Lloyd Family

I took the kids to see Santa Claus this past Saturday. Since we live in "Christmas City" it's only natural that Santa has his own house right on our town square, and he is there every Saturday in December. Pretty neat! Since we waited until the last weekend before Christmas we had to wait in line for 40 minutes with all the other procrastinators. Luckily the weather was mild. When we got into Santa's house, who would have guessed that they were all too nervous to actually go up to Santa? Luckily Zac broke the ice for us and then Ezra went next without hesitation, doing a stellar job on his first visit with St. Nick! This picture shows him looking a little unsure, but I think he was just taking it all in. In the end everyone sat on Santa's lap, told him what they wanted for Christmas and were rewarded with the traditional candy cane. Hooray!

I think the news has fairly well gotten around now that we are having another baby. But since I didn't make many personal announcements, some of you may have missed it. We're having a baby! The 6th little Lloyd, the child to complete our family, is due on June 12, although we won't expect him/her until more like the 19th. I went through a month or so of pretty miserable morning sickness, although I almost never threw up, which was nice. I just felt like I'd eaten way too much candy every minute of every day. And I was so exhausted it was all I could do to pry myself off the couch. Thankfully, I've gotten over the worst of it and am looking forward to the next few painless months of pregnancy :)

Zac came to me looking like this and said, "I'm the King of Stickers. Take a picture of me and put it on the blog!" So I did. Who doesn't love stickers?

It is just silly how long it's taken me to blog about Halloween! These pictures were taken almost a month ago, just before our homeschool group's Fall Carnival. The kids went on to wear the same costumes on Halloween, so I figured these pictures would do just fine. So we have a princess, skeleton, shadow ninja, princess and cow. One exception, though, was Zane. You can see his costume included a skeleton chest. It actually came with "blood" that he could pump through the chest piece with the aid of a rubber "heart." Gross, right? Anyway, when we got around to pumping in the blood on Halloween night, we found that there was a major leak and "blood" spilled all over the carpet (whose idea was it to put carpet in the kitchen, anyway?) The costume was thus unwearable, and we almost had a crisis, but Zane was resourceful enough to dig through the dress-up box and turn out as a very good-looking pirate! Now on to the REAL holidays!!!

...Sara picked up a sea shell today and, putting it to her ear, said, "Mom! I can hear the canal!"

So the Lloyd birthday season is over until March. Zane turned 8, which was a very exciting birthday for him! He had a huge list of requirements (wishes?), including a suit and a scripture Quad. He didn't get everything he wanted (such as a pocketknife), but he did pretty good. I made him the sailboat cake he asked for, and it turned out pretty good! Sadly, on the day of his birthday Zane came down with a high fever and finished the day by vomiting. But he was all better the next day (weird) and ready to enjoy the presents he'd forced himself to open the day before.

On August 21st we got together with Kory's brother Ross and his family fo r a little campout. We met in Hagler Canyon, which was beautiful and grassy, with just enough dirt to please the kids (a lot). In the evening, when it was dark, deer literally came right through our campground and one even seemed to bump into a tent and get spooked! Our time was spent cooking over the fire, hiking, shooting b.b. guns and bows and arrows, and visiting. It was very fun! So much fun that by the time we left for home, Sara had fallen down a hill and skinned her chin, Zac had gotten hit on the forehead with a b.b. gun barrel, and Ezra had fallen off a picnic table and banged his head. We felt lucky to be going home in one piece (well, 7 pieces, right?) Still, we're looking forward to next year. Maybe we can get some more of the Lloyd family branches to join us!