Family of Four

I am not a big fan of lizards - especially when they get inside my house. So far, Brandon has had to catch two that snuck inside and I am zero help - I just stand on a chair and yell orders. Nana has no fear of any kind of animal (Rachel especially loves to catch the snakes with Nana in her backyard), so Nana caught a baby lizard out back so that Rachel could play with it. Gross. It was basically crawling all over Rachel. Check out the picture of the lizard jumping off Rachel's shoe.

You might remember this - well, it was time again for our King Benjamin campout for General Conference tradition! We may have had a 3 day old baby, but Brandon didn't want to let Rachel down and she was so excited to sleep in the tent with dad. They watched a movie in the tent and got all settled. Then Rachel said, "Dad, let's go inside and sleep in my bed!" Well, that was short lived, but fun anyway!

One afternoon while Andrew was in the hospital, I snuck away to play with Nana and Rachel at the Zoo while Brandon stayed with Drew. We had some fun adventures! Rachel wore some new light-up tennis shoes and while we were checking out the otter, her shoe fell off into the otter exhibit. She was devastated and cried because she felt so bad. It didn't take long at all to find a zoo worker who quickly got the shoe, which eased Rachel's fears of losing her shoe to the otter permanently.

Being silly with Nana & sharing a giant soda with Mommy

Nana wanted to see if Rachel would ride the camel at the zoo. We weren't sure since she refuses to get on Papa's motorcycle because it's too scary (even while parked). She was too short to ride by herself, so the worker said that one of us would have to ride with her. He then pointed to my stomach and said that I obviously couldn't ride with her (because he thought I was pregnant - nice!) ... I was able to laugh about it and told him I had a 6-day old baby. Not that I felt like hopping on a camel - ouch! - so Nana took the ride with her and she loved it!

Being a big sister ROCKS! Rachel is so sweet to Andrew and loves to help out and is concerned when he cries. She's been a big helper and loves that he's part of our family.

HOWEVER, her behavior towards Brandon and I has been pretty terrible. She has been very disobedient and her manners have nearly disappeared. She talks back like a teenager and is very demanding. Yikes! We are trying to be very patient with her and we're trying to continue our normal routines and disciplining.

Grandma Nancy comes to visit this weekend! YAY! Stay tuned for more adventures.