James' 1st Boy Girl Party

Last Thursday a gal in my ward had a birthday party for her little girl that just turned three. (BTW Stephen and I babysat this little girl last year so that her parents could go to the temple and I was super impressed with her speech. She had just turned two and seemed to be already talking in sentences. When her parents came to pick her up the mom, Hollie said, don't feel bad, my husband and I are both speech specialists/pathologists. No wonder she was so advanced. In fact they have a website called "Home Speech Home" I think. I've been meaning to check it out since James is just a wee bit behind in that department, but I know that's common among boys.) Anywho, her daughter Gracie just turned three and they had a fun dance party. Here are some pix.

The birthday girl.

Kids having a breakdance competition complete with prizes.

James trying to breakdance like all the other big boys. (He's the one in the brown shirt.)


These are Gracie's parents teaching all the kids how to dance to things like "Hey Macarina" and "Jump on it".



And more party fun.

Switching topics, I found a little boy last week. I was out doing my daily wogging. (Wogging is walking with little spurts of me trying to jog and then deciding to walk again. This happens many times hence the reason it's called wogging. Jalking is when you go jogging but keep taking little walking breaks from the jog. Just in case you were wondering.) Whilst I was out I saw this little boy walking across the street by himself. At first I wasn't sure because I wasn't very close, and my eyes aren't that great (yeah I need to get glasses). When I first saw him I hoped it was just a shorter than average midget because he was by himself with no parents in sight, in what looked like an oversized dress. Plus, he was walking away from the residential area towards where they/Lehi city are doing building/construction by this business area across from where we live. I started to jog up to see if it really was a little boy when a car stopped right next to him. At first I thought maybe it was just this little kid's parents looking for him. Then this fear struck me, what if it wasn't this kids parents. A couple of months ago Draper, UT, which is just 10 mintues north of us had several reports of a man in a white van trying to abduct little girls on a number of different occasions, all were unsuccessful thank goodness, but they never caught him. At least I haven't heard of them catching him yet. So, I started to go faster and as I came around the bend I see this woman talking to him and then she points at me and then asks "Is this your little boy?" I said "no, but I saw him cross the street from that direction as I came around the bend." She didn't have her cell phone on her, and neither did I, so I said I had a friend that lived in an apartment close by. I think we were both looking at each other kind of suspiciously, not really wanting to leave him alone with the other, it's unfortunate but that's the world we live in. We tried asking him questions but he was too scared. He just said he was looking for his mom. So we went to my friends house, but she wasn't there. (Becca Bell why weren't you home last Thursday at 9:00 in the morning hmmm?) We were about to call the police, unsure what we should do, still not seeing any parents in sight looking for him (He seemed to me to be about 3 and 1/2) when we asked him again what his last name was and his mom's name and finally he felt comfortable enough around us to tell us. I guess this woman recognized the name and said she was pretty sure who the kids mom was and where they lived. I think they might have been in the same ward. At that point she took over and took him home. BTW he wasn't wearing a dress, he was just wearing his PJ's whichwas an oversized shirt.(I think about 80-90% of Lehi, UT is Mormon. So, if you're in Utah minus Salt Lake City and come across an unaccompanied child, just locate the local Primary President and she'll point you in the right direction.) But, all jokes aside, I was soooo fuming about this little incident. This little boy was wondering in the street, right where big trucks go by. He could very easily have gotten hit by a vehicle, or abducted. I just hope that the mom was out looking for him, maybe she'd just gone looking for him in the opposite direction. I do get pretty angry though when parents are not very attentive to their small children. That's the end of my story. Good night!