Other Stuff

William was sitting on my lap a few weeks ago and I noticed some tiny brown things in his hair. We went to the doctor....my boys and I had lice! I can honestly say lice is one thing I never imagined we would have. I felt disgusting. But then the doctor told me it is not uncommon in Australia. I was embarrassed to tell my friends that we had it, but when I did, one told me their kids had had it two weeks ago, and another friend had just chopped her daughter's hair because of lice. So I felt less embarrassed. Anyway, we did the whole lice shampoo treatment, and we are back to new.

Soren in his shower cap during the shampoo treatment.

My most responsible boy...William...wrote with pen all over our couch! He wrote our initials...D, A, W, B, and S. I looked online for a solution and using Windex, it came out like a dream.

At a park/lookout point with the Harbor Bridge behind us and the Opera House over William's shoulder.

How hard would you work for a handful of Cheerios?

Christmas in Sydney

We were invited over to a friend's house for Christmas Eve where all the children participated in the nativity story. Here are our sheperds...Benji, Dallin, William, Ocean and Burke. Burke insisted on wearing his wool vest with his head through the arm hole.

Sydney's Christmas Beetle. So colorful, and they say you know it is Christmas because you see these everywhere.
William's letter to Santa. Der Santa, Thancc you
lov, william for kuminggG.
burke, so(r)en hav a nic night.


Soren had tried as hard as he could the night before to eat Santa's cookies. In the morning, the first thing he did was to go finish off the crumbs.
Soren is extremely grumpy on an empty stomach, but we don't have breakfast until after presents, so I ended up just giving him a piece of bread to tide him over. Present opening was much more pleasant after he ate it!


The boys in their new Christmas pjs...thanks G&G Bennion!

Burke trying to feed his new walking and talking dinosaur.

The boys in their Ghana soccer shirts...thanks G&G Petersen!

The boys new squishables from G&G Bennion. So soft.

I put Soren in the highchair...while I was cutting up an orange for him, he got a hold of some homemade chocolates someone had brought by for us. When I showed this picture to Don, he said, "Wow, that is full on." Don's picking up the Aussie lingo!

Don's birthday!

Don had a birthday a couple of weeks ago and we celebrated by going kayaking in Manly Cove, the ocean nearest to our house. I thought I was decently strong until that day. Don was very good and rowed almost the entire time. I, on the other hand, took several breaks. Occasionally I would tell Don to take a break and I would take over. I was disappointed when I was rowing and our kayak wasn't even moving. All I could do was break even with the ocean current and the wind. Then Don would start in again, and we cruised forward. He is amazing, but I already knew that!

The little secluded beach we rowed to. We stayed here for a while and swam around. The first time I've actually swam in the water here, because we didn't have any kids with us to take care of!!

My love note to Don.

We went out to eat afterwards to a little Thai place near our house. Don and I have eaten a lot of Thai, and this was hands down the best. Gourmet. Everything was delicious.Everyone wants to help!

Burke and Will "surfing" on Dad's new boogie board.

Burke sporting Don's fins.

When Don gets the boys dressed in pj's he occasionally likes to have a little fun. I think he thinks he is entitled to this as a parent. :)

William writing, Soren talking

Will's letter to Santa. William is really into writing letters these days.

Will, Ocean and Ezra running down the Corso (walking street) near our place.

Soren is learning to talk! My favorite is the deep throated "k" he uses when saying Burke. We love this kid.

spiderman

Do they have these climbing structures at U.S. parks? This picture was taken in Sweden, but they have them at lots of parks in Sydney as well. They are the greatest, especially for William, our little monkey climber right now.

Darling Harbor

The kids and I spent a day recently at an area called Darling Harbor. It has several museums, an IMAX, the aquarium, Sydney Wildlife World , and outdoor play areas, restaurants, convention centers, etc. It's a great place. We went to the Wildlife World and then played outside for a while. It was a really fun day.



Huge beetles...



Huge spider...

Wombat

Wallaby

The kangaroos were being lame...all of them were laying down. Did you know kangaroo and crocodile meat is somewhat mainstream here? Not that everyone eats it alot, but you can find it any grocery store or on any restaurant menu.

Two cute koalas with their babies...koalas, which are not bears I found out, sleep something like 22 hours a day.

Playing outdoors


50 cent ice cream cone from McD's
Soren was having fun sharing until two seconds after this picture was taken...William accidentally bit Soren's finger pretty hard!

A long day, and the kids all fall asleep on the way home...it's hard to see, but Burke's face is incredibly dirty

Burke still couldn't quite wake up, even after walking up the stairs to our place.

Bishop Taufa

The kids and I have been to two mutuals with Don, who is serving in Young Men's in our ward. The pictures below were taken Tuesday night at a beach barbecue. Both times we've been to mutual, our bishop has been there as well. And both times, Bishop has taken Soren and towed him around all night, playing with him. Bishop Taufa is a gentle, faithful man and we are so blessed to have him as the leader of our ward. We love it how he and Soren have taken to each other!

Bishop Isileli and Sister Mele "Lila" Taufa. They have a son named William, too!

He's one!

Happy Birthday to Soren! Soren is happiness in our home. He is a content, sweet baby. He is getting more and more interested in what his brothers are doing and often follows the sound of their voices to go be with them. But he'll come back every few minutes to be with me, too, which makes his mama happy. He loves to put his cheek against mine and Don's and just watch what is going on around him. We love it too. And he'll let us stay like that for a couple minutes. It's so nice to have an affectionate baby! Burke and William love playing with Soren and always run to get him a toy if he ever cries. They're quite disappointed when that doesn't work, however. :) Soren really is a ray of sunshine in our house. He's not loud and not an attention-searcher (so far), but just goes about happily and quietly, and is a perfect part of our family.

He is really into sharing food these days!

William came up with the idea of writing this sign all by himself. I didn't help at all with this. Will is really into sounding out words and writing them. So here we have: Hape brthday for (he says "from" when he reads it, so it's supposed to be "from"--he also told me the r in birthday was upside down).....

...William and brke. I loved that he did this!

Soren's really stoked about the stacking cubes we got him.

Ready for bed. Burke always sleeps with his blanket, and it is almost always curled around his neck like this. Funny.