Some Posts Require Pictures.

Unfortunately, I don't carry my camera around with me, and my phone doesn't do anything cool.

So I'll discuss a few firsts in our household that would have been better with pictures.

Doug and I went to our first pep rally together yesterday:). We found out Mitt Romney would be speaking at Skyline High School here in Idaho Falls, so we found a babysitter for kiddies and went to the pep rally together. It was awesome! The high school band played, we were about 30 yards away from Mitt on the standing-room only basketball court, and I appreciated his remarks. I liked that thousands of people from our community came to this even with one day's notice (the announcement was made on the news the night before the event) and I loved saying the pledge and listening to the choir sing "The Star Spangled Banner" beautifully. The best two events at the rally were :
1) when Mitt talked about the Olympics volunteers in Utah--he said he needed 25,000 volunteers to do menial tasks for 14 days, and got 37,000 volunteers within a day of asking for them. So cool! He was illustrating the goodness of Americans.
And 2) After talking to us for about ten minutes, Mitt said," I sense that you are someone inclined to vote for me. Am I right?" And we responded with thunderous applause and cheering. Then he went over to the other gym, where people who hadn't gotten into the main gym had been sent. He went over there to say hi as well. Very cool. It made it really easy to get to our parking lot, without competing with everyone else. And everyone got to hear from him.
I am not lovesick or fever-swept over Mitt Romney, but I loved the pep rally, and I can be excited about him as a potential candidate for the presidency.

Another first: I made my first double-layered cake yesterday (for a Relief Society dinner, per request) and ended up laughing. I broke the bottom layer into three pieces and the top layer into only two:). What a disaster. Thank goodness for my sea foam green frosting and heart sprinkles. I realized that I need to admire people who make competent-looking two-layer cakes.

Yesterday, we also had two cute little neighbor kids over, and the little girl is in Kindergarten. She needed to read a book for homework, so she did that with me. Then, when I got Isaac from his nap, he read the book too:). I was happy to see that my pre-schooler can read kindergarten reading material. I've always dreamed of this process, and I love seeing it happen.

And Lucy learned all of her letters and sounds with flash cards and a fairy princess as bribery. We're quite proud. Now, when she sings the alphabet, you can actually hear most of the letters, instead of this kind of stuff "HIKKLMMMP."

And we've got to give Brooklyn a little credit as well. She did something that looked a little bit like the prototype for army crawling. There was scootching, and those little legs were bending one at a time. And she pulled herself up to her knees by Lucy's doll house.

So lots of firsts around here. I am thankful for them, and also for this non-first: I don't have to teach remedial English next semester. I thought I would, but I get to teach 2 advanced writing courses instead. That suits me just fine.