Claire's Other Crush

This is probably Claire's tenth hug with Chuckie Cheese - you can see it in his eyes - he's a little scared now that he realizes she's been stalking him the whole time.

Sammi at Three Months

www.yourrreflectionsphotography.com

Another beautiful picture taken by Tiffany - check out her website!

Claire's First Day of Preschool

For the Record:

Claire says she likes cleaning toilets better than playing with toys.

Teacher's Pet

Meet Brother Hamman, Claire's CTR 6 Primary Teacher. It seems Claire has a little crush on him. As soon as we get to church, she starts looking around for him to make sure he is there. One day he stopped by our house to drop something off and it immediately became show-and-tell. Dustin (Bro. Hamman) had his dog in the car, and asked the kids if they wanted to see it. Then he said, joking, "You'd better watch out - she'll lick you to death!" I thought to myself, this is going to be interesting. Because, you see, Claire is absolutely TERRIFIED of dogs. One time she admitted to me that what she hates the most about dogs is that they lick and slobber all over you. The little dog jumped out of the car and immediately started running around and chasing Claire. But did she scream hysterically and cling to me like she does every other time? No! Instead, she let it chase her with only a few nervous giggles - I could tell she wanted to impress. As soon as Dustin caught his dog and left, I gave Claire a big hug and noticed that she was shaking all over. Ahh, the things we do for love!

Here we go again . . .

No More Thumb-Sucking!

We're proud to announce that Claire has finally stopped sucking her thumbs! We tried the special nail polish first. It was really gross, spicy, and burned Claire's lips - that is, until she sucked it all off. So we decided to bite the bullet and buy the $80 thumb guards that she's wearing in the picture. I had to laugh when Claire's friend, Renee, tried sucking her thumb because she wanted to wear a thumb guard, too! (I'm sure her mom appreciated that.) The first morning we put the thumb guards on, I thought, "this is going to be a LONG day!" In fact, during the first 20 minutes of wearing them, Claire screamed "I don't wanna wear it! I want to take it off!" 78 times. That's right, I kept track. Just so Jerry would feel sorry for me. And she finally stopped screaming and stopped sucking her thumbs a week later.

Summer Vacation Part 1: Santa Clara, CA

What a crazy summer it has been - it's hard to believe it's already over - and we SURVIVED!!! Darren and Claire had fun taking turns staying with Grandma and Grandpa, where Darren learned how to ride a bike. Miles got to fly to Utah with Jerry to visit Grandpa Collingwood and Grandma Jan. In August we found out that Jerry's grandma has cancer so we made a quick trip to California to see her before she got too sick. We were able to see Jerry's mom, too. While we were there we, went went to San Francisco and Monterrey.

Everyone loved Grandma Bacon's pinball machine!

Unfortunately, Samantha was pretty crabby the whole time. We we got home, we found out that she had an ear infection. Poor thing!

Golden Gate Park, with the Golden Gate Bridge in the background.

Lombard Street

Pier 39:

Monterrey Bay and Aquarium - the aquarium was really cool because it was right on the ocean.

We even got to meet my brother, Taylor, for lunch at Chuckie Cheese.

Everyone's favorite place was the Children's Museum in San Jose.

We were sad to say goodbye!

Darren's First Day of School

Miss Love's First Grade Class




It's hard to believe that Darren is in first grade! We are proud of him and hope he has a wonderful year!