5 months old!

Little Lucy turned 5 months old about a weeks ago. I know I sound like a broken record, but she is just the best baby ever! This past month she has gotten stronger and has figured out how to roll back over from her front to her back. As I'm sure you recall from my last post about Lucy, she was just barely rolling over from her back to her front. Now, if she's in the mood, she can roll back to front, front to back, and so forth and get to where she wants to go. Sometimes, though, she rolls into the entertainment center and bonks her head, so we gotta be careful. When she's on her tummy, she also likes to bend her knees and then push with her feet on the carpet and try to propel herself forward a bit.

She also tried some rice cereal for the first time this past month.

She likes it! I give it to her once a day, when I remember. I'm sure she would love to eat it more, but it's not part of my routine yet, and I sometimes forget that it's an option.

She loves to play, and this past month we got out the Jumperoo to see if she was big enough for it yet. She likes to sit in it and play with the toys around the edge, but she doesn't really bounce in it very much. Her feet DO touch the floor, though. Just barely. Sometimes, she just wears herself out when she plays and can't keep her eyes open any longer.

She is just so darn cute. It is a joy to have her in our family!

Two-Face

Adam here. I was reminded today of one of the funniest things I ever did, and I was inspired to make a blog post out of it. Back in my Singles Branch days, my best friend Michelle and I were sitting in Sunday School, kind of paying attention to the lesson. Michelle suggested that we play a game that she had played with her sisters in church when she was younger. She folded a paper in half and explained that the would draw half of a face, mark where the eyes, nose, and mouth were, and then the other person would draw the other half of the face without seeing what the first half looked like because it was hidden by the fold. Then they would unfold the paper and see what the face looked like.

So Michelle folded a paper in half, drew half of a face on the left side of the paper, and marked where the eyes, nose, and mouth were. She handed it to me, blank side up, and I drew half of a face, too. Struggling to keep a straight face, I handed the paper back to her. I wish I had kept the actual paper to scan and show you, but here is a close approximation of what she saw when she unfolded the paper:





We were both red-faced and straining with the effort of not laughing out loud in the back of the Sunday School class. Clearly, the hours I spend in 6th grade practicing how to sketch a Ninja Turtle paid off after all.

It's been quite a while since I posted anything on our blog. Lisa does most of the posting on here because she remembers to do it and she has access to the computer with all the pictures on it every day. So this post won't have any cute baby pictures or anything, but it will have some thoughts on what has been most interesting to me lately.

Firstly, we are right smack in the middle of thunderstorm season here in San Antonio. Last Wednesday, there was a pretty severe thunderstorm that had a lot of wind to go with it. It knocked out power for a bunch of people and blew down some trees. Luckily, nothing was damaged near our house (and our power only flickered; it never actually went out). We had another huge storm last night. It didn't have the really high winds of last week's storm, but it had a lot more thunder. From about 9:00 last night to some time past 3:00 this morning, there was constant rolling thunder and flashing lightning. It reminds me of my mission in Milwaukee when there were severe thunderstorms in late May and early June that would shake the apartment all night long.

I really enjoy listening to the storms, as long as I don't have to be out in them. If I can lay in bed in our dark bedroom and just hear and feel the thunder and watch the flashes of lightning, then it's really relaxing and fun. I'm not sure if Josh or Lucy feel similarly, though. Lucy was woken up last night by the thunder around 12:45 or so, and she was not happy. She decided that since she was up anyway, she should probably also be a little hungry. So Lisa gave her a little bottle and she settled down. Josh doesn't seem to get too startled by thunder, but then, I think he could sleep through just about anything.

Secondly, we have been attending classes for Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University. I have known about Dave Ramsey for a few years, but never really bought into the whole "no credit cards, no debt, cash only" thing. Until now. It turns out that his whole system is based on painfully simple common sense. Sure, the General Authorities have been teaching these same principles for years, but I was never really ready to do anything about it until now.

We have finally hit the point where we want do escape the evil credit card and consumer debt game. We're tired of paying huge amounts of money just on interest because we bought something with a credit card rather than saving up actual money for it. We're tired of living paycheck to paycheck and never really having a reserve in the bank for emergencies. We're tired of trading our financial security and future to credit card companies so that we don't have to delay our gratification a little and save up for stuff that we want.

So we have called up our credit card companies and canceled our accounts. We have finally started making a monthly budget and sticking to it. We are on our way to becoming debt free. It's going to take a long time to dig ourselves out of the hole we created with our instant gratification habits, but it will be worth it. And some day we will be able to go wherever we want and buy a house where we really want to live and enjoy the fruits of our labor, rather than giving all of those fruits to a bunch of creditors.

Lastly, we are really excited to go to a family reunion in a few weeks. We're going to be driving from San Antonio to Park City, UT. We're making a stop in Denver for a couple of nights on the way to Park City to visit my friend Christina and her family. Then we will see the Pratt relatives over the ensuing days. We're really excited for everyone to get to meet Lucy and see how cute and sweet she really is. We're not necessarily excited for the approximately 48 hours of driving that will be involved in the round trip, but that's what podcasts and audiobooks are for.

More pictures!

Last week I took Josh to get his 3-year-old pictures taken. He was, of course, uncooperative, and didn't want to hold still for the camera lady. I was scared there wouldn't be any good pictures, but it turned out there were a few that I liked. This first one is the pose we chose for the pics going out to family.