Andrew is Home!

The youngest of my brothers got home from his Mission on Friday May 29th. Andrew served in the Moscow West Mission. It is very nice to have him home.

We left our house on Thursday and spent the night at Jacob's house to split up the drive. We finally got to Helena at 3:30 Friday afternoon.







Joseph had a wonderful time playing in Grandma and Grandpa's big backyard. We even let the neighbor's dog in and threw a ball with him for a while. Joseph and Aaron loved the dog, we need to get them one.









Then Uncle Jacob and Aunt Ashley came up after they were done with their classes. They decided to camp out in the backyard. Of course Joseph had to help put up the tent.







Then came the wait at the Airport. Andrew's flight came in at 10:48pm. It was a long day for the kids who were up way past their bed time. Joseph and Jacob played peekaboo with Aaron and Joseph just loved to talk to his Uncle Jacob.

Finally it was time to go and wait at the gate for Andrew. He was one of the last ones off the plane. As soon as Mom saw him walking towards the gate she had a huge smile on her face. She ran up to him and gave him a huge hug. Then the family all took turns giving him hugs.
Ryan and his family met up with Andrew in Salt Lake and rode in the plane with Andrew to Helena.

It was fun to introduce Andrew to the 3 family members that he had never met before. Everett, Aaron and Ashley. Grandpa also got to love up all his grandsons.

Then we went home and talked until we all had to go to sleep. On Saturday we all just had some fun. The boys got to play and the grown ups got to talk.

We also had the opportunity to take a family picture. Ryan's, Jacob's and our family had all independently decided to wear blue. So Andrew, Mom and Dad had to find blue shirts to wear as well. It was fun. If you look closely you can see the camera remote in Stephen's hand. We tied a puppet to the tripod and blew some bubbles up near the camera to get the kids looking there. Even with those tricks we still had to swap some heads.

When we got back the boys got to play with their sticker books. Instead of putting the stickers on the pages they decided to put the stickers on themselves.










Then in was bubbles and fun out in the backyard. The kids each got sunglasses and had fun wearing those too.
































Grandma Michaelis got a kids bike at a garage sale last summer. So both Joseph and Gage took turns riding the bike.



















Later on Saturday night we had a family dinner in the backyard. We discovered that Aaron loves potato salad. And Andrew discovered that one year olds are great moochers. They were begging off anyone who would look at them.
































Then we had a birthday party for Andrew, Ryan, Stephen, Aaron and Everett. We have a tradition in our family of giving one year olds their own cake and letting them go for it. We stripped them down to a diaper and let them eat. Everett really got into eating his cake and would grap bites to eat. Aaron wasn't so sure about this whole thing and wanted to eat bites out of peoples hands instead of getting his hands in the cake. But both boys had fun and had a bath afterwards.














On sunday Andrew was able to report on his mission and the family was able to sing in Sacrament meeting. While Dad watched all four kids. We sang Joseph Smiths first prayer. Ryanand and Jacob sang a verse in Portugase and Andrew sang a verse in Russian. It was fun.

It was wonderful to spend time with my family. The weekend ended too quickly. Jacob and Ashley had to leave Sunday night. We left Monday morning. Ryan was able to stay until Monday night. Kirsty and the kids were able to stay until Wednesday.

I can't wait to see them all again. I am so grateful for the knowledge that families are forever and that I will be with my family through the eternities.

Aaron is 1!

I can not believe that it has been a year since we had Aaron. He was born on May 14th of last year. Well now a few days over a year. Time is just flying by. Before I forget here are Aaron's stats from his latest doctor's appointment.
Head 48cm - 90th percentile (no wonder I have a hard time getting his shirts on ;)
Height 76.5cm (30.1 inches) - 60th percentile
Weight 21.2lbs - 25th percentile
He is healthy and eats everything in site. He is a fast crawler when he wants something and now can get everywhere in the house.

We were able to have a party for his birthday on Friday evening. We had family and a few friends over. So it was a good crowd. From what I could tell everyone had fun and enjoyed themselves.

We started out the night with Pizza, chips and soda. Then we went on to some games. The favorite game was a bean bad toss that we borrowed from Stephen's Mom. She made it before Stephen was even born. It was fun to learn some of the family history through the bean bag toss. Here is a shot of Joseph throwing the bean bags. He did very well.













We also had a ring toss and ball toss games but I don't know how those went because I was over at the bean bag game. But what the kids liked most was just general chaos and running around.













Then it was time for Cupcakes!














We had each kid decorate their own cupcakes. We had lots of sprinkles and colored sugars. We also had M&M(normal and mini), Reeses peeses (normal and mini), candy corn, licorice ropes, gummie bears and gummie worms.














Here are my cousins Annie and Ty with their creations.














Brad had fun with the licorice.














Niece Ruth showing off her Gummy Bear cupcake.














Our friend Kennedy with her cupcake.














Niece Victoria with her cupcake.

After the cupcakes we sang to Aaron and gave him his own cupcake. At first he was trying to share and then he was wondering why all these people were staring at him. He did eat part of it and I think he liked it but he didn't get too messy like I thought he would.



















































Here is a picture of Aaron with the cake we got for the grownups to eat.
Then the best part of the night the Pinatas. First was the baby pinata. This was Stephen's brain child. He made a box out of construction paper and then added lots of shapes and a couple of paper chains to the box. He said it looked like a 5th graders art project. Most of the carnage of all the pinatas was caught on video so I only have a few photos. The babies had fun tearing at it, but most of the damage was made by the parents. :)

Then came the pinata for the 2 to 4 year olds. Each kid got to hit it twice before we finally gave up and destroyed it and let them get the candy.











Then we had a pinata for the 5 and up crowd. This pinata barely lasted the first round that we were very surprised when it lasted a second round. Then we discovered that the structure was very well made so we helped it a little.
After the pinatas were done we cleaned up and went home, we had the party at our Townhome's community center. It was a nice open space that we can use. Thanks to everyone who came and made it a special birthday for Aaron!

Easter: A Recap

Sorry it has taken us so long to get this up, but it has been a busy month. The Saturday before Easter we were able to go to two parties. Joseph thought he had died and gone to heaven. The first was a family party put on by Grandma and Grandpa Bair. We went to their church for a nice lunch and an Easter Egg hunt. Later that night we had a party thrown by our friends Shannon and Mac, and Shannon's parents. They served a yummy dinner and the entire floor of the church gym was covered in toys and treats for the kids. She even made little baskets for the babies. Unfortunatly Stephena and Aaron had to miss the second party because Aaron had a rash on his back that we thought might be chicken pox. Thank goodness it wasn't but we just couldn't take the chance of maybe getting other little babies sick. We also forgot our camera at these two events so we have no pictures from them, but we did have a lot of fun.

We had so much candy from Saturday that we decided to wait for a while to do our easter egg hunt. We did it the next week on Monday. Joseph had lots of fun trying to find the eggs in our living room and we even had some on the floor for Aaron (filled with baby puffs). They also got hooded towels that I had made for them and a bunch of trains and track.

The boy's Easter out fits

I'm sorry it has been so long since we posted last. It has been a busy month. I don't have time to tell all of you about our Easter and everything else that has happened in the last month at this moment. I promise I will do that soon. But I will put up some cute pictures of the boys in their Easter clothing.

New Site!

Well, it ain't perfect, but it is finally up!

Our new wedding invitation site is finally up. If anyone has any comments (especially typos and broken links) please let me know what you think.

The new site is:
http://www.photoannouncementsweddinginvitations.com/

If you want to compare it to our old version, see:
http://www.photoannouncementsweddinginvitations.com/Old-Site/

Thanks!

Stephen

Oh, and if I don't fix a problem you spot right away, it is because it has joined a list in a document I call "Problems I know about, but will fix later." There are already some items I've added. I'm getting to major issues first, but it doesn't mean I don't appreciate knowing about smaller ones.

Still Losing, But slowly.

Some of you might remember that on January 1st, I announced that my new years resolution was to (continue) to lose weight, and that I had at the time lost 15.2 lbs. I had a 78-day head start on my diet (compared to the usual New Years start date).

I am happy to say that I have stuck to my guns, sort of.

My weight-loss chart stops at February 17th and doesn't have another entry until today:
(click the image to see it larger).



In the intervening 42 days I stopped dieting and exercising, but I stuck to my plan of good (but not "great") eating habits.

So you can see that I didn't plateau or even gain weight. Instead I've lost a decent 2.5 lbs in the past 6 weeks. That isn't much to write home about, but I am happy.

What happened?

Well I started working 10+ hours a day in order to totally revamp my invitations business while still doing my normal work. I admit that February is usually a bit slower, than June, but I still shot 4 weddings and did a lot of invitations for spring (as well as some bridals and engagements).

To re-tool my invitation business I've been redesigning my design examples, redesigning my website, and revamping my product lines (including testing new products and purchasing and testing new equipment).

The end result will be a new website and business that offers more information, better products (even slightly better prices, as my costs have gone down). I'll post the new site in a couple days when it launches.

The main thing I've done has been to add cardstock invitations. In the past it has been on just photo paper, but new printers allow me to get great photo quality results on cardstock (if you received a Christmas or Valentine card from us in the last months you can see what I mean, though those were a bit too contrasty and over-saturated, which I've fixed).

We've started leasing a new slitter-cutter-creaser, which will cut the cards out and even do a crease (for folding cards) all in one pass. That will allow me to mass-produce the cards on an economic scale. I can also print addresses directly on the envelopes economically, which will bring in more customers I think.

So I'll post the new site hopefully by Friday. I'm still waiting on a company to fix some mistakes on an order form that uploads photos. I have done all the web work but the upload forms and a price calculator, that I had my brother-in-law, Nathan Jensen do (he is a wiz at Javascript).

My future weight loss.

Well, I peaked at about 290 lbs some time last year. When I started the diet on October 15th I was at 285.2, I have lost 25 lbs since then. I am sure if I had kept dieting and exercising, I would be closer to 35 lbs right now.

But, hey I've proven that the lifestyle changes I made (at least in eating) have been some that I can sustain. And even if I continue at this much slower pace, I am continuing.

I hope to get back to exercising soon. It gave me more energy. The next couple of weeks will tell if the new site brings a lot more business or about the same. If not much more comes in we'll still eat well and have clothes on our backs, etc. Plus I can lose more weight faster (I will have more time to work out, for one).

If a lot of business comes in, I'll probably be on the slow track still, but that is fine. I'm still working on it. I lost about 7.5 lbs in the first 1.5 months of the year and 2.5 lbs in the 1.5 months after that. So it is still working, just at 1/3rd the pace.

Stephen

Can the winter please end!

This really has been our sickest winter. Between the Croup, Flu, Strep throat, 3 ear infections (2 double ones), pink eye and several colds we just can not stay healthy. I just took Aaron back to the instcare (third trip this month) yesterday. He has another double ear infection. We just can't seem to get our kids well. I can not wait for summer so our sick winter can end!