Brigham's Birthday

Brigham had quite the Birthday. I don't know if he understood what it was all about when the day started, but by the end of the day he was definitely a birthday believer.

Holly bought him a Winnie the Pooh birthday balloon. He carried it around all day telling anyone that would listen, "My Birday!"

The whole DeVore clan came over for cake and ice cream. We all sang to him and he loved that. He couldn't quite blow the candles out but he tried really hard.

Then the presents started. He didn't know what it was all about but he caught on quickly. His eyes would get big with each gift that came out. Some highlights were:

• A Poohbah musical toy that Brigham loved and which caused major emotional trauma to Jacob (it is now hidden)
• A raw piece of steak (from Trevor and Heather of course - they also gave him gourmet popcorn)
• Several airplanes (airplanes are his latest kick)
• A Spiderman backpack, a wagon full of Duplos and a broom (that may sound weird but he was absolutely thrilled)
• And an airport and train play sets

There were other things too but I can't remember them right now. The best was that we put the two play sets in the family office to get them out of the way. They were still in their boxes. We were trying to get Brigham down to bed when he opened the office door and started carrying the play sets out to the living room. It was hilarious. The play set boxes were about as big as he is. He was staggering under the weight and tipping this way and that but he got them both out there.

The next morning he woke up and the first thing he said was, "My birday!" Sorry bub. You only get that once a year.

Jacob is standing up on his own!

Jacob is now standing up on his own. Jacob has been able to stand unsupported for sometime now if someone helped him to get in the proper position or if he was able to pull himself up on something. But yesterday he started from the floor and got into a standing position by himself without pulling up on anything. This shows a lot of improvement in his leg strength and coordination.

He was very excited and is now standing up all of the time.

Joseph Smith Website

I don't know how many of you know that many of the Virtual Reality photographs from our Virtual Historian program were used on the Joseph Smith website created by the church. The main site is here.

The VRs are spread around the site but the easiest way to find them is to go to the Historic Site section. Here is an example of the Sacred Grove. You need to have Flash installed to view the images. The ones with the little cube at the bottom right are VRs. Look at the example above.

Jacob avoids the knife again

Jacob was supposed to have surgery on his eyes tomorrow but we
postponed it at the last second. In his pre-op exam his eyes were
doing much better than they had the previous visit so we decided to
wait a few months.

This isn't the first time that this has happened with Jacob. When
Jacob was just a few weeks old he was supposed to have a tracheotomy
because we was having trouble breathing off of the ventilator. The
day before he pulled his own breathing tube out and has been
breathing on his own ever since. It seems that all Jacob needs is to
be faced with a scalpel and he decides to try and fix things on his own.

Brigham is on his way to Utah

So Brigham is taking a plane ride for his 2nd birthday. Tomorrow he
flies to Salt Lake with Granny Dot. Granny Dot is going to drop him
off with Grandma Hales while she makes a trip out to Vernal to take
care of some things on the farm.

Brigham was very excited to go. He left tonight with his PJs on and
his new Spiderman backpack all loaded up. He wheeled it right out to
the car, jumped in and said "Dot Dot's house". At least that is what
we think he said.