Happy Birthday Week

At the Hall house we're blessed to have our three children born within a week. This means lots of partying, sugar, presents, and silly songs. We start each birthday singing all the birthday songs we know and telling their birth stories (they can never get enough: tell me more, what did  I do as a baby, etc.). This week we were able to get the kiddos to vary their birthday treats. Julia picked cupcakes, for Eliza we made a gingerbread house cookie, and for Israel we had cinnamon rolls. Yay for variety, there's only so much cake I can eat.

Julia turned 4-she's so big and such a helper. She and Mom are big pals since her other siblings are in school and baby boy hasn't come yet. Julia loves to dance (ballerina stepping) and makes up hand positions and twists and has a great time. She's our commedian and has such a great laugh-we can't help laughing right along with her. She loves Dora the Explorer and playing with her tea set (we need to get her a new one since Caramel did a good job destroying her old one. Word to the wise, don't leave anything in our backyard that you care about.) She's all about baby dolls. She has good babies and bad babies and a favorite black baby (that's it's name) that she let me sleep with while Stan was on a business trip-pretty good for snuggling. Julia is very reverent in church. The best Sunbeam we have this year I'm happy to be able to say and she loves her teacher Sister N.

Eliza turned 6-she's grown up so much this past year, not only in height (but she's still a stick-thank goodness for adjustable waistbands), but emotionally too. She's getting braver, talking to a few more people, and even doing well in school (bless you Mrs. L!). Eliza is a really good reader, she loves to play doll house and think about the future. Frequent topics-how young you can be to get married, when she'll be an adult, and the fact that her husband needs to be named Henry Hall (do you know the song "There's a hole in my bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza?" Well, she wants to be married to a Henry because of that and she doesn't want to have to change her last name. So if you know any good quality Henry Halls age 6-9, send them our way in 14 years!) She loves to play the piano, ride bikes with dad, dance with Caramel, our dog, and play legos with Israel.

Israel turned 8-how big he is. I still can't believe we have an 8-yr-old. He's getting baptized this Sunday after church and we're so proud of him. He got his first full set of scriptures, a scripture tote, journal, and 1st real tie for his birthday and he didn't even complain. That might be because there were a few pokemon cards thrown in there:) Israel is in 2nd grade and doing well. He and Eliza play on the same soccer team and he's already scored a goal this season. He's very aggressive. Israel's a great reader, his favorite books right now are the Asterix comic books (if only they were AR books). He's quite the artist and writer as well. We enjoy his creative side and hope he grows up and keeps it.