What happens when the middle child gets all the attention?

It's not often that Chris gets to headline the blog because he prefers to fade in the background, but he just turned 17 and went on his THIRD date (he was determined to beat Devin's record of two dates before his mission!), so here we go on a one-man show.  Heeeeeeeeeeeeere's Chris!

Last week we hosted a priest/laurel etiquette dinner (a fancy 5 course meal), and the price of admission was a date.  Chris asked Anna Call, dressed up handsomely, and enjoyed himself immensely!  When I saw how nice he looked I asked him to pose for some pictures.  Instead of running from the camera like some of my other children, he sat right down and gave me some goofy poses and cheesy grins.  He reminded me so much of my brother, James, that I just had to laugh.

GQ material here!  Almost Blue Steel!

This is the one he called "The Thinker" pose.

I call this one "Handsome Cheese"!

This one is called "I think my date is really cute".

A couple of days later we celebrated Chris' 17th birthday.  I asked him what he wanted for his dinner and dessert, and his only request was Frog-eye salad.  He's a funny kid! He asked if he could make his own birthday cake and started searching through all of my recipes for the perfect one.  Two hours later he still hadn't decided what kind he wanted and had changed his mind about wanting to make it at all, so he ended up with angel food cake with strawberries and ice cream because it was fast. 

This pose is either called "Grateful Cheese" or "Hopeful Cheese"--I can't tell which.

Chris was SO surprised to get a great picture to go in his bedroom (really he picked it out himself).  It goes perfectly with his new bedding and guitar pictures he got for Christmas.  Now if we could only get them all on the wall.

I also found the perfect t-shirt for him, and he loved it.  My attempts to encourage a positive attitude may be a little blatant, but life really is good!  It's nice to have reminders every now and then, and Chris is going to be doing his part to remind everyone when he wears this fun shirt.

So when Chris started getting all of this attention, I guess the rest of my family couldn't handle it and wanted some attention for themselves.  First, Del fell and sprained his ankle REALLY badly! He has twisted this ankle many times during our marriage, and he likes to call it his "trick ankle"!  I've told him that I think it's a really lousy trick, but he insists on doing it every couple of years.  It's hard to see in this picture but it was incredibly swollen!  It was about double the size.

Del's nasty foot.

After Maren saw how nicely I babied Del, she decided that she needed attention too, so she proceeded to smack her ankle really hard against the bed frame while playing horsey with Layla, bursting blood vessels and bruising it pretty good.  She was pretty miserable until she realized that she would be excused from the mile run in PE the next day.  Always look for that silver lining because life is good!

Maren's nasty foot.

This picture of my two gimpy people shows a little of the swelling.

Devin and Margene

The funniest part was that when we got Devin's letter yesterday from the MTC, he told us that he sprained his ankle last week, too!  Uuuugh!  What is it with these people and their ankles?  Again, though, there was a silver lining.  When Devin went to the health clinic in the MTC he met a second cousin of Del's, who bandaged him up and promised to make him a batch of cookies.  Life really is good!