The Greatest Show on Earth...

We went to the circus yesterday and the boys had a great time. The big boys that is. Adam thought it was entirely too hot and noisy. There were amazing acrobats and cool zebras and elephants. It wasn't as exciting as I remember it when I was a kid (no fire or motorcycles, and always a net), but I guess they have to worry about lawsuits these days.

We visited Grandma Shurtliff before the show and had a really nice time with her. She fed us a wonderful lunch and I had a nice chat with her while the boys played on the swings. We also walked around temple square and Brian gave the boys a tour or everything. Off subject, but hug your little ones tight today -- Cameron almost got hit by a car last night when he darted away from me outside of the Conference Center. I can't stop hugging him and thanking my Heavenly Father -- it was a really close call.

Well that's about all that's new for us...

From Rick...

This might be the same as the letters you guys have been getting, but for those who haven't heard some of his latest...

there has been a lot of tracting, so i'm starting to get into shape. haha oh yeah i have devolped a twitch in both my eyebrows its hilarious. i will just be sitting there and all of a sudden my eyebrows will start going crazy!

oh man they have changed so much in the mission this Zone conference. we had a standard of excellence that kind of put us above other missions i guess, like an extra set of rules, and it just got upgraded. ...missouri is one of four missions that is starting a new program called "truth restored". we are kind of a guinee pig mission. the chuch has started advertisments and we have new pass along cards, that say "the truth about lifes great questions is now restored" you can go to mormon.org\truthrestored to see the advertisments and stuff. yeah so a ton of pressure is on the missionaries to really make this program work. phase two of the operation just began, so now they really want to see a change. pretty cool huh? if this program is a success then they are going to start it in every mission in the world. so yeah the stakes in this mission are now training members how to preach the gospel to their friends and how to be missionaries basically. just imagin if the whole world did that. haha I'm leading a revolution! its really exciting. you definately need to check that website out.

Brian is 6!

Can you believe I'm that old? Crazy. Speaking of crazy, his party was insane. Next time remind me not to try to drive anywhere with a bunch of little boys -- especially when there is a parade going down Main Street! We made it through relatively unscathed, though, and Brian had a great time. As you can see from the picture, he loves Rick's scooter. Love you all!

Fellow Canker-sore sufferers...

Chrissy, you may be the only one who appreciates this, but Baby Ora-Jel is AWESOME for canker-sores. I can't believe I didn't try this stuff sooner. Just stick it on and in seconds you can smile and talk and eat again. Woo-hoo!!

Random Pictures of the Fam (mostly of Benny Boo)

This is from when we went to the fair. Ben was so excited to ride the horsey and to sit in the car (also known as the ka, ka). For all of you who didn't understand that tid bit in parenthasese (my spelling horrible) wait until you have children (i guess that would only apply to Chrissy and Jon, so the rest of you should understand it). anyway, now i am way off on a tangent. i guess taht is what happens when you write the blog at 12:30 a.m. well good night and good luck. :)

Computer Question...

Random question for you computer nerds out there (aka Dad and Mark):

I am creating a large unit plan for one of my classes this semester and we have to have a border around our pages that we create in MS Word. I know how to put a page border on, even the art ones that microsoft provides, but what if I want an image around the page that's not a canned option? I know this is weird, but I want eyeballs as a page border (the book is 1984 and eyes are important). Is there any way to do this? Thanks!

Finally!

Here it is - I'm finally posting. I love this blog idea, and I've enjoyed reading everyone's posts. The past few weeks have been crazy busy for us. We moved into our house and we love it! There's so much to do though. (Even with some updates, a 40-year-old house has plenty of quirks and issues to take care of : ) ) We finally finished painting the spare room and we're ready to move all the spare room furniture out of the living room an into its rightful place. Eva's room is half painted, and Aiden's room...well, Aiden's room is still dark purple. The air conditioning conked out the day we moved in, and we've been fighting with the warranty company (we have a one-year warranty on the house - I'd never heard of such a thing before) about them paying to replace it because they figured that with the timing it must have been a "pre-existing condition"; but they finally agreed to pay up and we have a/c now (last week was 90 degrees outside, and this week is in the 60's and 70's - oh well, at least it'll be working in the spring when we have to use it again).
Our neighbors here are amazing. Soon after we moved in our next door neighbors left a scarecrow decoration on our doorstep with a "welcome" card. Our other next door neighbors and the neighbors next door to them both invited us to cookouts in our honor, the across-the-street neighbors brought us brownies, and yesterday while I was at the grocery store someone mowed our front lawn (we still haven't found time to buy a lawnmower). Our ward is nice too, but I don't feel like we've really met many people there yet; I'm sure we'll get integrated soon.
Eva started preschool last week, and she loves it! She loves making new friends. Aiden is getting so big too. I'll post pictures soon. Well, Eva is getting antsy, so I've got to finish up, but I'll post again soon!

It's a BOY

For all of you who have not already heard, we are having another baby boy. We think that we are going to name him Bowen Harold Baker, and call him Bo (or Bo-Bo) for short. Last weekend we got moved into our new apt. we are happy to be finally settling down... at least for the time being. At the end of December we are going to be moving to AZ. I don't think that we could be going to such a warm state at a better time. You are all welcome to come and visit, if you want to make the trek d0wn there. That's about it for now. Love you all.

Good ol' Provo!

I thought you guys might like to see some of these pictures I took in the MTC when we sent Rick off. The picture of his nametag with the dot on it is kind of an inside joke--Jon told me that that dot is called "the dork dot" cuz all first-day missionaries get one. For some reason, we all thought this was hilarious and it really lightened the mood that day. And this pic to the left is of Jon and I in front of Frank Lloyd Wright's house in Chicago, where we visited just before we returned to Provo. Speaking of Provo, things are going pretty well here. We've gotten used to our ghetto basement apartment south of campus and like having two bedrooms and access to a washer/dryer. Classes are really tough for me this semester, but I love them and I can't wait to student teach in a few months! Jon is so happy to be in his construction classes, and we feel so blessed to finally have him in the program! I just got a job as a research assistant on campus doing statistical analysis for the School of Education (I'm actually not exactly sure what I'm doing yet, but it pays well!) and Jon has some job interviews lined up this week. So that's about it for us. I'm glad that you are all doing well, and Lisa, I like the reunion idea but I feel too young to be starting our own "baker reunions!" Much love!

Rogers Family Update

Hi Family! Sorry I haven't posted anything yet. When you first started the blog, I tried to post through Picasa so I could easily include pictures, but I can't get Picasa's blog function to work. I keep getting lots of error messages. Mark and I can't figure out what the problem is. So I kind of forgot about the blog for awhile. I will try to be better. Suzie's been very busy moving and repainting her whole new house, so I think we should give her some slack about not posting yet ;) When I talked to her the other day she was taking a door off it's hinges in order to replace the hinges. Go Suzie! I'm very impressed with Suzie and Lisa's remodeling skills.
Things are going pretty well here. I got to attend Deseret Book's "Time Out for Women" with Mom yesterday. It's like a mini-EFY for women. We had a really nice time. There were lots of good talks and Kenneth Cope sang. Some of the songs were new to me and they were very touching. (I don't suppose this blog lets you post songs). The songs were both by Kenneth Cope, titled "Come unto Jesus" and "Broken". You can find them on I-tunes for 99 cents each.
We've been doing pretty well lately. Mark has been a fabulous help this weekend, I feel like I've had the whole weekend off. I'm so blessed. The girls are doing pretty well. Grace has been rather fussy lately, but I think she's okay. Maybe she's teething again. BethAnne is also doing well. She started Preschool last week and she loves it! It's so fun to watch her learn and grow and make friends. It's really nice to that she doesn't have poopy diapers anymore, and she stays fairly dry too. She wears pullups, but we only have to change them in the morning and at night and she can do that herself. Right when we got back to Boise, the Bishop set me apart as a Nursery worker and in the blessing he said that I wouldn't have to spend so much time with BethAnne's health maintenance things. It was a really sweet blessing. At that time I was still overwhelmed with everything and I didn't understand what the blessing was talking about. It's clear now though. I spend so much less time with diapers and things. BethAnne changes her own pullups and we only have to do the enemas every other day and she's completely clean in between (most kids have to do the enemas every day for them to be effective). That saves me a ton of time. We've been really blessed. She still has about a 50/50 chance of potty training her bowel when she's a little older. But the enemas are working well and she doesn't mind them too much. We are going back to Cincinnati in October for more testing on BethAnne's urinary tract and then she will have surgery in December or January. That will keep us in Cincinnati for 2 to 4 weeks probably. With the surgery and regular catheterization, we will hopefully be able to keep BethAnne's kidneys healthy enough for many more years.
Mark and his family are doing better lately, for the most part. It has been a hard summer, but we are grateful for the "good news" of the Gospel and the peace of the Comforter. We know we will see Todd again. We appreciate all your thoughts and prayers. Mark's brother, Scott, is moving to Lehi in the next couple of weeks to start work at Micron there. We're excited to have him on this side of the country. Mark's parents are planning to retire to Boise in about 1 1/2 years. That will be great!
Well, I'm sorry this was a little long and redundant for those of you who may have heard a lot of it. I love all of you so much! Hope you are well.
Love, Aubrey and family

2008 Family Reunion

Hi family! Brian and I want to start a family reunion every-other year (like on the off years of the extended Baker family reunion). We'll host it next year, and then someone else can the next time (unless you all like Logan so much you want to make it part of the tradition...) Our summer is wide open so far (except for the weekend of July 26th). Of those of you who want to come, what dates work best?

Some ideas:
- Thursday or Friday through Sunday
- Our house (4 spare bedrooms, but not that many beds - air matresses anyone?)
- Or we could rent some cabins by Bear Lake
- Play at Bear Lake (1 hour away from our house, very fun because the water is warm/shallow for a long time for the kids, then deep enough for boats and jet skis, etc)
- Pickleville Playhouse (dinner theater in Bear Lake - like the Shakespeare festival)
- 1 night of camping at Tony Grove? (gorgeous area walking-distance away from a small lake, with toilets and flushing water - 15 minutes from Bear Lake) - 4-wheelers, motorcycles, fishing (maybe the guys could do this with the older kids, and the girls could go to Pickleville with the babies? or maybe we could be brave and rough it too...)
- We also have a few nice parks by our house, an aquatic center 15 minutes away (like the Natatorium w/kid area and slide), a very small zoo (birds and turtles anyone?)

So is anyone game? If so, when?

Note From Dad

I was just going through and reading everyone's blog entries. I'm glad so see that most of you are taking advantage of it. Mom and I are doing great. We love working at the temple. It brings us closer together and reminds us even more about how much we treasure our family.

We are trying to figure out how to share some of the things that Rick sends in his letters. Maybe we should just make entries in this blog. The "high points" in Rick's last letter was "missionary work is HARD! ... but I'm doing great. I thought when they said it would be hard, they meant 'oh somedays you don't teach many lessons, but most days you will." Well, he said he finally got to teach a discussion and that he doesn't really mind getting hundreds of doors slammed in his face. He likes talking with the members every night over dinner and getting a home-cooked meal. He likes his trainer, even though he's a foot shorter than Rick. He says so far their biggest conflict is that the trainer get frustrated with people that slam the door on them and Rick is a bit "happy-go-lucky" and ready to move onto the next door. His email address is rbaker@myldsmail.net and you can write to him at 7319 NW Donovan Drive #329, Kansas City, MO 64153.

Keep sharing your news. We don't have alot going on being the empty nesters that we are. We love you all.

In Limbo

We are back in the great UC and at BYU. This semester I am taking 18 credits and Steph is going to try to take 4 credits. If everything goes as planned then we will both graduate in December. Ben is doing well. He is as cute as ever and babbles like you wouldn’t believe. We still haven’t nailed down a place to live here this last semester… so we are still vagabonds.

Llewellyn Update

Hi everyone! Just a quick run-down for you...
Adam is crawling everywhere these days. At 6 months, he's our earliest crawler. He even pulls himself up on the couch, and then gets a little scared because he knows that falling is inevitable if mom isn't close by. We visited Delona's family in Orem a few weeks ago, and she snapped some family pictures of us at BYU. It was strange being back on campus -- this time with 4 little boys. Where has the time gone? Brian is officially "big" now -- he caught the bus to his first day of Kindergarten last week. He is SO ready to go (and mom too). And last but not least, Carl and Ben came to visit over Labor Day weekend. We had a fantastic time together. We went to the park a few times, watched a couple movies, went to a remote control air show (Ben was absolutely adorable -- ask him what an airplane says next time you see him), and we topped it off with a trip to Sam's Club for pretzels and Icee's -- yum! We will miss them when they move to Arizona next year!

Hello from the Hastings!

I'm so excited that Lisa and Dad started this blog so that we can all keep in touch! Jon and I are in Omaha today, splitting up our excruciatingly long trip back to Provo. Jon's excited to watch the first BYU football game this afternoon with his Dad (and the rest of us of course). For those of you who don't know, Jon got accepted to the Construction Management program earlier this week (WooHoo!) after an intense 6 week Independent Study Calculus class this summer. We are both excited to start school, if not a little nervous. When we get back to Provo I'll post some of the pics we took at the MTC with Rick a few weeks ago. Anyways, that's what going on with us right now, but I'm excited to use this blog to keep in touch often!