Future softball star

Last weekend we had a stake youth softball tournament. Our whole family went, because it was a great excuse to spend an evening at the park. I should just start by saying that Jacey LOVES the young women in our ward, and they adore her. There's 2 sisters that are especially good with her, and Jacey idolizes them. She had to come to mutual with me last week and we played games at the end. These girls were so good about choosing Jacey to be their partner, choosing her to be "it" when they played friendship tag and letting her catch them, etc. Anyways, at the softball tournament the older sister, Brittni, took Jacey way out to the back of the outfield and let her stand by her. Jacey was prepared with her hot pink baseball mitt, Brittni let her wear her sunglasses, and Jacey felt like queen for the day! I love being in young womens!

Our first circus!

A couple weeks ago we went to the circus in Dallas. The summer reading program at our local library gave free tickets to any child that completed the program. It wasn't very hard (only a few books), so we took it a step further and told Jacey that they were giving circus tickets to kids who didn't watch too much TV, but read books instead. It was a great incentive for her to keep the TV off this summer! She looked forward to it all summer, and barnum and bailey definately didn't let her down. It was my first circus too, and I'll admit I was very impressed. Her favorite part was the elephant that did the headstand. She's very into imagination games right now. Her favorite used to be that she was a princess, and I was the prince that was going to marry her. I don't know how many times I've married Jacey. Since going to the circus she has a new favorite game. She is the circus dancer (they had dancers up on ropes way up high twirling around), and I am the elephant. I think I preferred being the prince, but I'm sure in a couple weeks she'll move on to something else equally crazy. It was a fun night. A late one for the kids, but Jacey didn't mind staying up a couple hours past her bedtime. Broden was a good sport too, and even though his first tooth broke through that day, he did great!

Girl's Camp

Last month I was able to go to Girl's Camp on Friday night to visit the young women in my ward and be there for testimony meeting. It was a great experience, and every time I hear them bear their testimonies I am blown away. Their testimonies have so much more depth than mine ever did at their age. I have been so impressed with the youth down here in Texas in the 2 different wards that I've been able to be involved with the YW. We had lots of fun. Our bishop also joined us for the evening. I think it was eye-opening for him to see how silly these mature, reverent, responsible girls (and leaders!) could be once you got them out of the church. We played silly games, sang crazy songs, soaked each other with water balloons playing human battleship, settled down for a devotional, and ended the evening with a testimony meeting. I had to laugh when I got there though. I had heard stories about "camp" down here before, but I still wasn't prepared for how good they had it. Our ward's "cabin" was actually a triple-wide mobile home, complete with bunk beds with more comfortable mattresses than my kids have and a garden tub in the bathroom. They really rough it! When I told all this to Dan, he very openly shared his opinion how the YW had it so easy and he guaranteed that they young men never did anything that cool. The next week, a couple of the YM came to collect fast offerings, so we started asking them about their upcoming high adventure. They told us that they were driving down to Galveston, camping on the beach, learning how to sail in the gulf of Mexico, then going to Schiltterbahn (supposedly one of the best water amusement parks in the country) on their way home. Dan was right- WAY rougher than the girls! :)

Messy face

Broden was a new man the day we started solid foods! For the last month, he's been doing really well with them, eating whatever we give him. He hasn't even been nearly as messy as one would expect a baby to be. Until last week when we tried prunes.... either he really didn't like them (although he was very happy) or he was just being mischevious and seeing how big of a mess he could make. They were EVERYWHERE! I think it's going to be awhile before I'm brave enough to try that one again.

Jacey's "first day of school"

A couple weeks ago, Dan was feeling like he hadn't been able to spend very much time with Jacey lately. So he got up Friday morning and decided to take Jacey to school with him since for some reason he only had class for 1 hour that day. I have to admit, I had my doubts. I packed her princess rolling backpack stuffed with coloring books, little quiet toys, puzzles, snacks, etc. Sure enough, she was the center of attention, and even the instructor stopped in the middle of class and said "Dan Sillito, who is that beautiful girl sitting by you?" Dan said she was perfectly quiet the whole time. She felt very big and important when she got home.

Stuck again!

Ok- this picture is a little old, but it makes me laugh every time I see it. Every time for about a month, every time I turned around this is where I would find Broden. He got the scooting backwards thing down long before forwards. He would be perfectly happy, then I would hear a little noise- not really a cry, just kind of a grunt. Sure enough, he would be stuck under the couch every time. Now he's getting around pretty good forwards and backwards. I'm still not really sure how to describe his forward movements. It's not really a true crawl yet, but not the scoot or army crawl that a lot of babies do either. He crawls forward a couple of steps, then lies down on his tummy to rest, then gets back up on all fours to rock back and forth for awhile to build up some more momentum, and finally it's forward a couple more steps. It's been hard to remember after 3 1/2 years what this was like the first time, so it's kind of fun to experience it all over again with Broden!