Birthday Money

I received some money for my birthday in April, and I was trying to figure out what to do with it.  Then a couple of weeks ago, we were playing some soccer with Joseph and Kenny, and I decided I would look up plans for how to build a soccer goal.  I found the following website - http://soccergoalplans.com/ and decided to go for it.  The limiting factor previously had been the cost of ordering the net.  But with some extra cash, I thought, why not?  And an extra bonus was it came as a package to our apartment, and few things can rival the excitement generated when the boys hear the doorbell and find a package on the doorstep. 

So later that day, we went to Lowe's and bought the pipe, and brought it home to put together.  Joseph and Kenny helped measure out the pieces for me to cut while Elizabeth and Richard watched.  We built it in our living room because it was too dark outside, and then we had to play for a little bit.  Kenny wanted to be a goalie that would fall over when the ball hit him.  It's been well worth the investment so far.  And here are a few more pictures just because.

January

This past few days has been fairly eventful, with Elizabeth and Richard back in Utah, I've been at home with Joseph and Kenny.  I have a whole lot more appreciation for Elizabeth and mothers of young children.  The boys are a lot of fun, but they sure take a long of energy and ingenuity to entertain and to keep from fighting.  I thought I'd put in some pictures of our month.

 A family pic the day Richard was blessed.

We were blessed that Elizabeth's mom could be there for the blessing.  She came for a week, which was great for our whole family.

Showing the resemblance between Kenny and my baby pictures.  

 

 Sweater-vest Sunday.  The older boys appear to be enjoying more than Richard, who isn't quite sure what is going on.

  

What could be more fun to little boys than jumping off the couch onto a bouncy mattress?

 I moved to the floor to get better pictures

Catching a Richard smile.  They're still fairly rare, but a lot of fun to see, even if he just spit up all over his shirt.

Baby Blessing Guessing Game

Our little boy Richard was blessed in sacrament meeting today.  We had several family members here - Elizabeth's Mom, my aunt, another uncle, and two cousins that came from New York and New Jersey.   Robert and Alicia Broce and their family (Elizabeth's cousin) came to our meeting also.  Since I conducted the meeting today, I shared my testimony, and Elizabeth bore a powerful testimony today also.  She mentioned that today is exactly a year after Nellie's funeral service.  Richard must share Dad's love of neat days - he was born on Dad's birthday, and now was blessed on the day of Nellie's funeral.  What a healing blessing he has been for our family.  But the little guy cried and cried through the whole blessing, then quieted down as soon as he went back to Elizabeth.

Since we've had so many people tell us that he just looks like one of our kids, and since all of our boys wore the same outfit when they were blessed, I decided to have a little contest to see if you could guess which boy is which:

Richard James Taylor

Last night Elizabeth delivered a healthy 8 lb baby boy.  We're so thankful that the delivery went smoothly.  Because of what happened with Nellie, the doctors wanted to deliver this baby as soon as they felt it was safe.  So last Friday they did an amniocentesis to test for lung maturity.  When it came back positive, we were set to be induced yesterday, at 38 weeks.  I wonder how big he would have been had she gone 40 weeks. 

We named him Richard James Taylor.  He's named after Richard Vernon, Elizabeth's father, who passed away just a couple of weeks ago from cancer.  His middle name is from my grandfather, James VanDerwerken, who passed away a year ago September. 

My aunt and uncle came down from the Albany area with their kids to watch our boys while we were in the hospital, and my aunt brought Joseph and Kenny in to see their "baby bro" (as we've been calling him for the last few weeks).

It's a ...

Just after we got back from our trip, we found out we're having little Taylor boy number 3!

Summer Birthdays

We celebrated Joseph's birthday in Utah.  We hadn't been exactly eating too healthy already, and the boys had been rather energetic, so when Joseph requested a spider cake, I got thinking of alternatives to the sugary mess that birthday cakes usually bring. 

 So he had a banana, watermelon, grape spider cake and he loved it.

That morning we went to farm country. Kenny was as happy as could be on the wagon ride.

But not so much on the pony ride.

Joseph had been looking forward to the horse ride for quite some time.

 Kenny got to sleep in, on our bed on his birthday.  I might have too, but someone had to make sure he didn't roll off the bed, right?

 A Bob the Builder Phone.  He was always calling Bob on our cell phones, on calculators, on remote controls, dominoes, or anything flat with buttons.

 Here's Kenny's cake - a basketball cake.  He nearly put his small basketball into the cake, and Joseph nearly stuck his hands through the whole cake. 

June Trip out West

June saw us take an adventurous trip flying with our two little boys and an expectant Elizabeth.  We had an eventful few weeks.  The boys just loved it - Joseph got right to his first priority on our summer vacation:

The boys had a lot of fun at this splash pad.  They had a river of water that they both just loved to run through.

Elizabeth's brother Parley was married in Salt Lake, this is him and his wife Mackenzie.  

 

 Mackenzie loved all her neices and nephews, and Kenny just loved putting his arms in the air.  If you look closely, you can see Joseph's arm just behind Kenny.

 A date to Thanksgiving Point Gardens - great to have in-house babysitters!

 Taking the boys to BYU was fun - we went to the Bean Museum to look at all the animals.  Then we ate at the Cannon Center, where both Elizabeth and I ate as freshman in the dorms. 

Cooking 'smores at a campfire at Moyle Park in Alpine.  The tents didn't stay up for very long with lots of little boy cousins.

Elizabeth's favorite part of our trip was our late nights.  This is Kenny at about 11:30 Mountain Time.  We realized how wonderful that cribs hold kids in.  At least they did.

Then we went up to Bear Lake for a Taylor Family Reunion - we loved it, even through the sunburn and rocky beaches.

If you can't reach it from the ground ...

 Here's Grandpa Taylor giving horsey rides to the grandkids.  I don't know where that energy comes from.  The grandpa strength, I guess.

 Swimming in natural hot springs in Idaho.  We went to check out the water, and before we knew it, Elizabeth and the boys were already in.

Then we came and swam at a developed hot spring pool - and I experimented a bit with our camera. 

Kenny learned some important things this trip - like going all out for the frisbee.  "Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it" (Proverbs 22:6)

 Lots of siblings and my parents resting while the kids play.

We had a great time seeing everybody.  My youngest brother, in maroon above, returned from a mission to the Philippines while we were there.