Pause and remember

Today is Anzac day, it's sort of memorial day for New Zealand and Australia. It's a day understandably close to Logan's heart. Yesterday he took down his POW MIA flag and put up the New Zealand flag because NZ is just about a day ahead of us.


I love how proud New Zealanders are of their boys who serve and defend. When we visited in the summer of '08 I saw a war memorial in almost every town we went through (I slept through a few). This was one of my favorites, it was in Dannevirke.



This wall was in a memorial park in Hamilton. One half was names from WWI and the other was the names from WWII.
I think this last shot speaks to Logan as a father. His heart is to teach our children to always remember and honor those who have fought and died for freedom.

Super fantastic fun family visit!

For most of the past week my sister, brother-in-law, and nephew have been visiting us. They left yesterday afternoon. I have many pictures from their visit but haven't found the time to sit and organize them into a nice post yet. Here's a snippet of their time here, a few pictures I did manage to choose from the virtual piles of snapshots. The day they arrived we had the Hams over also. Bob, Lalita, and Simon are good friends and good company :) Rowan was pretty excited to see them, before they arrived he was talking (and talking and talking) about it. The best quote was, "Rowan see Simon, Bob, and Larry". He of course confused "Bob and Lalita" with the talking, singing, bouncing duo of "Bob the tomato and Larry the cucumber" from one of his favorite DVD series, Veggietales.


They turned out not to be dancing veggies but no one didn't seem to mind. We had a great time anyway.




























Rowan and Simon played really well together. They shared like champs as they played tee ball and other games.

Rowan can't quite get his "gremmy hat" on by himself so it often looks a bit... wonky. Adorable but wonky.

Katie handled all the visitors as she usually does. With grace, poise, and a nap :)


More pictures to come! It may be take a day or two but they'll come :)

He's so big!

Rowan hasn't gotten very many haircuts but when he does he looks like such a big boy! I can't believe how huge he feels, especially after holding Katie for a while ;)

The other day he decided he didn't want to wait for Logan to come home from work so he dumped out five of his toy bins and made a "train". He sat in the big one (presumably the engine), blew me a kiss, and told me he was going to see Dad at work.

Just before I grabbed the camera he announced, "Mom, dis twain's weavin!"

He didn't get too far in the toy bin train but as luck would have it, after some lunch and a nap, Dad came to him. Rowan wasn't the only one to get a haircut, the same day Logan and Rowan dropped Max off at the groomer and Logan got a bit of a trim up also. Here are the handsome devils romping around, as handsome devils will do. At least these ones anyway ;)

It seemed to end peacefully but if I remember correctly after realizing the book Rowan brought over was The Night Before Christmas Logan launched into a tickle attack.


Ah boys... :)