Kindergarten!

It's official...Haley's in Kindergarten. We took her to the school on Saturday to look at the lists and find out who her teacher is. On the list we saw the names of two of Haley's friends, Calvin and Sasha. She is very excited to be in class with her friends.

Today we took her to the school to meet her teacher, Miss Harms, and to visit her classroom. Miss Harms seems very nice and complimented Haley on how pretty she looked. Haley wasn't hesitant at all to find a seat, which put Brent and I at ease. It was funny that all the girls sat together at one table and the boys occupied the other two tables. She met her principle Mrs. Young and had no trouble locating her cubby and backpack hook. Haley is very excited for tomorrow, the first real day of school.

Tune in tomorrow for the first day of kindergarten update! I'm sure Haley won't leave out any details.

PopPop's Chicken Pox

PopPop,

Haley drew you a picture. You have chicken pox. She got the idea because you had shingles and we researched it on the internet. We also researched chicken pox and obviously she liked those better. If you were 35 years younger we might assume they were zits. But, you're an old man. By the way, I shipped the Depends yesterday.

New Baby!

I had an ultrasound on Monday and these are the pictures of our new baby. I'm 12 weeks along and the baby is due on March 5. The doctor says everything looks really good so far. I'll have another ultrasound on Sept. 11 for them to check the heart and other organs. The doctor said they should be able to tell if the baby is a boy or a girl. Any guesses?

We're clueless as to the gender, but we'll be ecstatic either way.

Stansbury Days

Brent thought this was funny.

A view of Stansbury Park, our subdivision. Haley and Allie on the slide.

A sucker always makes Haley a happy girl, but she's not patient enough to suck on it. She bites it until it breaks which makes me feel like she's going to break her teeth. It's very painful to watch.

Sugar and more sugar makes for happy kids.

Some of the sailboats.

We had a community party last weekend and we took the girls to enjoy all the activities. They ate pizza and there was live music. Haley didn't seem too impressed by the performers. She just wanted to know when it was going to be her turn to sing on stage. There was a frog jumping contest (which we missed) and the girls had a good time on the inflatable slide. They became very good at cutting in line without people noticing. Of course, it's hard to reprimand them when they're 15 feet above me. They also had a sailboat race on the lake, and by lake I mean an oversized pond. These people don't know what a lake is, one of the cons of living in Utah - a serious lack of water. Everyone should have a swimming pool! Still we had a great time and got lots of good pictures. Enjoy!

Thank you Grandma and Papa!

Thank you Grandma and Papa for the package in the mail. Haley and Allie love all the goodies you sent. I think the best part to them is knowing you are thinking about them. Knowing it's from you seemed to make it extra special. We all love and miss you!

Emily

Here are some fun new pictures of Emily. We can't believe how big she's getting. We'll celebrate her 1st birthday on the 29th. Brent and I continue to be amazed at how much joy our children bring. We're so grateful for all of them.

Emily has 4 new teeth. If teething bothers her we'll never know...she's all smiles all the time. Similar to our other children, along with her sweetness she's opinionated and doesn't have a problem making herself heard. In other words, she fits right in. She's not walking yet, but it won't be too long before she's keeping up with Haley and Allie. The girls are really good to stop and include Emily in what they're doing. Their favorite thing lately is to climb in Emily's crib with her, but we had to stop that for safety issues. Still it's nice to see that they love her so much. Who wouldn't?

How Do I Love Thee

For all the Moms

Laura I love you and appreciate you and am glad that together we have the opportunity to raise righteous daughters who will someday have righteous families of their own. You are a lovely and perfect woman and I love you this much | |.

Unattended Children

May I Please Play Outside Unsupervised Agreement

I, Joseph Brent Helms (hereafter referred to as "Negligent Parent") shall be responsible for Haley Marlena Helms (hereafter referred to as "Unattended Child"). Negligent Parent shall indemnify, defend and save harmless Unattended Child, its Grandparents, Aunts, Uncles, Great Aunts and Uncles, Cousins, Sisters, Stuffed Animals and agents from and against all liability, cost or expense, damages, claims, or losses that arise as a result of, in whole or in part, the negligence, error, omissions or failure of Negligent Parent to perform duties as set forth in Exhibit A of this Agreement.

Exhibit A: Negligent Parent shall assume all parental responsiblities of Unattended Child while Laura Taylor Helms (hereafter referred to as "Wife") is away attending to important household duties.

I accept said terms of this Agreement of my own free will and choice as demanded by Wife.

J. Brent Helms

It was Laura's fault for leaving me in charge . . . I'm suing!

Family Outting

Every time a new Temple is built, a big Open House is held so anyone can come inside and see the Temple before it's dedicated. This is a great opportunity. A lot of people think that the inside of the Temple and what happens there is a secret; its not a secret, it's sacred and isn't discussed in much detail outside the Temple. So the best way for people to understand the Temple and what happens there is to see it.

The new Oquirrh Mountain Utah Temple held its Open House the whole month of July. It will be dedicated later this month. Brent and I were excited to take the girls inside b/c children don't usually attend the Temple until after they're twelve years old.

The flowers were beautiful and there is a fountain that all the children thought they should play in. (I'm glad ours weren't the only ones.) Haley and Allie liked all the pictures of Jesus in the Temple and how beautifully everything is decorated. There is lots of light in the Temple and one of my favorite things are the mirrors. Mirrors are placed directly across from each other in the Temple to represent eternity. In the Temple couples and families were invited to stand between the mirrors and watch their reflections continue infinitely, reminding us of our eternal nature and that families can be together forever.

Haley was curious about the words inscribed on the front of the Temple. We tried to explain that the Temple is Heavenly Father's and Jesus' house just like the Temples in the Bible. In case you can't see, the words on the Temple read: In Holiness to the Lord. The House of the Lord. These words are carved on every Temple and Haley liked that too. This was a really unique opportunity for our family.

To see more pictures of Temples and learn more about them you can click on this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-x_-TQivCx8

or this one:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLXYxmaHWQs

This was taken outside after we toured the entire temple which was three stories in all.

Playing in the fountain. We couldn't get Allie to turn around long enough for us to take her picture.

Here's Emily smiling as usual. She is the happiest baby. I don't know how we get so lucky every time, but we have the best kids.

Thanks Grammy!

Haley was very excited to receive a package from Grammy today. Haley wanted to try on all the dresses so we could post pictures for Grammy to view on the blog. She posed herself for all the pictures. WHAT A HAM!

Thanks Mom for the dresses. They couldn't be more precious! Also, thanks for sending Allie a thermos. She's felt kind of left out with Haley getting ready for school. A pink thermos was just the trick!

Finally...New Posts!

We took the girls to Big Cottonwood Canyon a couple of weeks ago. Grandpa and Nana had been camping there all week and we spent the day at their campsite hiking, playing in the stream, and feeding a ground squirrel. The scenery was unbelievable and Haley and Allie had a lot of fun. The heat in the valley was 97 degrees that day but in the canyon it was only 74. It was nice to escape the heat for a while. Soon we'll be trying to escape the freezing cold!

Standing in the mountain stream was very cold, but Haley and Allie didn't seem to mind. They just wanted to be wet and were glad for the opportunity to play outside for a while.

You can see that the water was rushing very quickly at this point in the stream, but Haley insisted on getting in. I'm glad I got in with her because her foot slipped on a rock and she almost got washed away under the log. (Too bad she didn't have a change of clothes. Dry pants weren't much of a help at this point.)

Emily still does not enjoy camping. What a frown!

The hammock became the ultimate swing. Knowing how adventurous Haley and Allie are, you can imagine that they insisted Brent push them until they were completely sideways and about to fall out. We're finding some things to like about Utah. All in all, there's no place like home.