New Addition

I'm sure Emily will do a much better job at explaining all that has happened the past few days but I thought I would get a few pictures posted and give the vitals. Benjamin Michael Parrish was born at 7:18 am on Friday, February 11th. He was 9 lb 1 oz and he was 20 1/2 inches long. Both he and Emily are doing fine and returned home this evening.

Christmas

We had a great Christmas. Two days before Mike treated us to a traditional Italian five course meal. We were beyond stuffed. It was so good. On Christmas eve we had another good meal and then did our traditional program of reading Luke 2, decorating a birthday cake and watching a movie.
Santa really came through for us this year. Mark got the Toy Story Lego train that he had been insisting would come. It has already got a lot of lovin. Megan got a bed for her babies and a high chair. Mom as mentioned before got her wood floor and Daddy scored big with a new TV finally.

We also made sure that everyone had some "mad pants" as they are called in our family. Mike has had these PJ pants for a while that have comic characters on it that all look mad- so all colorful PJ pants have become "Mad Pants". Mark and Megan picked out their own fabric- Mark's are Lightening McQueen and Megan's are of course pink Princess.

Here is Megan dressed in one of our gifts- a snowman kit- but we didn't have any snow handy so she'll have to do.

After our own little morning we headed up to Mesquite and did round two. We made it to the Brey house a few days later. We are so blessed to have so many people who love us and are so generous. The kids had the time of their lives and are counting down to next year.

December

Like everyone else we had a really fun and busy holiday season. We had an awesome ward party. Mark was able to be a shepherd and at the last minute Megan was the littlest angel. They both did an excellent job. We had the normal preschool, birthday parties and other monthly stuff. We ended up having a pretty relaxed week right before Christmas. Mark and Megan for one of their presents to grandpa shopped for some other little kids. It was serious stuff deciding what to get them. Mark was all tired out afterwords. Shopping is not his thing apparently.

Here are the kids just goofing off with the camera. Our video camera was on the splits so I was trying to fix it- still haven't yet- and the kids had lots of fun while I was working on it.

Just before Christmas we drove up the mountain with some friends and got a quick taste of snow. Mark loved sledding once he got the idea. He is not a fan of the saucers- they are too bumpy.

Megan was content to watch. She is usually the brave one so this was new for her. After just a few runs down the hill the park rangers showed up and informed us we were trespassing on restricted land. So we packed up and went home without finishing our snowman. Mom and Dad need to work on reading the signs better. It turned out to be the perfect legnth outing.