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life

The Best Christmas Gift

We have been encouraging the kids to think about what they would like to give to others at Christmas and to go beyond simply spending money or giving away toys they no longer want. The results have been very encouraging. I was most pleasantly surprised when Alyssa apparently decided that something she could give me would be to pack my lunch for me. Of course that does no good on Christmas day so she set to work Sunday evening and packed up the leftovers that I had been planning to take to work yesterday then she wrote me a note saying:

I hope you like your lunch. I packed it.

From Lyssa

To Dad

She left the note on top of the lunch in the fridge for me to find. It was a fabulous gift from a child with an amazing heart.

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life pictures

Welcome Enoch

Almost 3 years to the day after his older brother arrived we got a new arrival today. Stats and story follow.
Name: Enoch Andrew Miller
Arrived: 11:15 am 11/2/2009
Weight: 7 lbs. 5 oz.
Length: 20 1/2 inches

Enoch Miller
Enoch Miller

We had been expecting him for weeks since his two older siblings each came three weeks early – never again. My new motto is “be ready a month early and don’t plan on anything before the due date.” Enoch was not very late as he was due the last week of October, but he held on long enough to make it into November – boy month in our house since Dad, Isaac, and now Enoch all have November birthdays. Unfortunately siblings (under 14) can’t come to the hospital to visit so we can’t get a great little family picture like we had when Isaac was born. We’ll post the best we can get after Enoch gets home.

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life pictures

A Sneak Preview

We went to have an ultrasound today to find out whether our next child was going to be a boy or a girl. We got some really good images of a very healthy and active baby. They were easily the most detailed ultrasound images we had ever seen except for the one time we got to have a 3-D ultrasound with Isaac (because the clinic wanted to test their new machine).

Enoch's arm

Aside from very clear images we got a good look at a very active little boy, turning his head, moving his hands and feet – he was almost constantly in motion. Hopefully that means that Enoch will be a very well-matched playmate for Isaac (once he is more than half Isaac’s size that is).

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life

“I Want . . .”

Isaac has a habit – that seems pretty normal for his age – of changing his mind every second. Normally this is irritating to me, but this morning we had a very sweet little instance of this.

He came out of his room after waking up (he’s often the first one up) and came to where I was studying. He asked for a hotdog (a normal morning request for him). I said okay and he immediately asked me to hold him. I picked him up and he snuggled into my shoulder and asked to go to bed. I asked him a couple of times to make sure that he really meant that (not wanting to get in trouble if I was mistaken) and then I carried him to bed. He went right to sleep and did not wake up before I left for work.

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life

The Chairs Are Smiling

While watching the video presentation prior to touring the Draper temple Savannah blurted out “the chairs are smiling” when she saw a picture of one of the endowment rooms. Later she repeated that when seeing a picture in the brochure and when walking through those rooms.

Leave it to a child to see things in such a simple way. Where else but the temple would even the furniture be happy? (I’ll have to get a picture from one of the brochures and post it here to show what she meant.)

Categories
life

Today’s Adventure

Laura called at 9:42 this morning and told me that she needed to take Alyssa to the emergency room at Primary Children’s Hospital with a cut on her face. I told a couple of people at work so they could cover for me as necessary while I helped Laura. Thankfully it turned out that Alyssa only needed three stitches and was very brave about the whole affair. We even ran into our cousin who has been there with RSV for a few days.

After the whole thing was over I just had to think that we have been very much blessed that this is only the second time that we have ever had a child in the hospital (Isaac’s bout with RSV two years ago being the other time).

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life

Not Pregnant Anymore

To finish a story that Laura started earlier today – when we bought Angel last night (Savannah’s new pet mouse) we knew we were in for an adventure since she was pregnant. The woman at the store guessed that Angel would have her babies in about a week. I figured that was enough time for Angel to get adjusted before we would have to stop handling her while the babies were in their infancy. (We were told that handling the mother after the babies were born might make the mother become aggressive toward the babies.)

Angel had her babies today (probably very close to the time Laura published her post). They are two cute pink squirmy things right now, but we expect to enjoy watching them grow until we have do decide whether to keep them or to sell them.

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life

“Light of the World”

I’m not sure how long it has been there, but website for the Mormon church’s children’s magazine, The Friend, has a place where kids can Color Online. Savannah was playing there this morning during my scripture study and she called out to me that she was going to put a background of light on the picture of Jesus in the picture she was coloring “because it’s one of His names, ‘the light of the world.'” I thought that was very insightful – I wonder if any artists thought of it that way back when it was standard practice to place a halo of light around the face of Christ.

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life

Universal Holiday Spirit

If you do a little searching here my position on Halloween could hardly be described as positive. This year as we partook of the festivities of the day I underwent a marked change in perspective. We spent a couple of hours walking around our new neighborhood with the kids. The older two would run from house to house gathering more goodies than is good for them and the younger two would generally try to keep up, but they would stay back with Laura and I as we enjoyed conversations with many of our neighbors. We would then hurry three or four houses forward to catch up with the older girls (who would have gathered candy from the intervening houses not only for themselves, but for the younger two as well) and talk to another neighbor.

After this year, I sitll don’t care about Halloween as a “dress up and gather/distribute candy” activity, but I sure enjoyed it as a “get out and talk to friends and neighbors” activity. Unlike the last couple of years we were also blessed with perfect weather this year – this is the kind of Halloween that I can enjoy, and I hope to bring this attitude into future years.

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life

Meet Zach

Yesterday we got a dog. We’ve been talking about it for a long time and Laura and I had decided by June to get one after the move. Two weeks ago (or even a week ago) we were expecting to get a dog for Christmas, but on Friday we decided to go look at a beagle that was available at the Humane Society. Since we were looking at dogs, which the kids loved, we visited the Pet Super Adoption that was taking place in Salt Lake City – that’s where we met Zach (he was named Brom there). He’s a Heeler/Terrier mix. He just fit right in with the rest of the family. Since the event was closing for the night and we didn’t know much about heelers (we had focused our research on beagles) we decided to learn what we could about his breed overnight and then adopt him in the morning (assuming we didn’t learn anything too alarming about heelers).

It was interesting yesterday while we were out running errands to see how Zach was so attached to everyone in the family. At one point I got out of the car to run a quick errand and he went from content to nearly frantic (according to Laura – I wasn’t there) until I came back. Later Laura left for a short time and he had the same reaction.

After only 24 hours we have had our first escape (this morning before church) and our first home alone time (church). We also know that Zach can jump the fence so we’re happy to see that he tends to come back. We are already looking forward to the time when we all get used to the new rhythms of pet ownership when we and Zach all know what to expect of each other.