Nathan is 6 months old already!!

Nathan turned 6 months old this month! The poor little guy has yet to go in for his 6 month photo at the studio... in fact, he has yet to get ANY professional photo taken (yeah, yeah, I know, shame on me), but that hasn't seemed to inhibit his ability to be too stinkin' cute. He's sitting up quite well and likes to chatter. Paul is convinced that he's saying "da da" to him already (I'm pretty sure that it's just baby rambles, but we'll keep that our little secret) Nathan is also a total busy-body. He's always wiggling and bouncing, and he does not like to be out of the action for more than a few minutes. He refuses to fall asleep in my arms anymore, but does love to be held so he can get a better view of the action.

This month, he took his first swing ride, and loved it.

He also got his first tastes of real food this month- courtesy of Auntie Dawn. I really didnt have any desire to start mushing up food and smelling the much stinkier diapers that appear as a result, but everytime I held him while eating, he was taking dives at my hand trying to reach whatever I was on my fork. I thought I'd just give him some food in his net feeder thing (don't know the real name for it), but couldn't find the net to go in it and hadn't gotten to the "I need to get one" stage yet. That following Sunday, Aunt Dawn brought us a new one!! Hooray! Soooo, this is a picture of his first feeding.

I believe his first food was pears... how pathetic is that... MUCH different than all of the other kids' first spoon-feeding incidents. He has taken to it quite well in the last couple weeks with apples, blueberries, grapes, bananas and whatever else I have on hand to throw in it. He's now starting to get excited when he sees it coming. Still no teeth yet, but I'm sure they're on their way. So, that's the Nathan update... until next time...

The Case of Mistaken Identity

I have recently discovered that some people have mistakenly identified my kids as angels...

I mainly blog about the sweet and adorable things that they do, so I thought I'd clarify: my kids can be down-right obnoxious, mean and stubborn sometimes.

I was reminded once again as I picked the girls up from their Sunday School class after church today. Grace had tears in her eyes from one of her "I didn't get what I want" melt-downs, and the teacher commented on Ellie's "anger streak".
That scene actually reminded me of one that took place at church LAST year. When the kids were released from the Sunday service to go to their classes, Seth and Noah (along with 2 others) didn't realize that they were supposed to meet in a different room, so they went to their regular classroom. After 15 minutes of sitting in boredom without a teacher, they decided to "create" their own fun. By the time the teacher brought the other kids to the classroom, there were teacher papers strewn all over the room along with other things, and Noah topped it off by putting pins in the seat cushions in preparation for their classmates to sit down (I still can't figure out what cartoon he got that from). I am giggling about it as I write, but I was certainly NOT at the time.

My kids have pulled hair, punched eachother, scratched, kicked, and bitten like most other kids (unless you have one of those angels that was mistook for my kids). One brother is grounded from his b.b. gun for shooting the other brother in the leg, another is restricted from the go-cart for chasing his baby sister around the yard with it, and... the list goes on and on. I have decided I need to write the restrictions down on a notepad just so I can keep them all organized.
So, for all of you reading this, my kids are, well... kids, and will one day be saved only by the grace of God, just like their mom and dad.

In thy... Car??

Ok, so here at the Larson's, we have been focusing on memorizing scripture verses. The kids are doing GREAT!! I'm not doing too bad myself... Since mid January, we are up to about 25 verses (the goal is to memorize 150 verses by the end of the year), all the books of the bible, and we're half-way through Psalm 91. It actually seems to get easier the more you memorize...

To make it simpler, we make the longer verses into a sing-song type thing, and to be sure they are etched in their minds, we review each verse daily, and once a week I take each kid aside and quiz them on the verses they know. M&Ms and chocolate chips make good incentives :) We do memorize in King James simply because it is written that way in the program I am using, and because it's wording seems to have a natural rhythm to it... Anyhow, It was Ellie's turn for her quiz and I asked her to say Acts 16:31. She said, "And they said unto him, 'Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, (in) thy house'... and in the car, too, right?"

Nathan's graduated!

Nathan's taking his baths sitting up in the big tub now!!
He's loving to be able to play in the water!

Here chickie, chickie...

We got our baby chicks yesterday! We ordered 50 laying birds and 50 meat birds, for a total of 100!! chicks (plus a couple extras that they throw in just in case any die in route, which none did this time). Unpacking the box is a fun part of getting the chicks. Each one that we take out has to have his/her beak dipped in water (don't completely know why, but I think it has something to do with the stress of the long shipment and to be sure they can find the water when they need it). The kids take them out of the box one at a time so we can count and "dip" them, but, as we have a few times before, we lost count (this time at around 60). Because it is nearly impossible to count moving chickens, we probably won't get them counted again until we take half of them to the meat locker, and I don't know if we'll ever successfully count the layers... (and to be honest, it really doesn't matter)

I do enjoy this time of year when I start getting glimpses of jacket weather, and realize that any snow that falls now will not be around long. It is exciting to experience and see new life "spring" out of the long and cold days of winter and it gives faith that warm weather really is on its way.

Cousins!!

Grandpa Les holding Levi, Jay and Nathan! All born within 5 months of eachother! What fun they'll have growing up together!

The three proud mama's!

And the real reason for the get-together was Isaac's 2nd birthday!!
Isaac is a little cutie! I was impressed that he could recognize all of his cousins by name considering that they live about 2 hours away and he really hasn't seen them that often in his first 2 years of life. He's a smart little guy.