3 months in a Flash

As you can see from our lack of posts, we have been pretty busy the last 3 months. So we'll just do a quick summer wrap-up.  Summer here in Central Texas can be summed up in 1 word: "hot".  This summer was not nearly as hot and dry as last summer, but it was plenty hot to dream of a cooler climate.

Here we are trying to get a good photo shoot for Angela's Spruce Suspender Shorts, which she began selling this summer! Christine is in the background wanting to participate in the photo shoot as well. She has her favorite frozen shirt and Belle glove on.

I love these suspender shorts, and I'm so proud of Angela's pattern.

We started having regular family home evenings. It now is Christine and Jacob's favorite thing we do as a family. Of course all of Christine's baby dolls have to participate.




There is usually a weekly fight between Jacob and the dolls where to sit. Jacob loves dragging the minnie mouse couch over to the table and then shoving the baby dolls off.

Christine loves to make assignments.  The third week, she announced that she would be doing the lesson.  In her usual head-strong fashion, she absolutely refused to change the assignments, and insisted that she would be giving the lesson. She then gave a 10 min lesson on baptism, reading her primary talk, having us sing the baptism song, and assigning Daddy to find the scriptures. She is an amazing little girl.

After family home evening we always have ice cream.

Jacob quickly decided that he liked this tradition very much. That's his death grip on the spoon.

I was on nights at the beginning of the summer, so I chronically had bed-head during the day. Christine insists that the ice cream be "fancy". So it always has spray cool whip, cherries, chocolate sauce, and usually sprinkles.

Summer has been filled with crafting with Mommy, while Daddy's been at work. There is a tomato from the garden ripening on the table.

June started off with my great birthday celebration. The big present was a new big screen TV! It had been time to say goodbye to our previous TV for many years now. But frugality won out time and time again, until finally we could not see the facial expressions of the actors on some of our movies. And Jacob kept playing with the color and tint knobs (yes it was that old of a TV) so the color was never quite right.  

A brief biography of our TV: The TV originally was owned by someone unknown to us for any number of years in the 80s-90s. The owner then donated the TV to the DI, trading it in for something nicer and considering it un-sellable.

That is when it entered into the Salas family. It was first bought by the Deeleuws as their first family TV. With some typical Salas ingenuity a special switch box was employed to allow them to watch new fan-dangled  DVD players with red/white/yellow cords on a TV with only the large cable hook-up. It enjoyed many years of love in their living room, until it was then given to Jessica's younger sister, my lovely wife Angela. I consider it part of Angela's Dowry. We used it in Provo, and then it took a long journey to Houston with us. In Houston it met its next upgrade, the internet! We would plug and unplug the DVD and ROKU player to the switch box to watch our streaming videos. Little did our old TV know it was first made expecting to show VHS tapes and TV shows through the cable wires, that one day it would be playing streaming on demand videos for a library of thousands of shows. The TV then traveled with us to Temple, where it was retired. Quite a good life.

For my birthday dinner we had delicious steak sandwiches with onion strings and fried zucchini. The onion strings were my all time favorite.  Of course there was cheese cake too!

Singing Happy Birthday


Daddy telling a funny joke.

Jacob is getting so big. He loves talking on the phone. He hold up any phone shaped thing to his ear and say "Hello".  He loves cars and toys that make noise. He loves computers, ipads, and cords. He is incredibly clever and can take anything apart.

He loves imitating his sister. He even sings, "Let it go" with her, but doesn't know any of the words.

Christine was born packed with personality. She is very into her princesses and her baby dolls right now. She loves dressing up as princesses and dressing her baby dolls.  Her sense of style she clearly gets from her mother, because whenever I try to pick out Jacob and her clothes, Angela always has to change them, but if I let Christine pick them out. Angela always responds, "Wow, these are really cute outfits you picked out today!" No, no. It was Christine.