Jacob's 8th birthday party with some of his friends from primary and school. He had a great time. I'm glad the party only lasted an hour and a half. Jacob and his friends had a good time playing the games that Jacob found on the internet. He's been really into Club Penguin (the online computer game on disney.com). So he had a club penguin themed party and they played a game called "Ninja Nowhere" (similar to hide and seek), and "Hot Puffle", and an ice fishing game. He also had a penguin pinata. I never seem to get pictures of the pinata though. I'm always too busy making sure the boys don't kill each other when they're swinging at the pinata.

This is the best cake idea I could come up with the day after being sick

Blowing out the candles

Random dancing before blowing out the candles

Ready to serve them up

One of the presents he got, some kind of legos. He also received several club penguin playing cards.

These boys were hyped up after all the cupcakes, ice cream and candy from the pinata!!

Stomach Bugs and Holidays
Warning: May contain graphic content-not for those with weak stomachs!

I don't know what it is, but there's just something about our family getting the stomach virus during holidays. I remember about 2 years ago, the stomach flu went around our family over the 4th of July weekend. And we've been plagued with the stomach flu over Christmas twice. Two years ago Dave's parents flew in from Texas and his poor mom came down with a stomach virus two days before Christmas, then it cycled through our family. I don't think anyone was throwing up Christmas morning, but all the days around Christmas someone was sick. Now we came down with the dreaded stomach bug the weekend of Jacob's 8th birthday. It all started with Michael. He threw up Thursday night in his bed, this just happened to be the same night as my bunco group were all gathered at my house to play. Dave tended to Michael and got him cleaned up. I didn't even know he'd thrown up until everyone left. Then later after the bunco game was over, my stomach really started to hurt. Then I started to throw up and it didn't stop all night until about 4 a.m. It was horrible. It was probably one of the worst nights of my life. Some of you know I have a weird tendency to pass out when I am sick and starting to vomit. So I sit there over the toilet, trying really hard to take deep breaths and not pass out, and sometimes it doesn't work and I feel myself starting to lose consciousness, I'll wake up on the ground, sometimes covered in my own puke. I know, not too pretty a picture. Takes me back to my most embarrassing moment in college when I was with some guy friends at a Jazz game and was sick and ran to the bathroom, barely making it to the stall where I ended up passing out and a bathroom attendant was standing over me asking me if I was okay. I come to and realize I've vomited all over myself and then I have to come out of the bathroom like this and face my good friend Jeremy and his two roommates. Nice. Not only am I covered in vomit, but the security people insist that they get me a wheelchair and wheel me out to the car. Just what I need, more attention drawn to myself.
Anyway, back to the story at hand. So I'm in the bathroom and I've realized that I've passed out and I start to clean up the vomit on the floor and myself. Then I go upstairs to my room to clean up and try to get some sleep. To no avail. I run to the bathroom to throw up again. This time I succeed in remaining consciuos. So I go back to the bed just to get up 10 minutes later and throw up again. It was bad. It's one of those kinds of stomach viruses where you don't really feel better after throwing up. I just felt bad the whole time. I went back 30 minutes later to throw up again and this continued a few times. Sometime around midnight it started coming out both ends, and this is when I really wanted to die. I didn't know if I should sit or lean over the toilet! Anyone been in this position before? Then I started to vomit again, and this time I do pass out again and "wake up" only to hurry onto the toilet. "How can this be happening" and "What have I done to deserve this?" are just some of the thoughts running through my head. I think I passed out one more time after this and I really hurt my foot somehow. After this, and while sitting on the toilet, I start to yell for Dave. I've been in the bathroom this whole time, and while I was in there Dave went down to the basement to sleep. Probably very fearful that he might catch this nasty illness. So I'm sitting there calling for him, then I start yelling help as loud as I can and am crying. I realize Dave isn't in the room and I am on my own, so I clean myself up and go downstairs to find him. I get to the basement and wake him up somewhat hysterical and delirious and start crying. I can't take the pain anymore. I asked him to give me a blessing. We go upstairs and he gave me one. He also found some nausea medicine that we had in the medicine cabinet. It expired in 2009, but I figured it couldn't hurt. So I took that, and I think that the medicine combined with the blessing he gave me really helped. I slept the rest of the night. The next morning Kera had her preschool graduation and I was supposed to bring treats to Jacob's class for his birthday. So Dave stepped in, took the mornig off, and went with Kera to her graduation and videotaped it. He then took Jacob's treats to his class and brought some things to tell about Jacob. He went in to work about 1 pm and by that time I was well rested and felt a little better. I kept Michael in my room with me. He hadn't thrown up again, but he had been having diarrea and you could tell he didn't feel good either. So we were quarintined in my bedroom with the laptop watching Disney movies and eating popsicles. Dave came home later and we started talking about what we'd do about Jacob's birthday the next day. He was having a birthday party at our house with 7 of his friends the next day. Jacob started to complain about his stomach hurting around 6 pm and he threw up once in his room and then again around 10 pm. The next morning Jacob woke up and said his stomach didn't hurt anymore and he felt much better. Kera wasn't sick and I was feeling a lot better after resting all day friday. Dave felt well and Michael seemed cheerful. So we debated about postponing the birthday party, but eventually decided to still have the party since everyone seemed on the mend. We kept it outside in the backyard and sprayed Lysol throughout the house and on all the doorknobs.
It's one of the calls you make as a parent where you hope you made the right decision. I think we did okay. Jacob was so excited to have his big party on his birthday. We were excited to get the friend party over with! We still have his baptism and family party next Saturday.
Jacob's big birthday present from us was a new trampoline. Dave spent the whole morning and after the party setting it up. We finally got it all put together tonight around 6 pm with the net enclosure on and everything. The kids have been having a blast jumping on it. Jacob was so excited to see his big birthday gift, and Kera was just as excited as he was. We finally have something fun to play on in our backyard!!
So that's been our crazy weekend. I will post pictures of the party and the new trampoline soon. I just wanted to get this whole crazy story told while it's still fresh in my brain. Hopefully this virus stops here and nobody else in our family gets sick...we shall see.

And hopefully none of the ladies from my bunco group or the kids from the party get sick. If you do I'm very, very sorry. :(

Look mom, no training wheels!

Kera riding a bike, no training wheels!

When Dave and I got back from our cruise Kera was very excited to show me her new skill. My dad took her training wheels off her small bike and helped her learn to ride. She also has been spending a lot of time with her friend Samantha who can now ride without training wheels, and she helped "coach" Kera and gave her encouragement when they were riding bikes together. So I said in the clip that she did it all by herself, but she did have help from grandpa and friends.

Way to go Kera!

Michael the Comedian

Oh how I get a kick out of this adorable little guy. Here's Michael trying to wink.

Carribbean Cruise Part 2
Eastern Carribbean: Princess Cays, Bahamas; St. Maarten, St. Thomas, and Grand Turk

Dave and I were fortunate enough to take our second carribbean cruise. We went on our first cruise 3 years ago to the western carribbean(Bahamas, Grand Cayman, and Cozumel, Mexico). Now we were able to go on our second cruise and see some of the islands on the Eastern side of the Carribbean. We went with our good friends Jeremy and Heidi, who we also went on our first cruise with. So it was kind of like a reunion of sorts. Many things were different this time, we have three kids and back then we had two, Jeremy and Heidi had no kids yet, and now they have one. We also have changed a lot and it seems like our lives are now more complex. It seemed harder to leave for a week this time. But it was a great break from reality and the beaches and places we saw were amazing. We had a lot of fun together and made some special memories that I will never forget. I enjoyed watching Dave relax and let loose. He has been working very hard these past couple years and his hard work has allowed us to have this vacation! We made a little game of finding out where the camera man would be on the cruise ship so we could get on the cruise video that they were filming. It's funny because we tried so hard to get in so many shots on the video, but yet we didn't even buy one. I mean the dvd was like 40 bucks. We brought our own video camera and were able to capture moments ourselves for free! But it was fun to see the video once we got back to our rooms and see how much "camera time" we all got. We also had a lot of laughs at one of the cruise ship entertainment guys. His name was Boogie and he was from Romania. He hosted an open mike one night and he was not good because since English wasn't his first language many of the jokes were "lost in translation". At one point he made a joke and only one person laughed and instead of saying "thank you to the one person who got the joke" or something to that effect he would say "thank you individually". I don't know why but we thought that was hilarious. So we had a lot of fun moments both on and off the ship. I would say that my favorite port was St. Thomas. It was beautiful and the island was very tropical with a lot of lush green trees and mountains. The other two islands were smaller and more desert like. One of the highlights of the excursions Dave and I did was to take a beginning scuba diving class in St. Thomas. We both enjoyed that and want to get certified here in Utah. It's so neat to be able to swim around with the fish and see all of the underwater stuff.
So that was our big vacation of 2010. Hopefully it isn't too long before we go on another one like it, but next time we will probably bring the kids. It's too hard to be away from them for so long. And they really missed us by the end of the week. Maybe a two night vacation would be better.
Here's a slideshow of the highlights of the trip.