Daddy's Little Helper

We stopped by to see how dad was doing while he was DJing at Jordon Elementary. Lucas deciding he wasn't doing a good enoughjob and needed to take over. Look out BBDJS, hear comes LLDJS! (aka Little Lucas Disc Jockey Services).

Play Date

L2 had so much fun at his play date a few weeks ago. We went to Freestone park with Karla and Natalie and a couple of Karla's friends. He tried out the swings ffor the first time and loved it! He just sat back and relaxed. We had a little picnic and the little man enjoyed his first brown bag lunch with a jelly sandwich, teddy grahams, and yogurt. Before we left we watched Natalie chase the ducks around the pond.

The Announcement!

We had awaited this week for months (back in march)! Let's just say it wasn't anything we expected it to be. The week started out on Monday night with Lucas projectile vomitting all over the Grandma and Grandpa Banda's Family room. He was sick the entire week! Then I greatly enjoyed getting whatever Lucas had and threw up all night on Tuesday. But we had our ultrasound scheduled for Wednesday and there was no way I was going to miss it after counting down the days! That night we had the family over for the big announcement. Since I was sick, Christa sso lovingly made the cupcakes for me. We have started a tradition that everyone picks a blue or pink frosted cupcake to guess if it is a girl or boy, the we open a gift to announce it. We wrapped a blue little dress to throw everyone off. I wish I hadn't felt so crummy but it was still a lot of fun!

Mmm...Chocolate Chip Pancakes

A few weeks ago Seth was craving chocolate chip pancakes, so I made them for Sunday morning breakfast. We enjoyed a wonderful and quiet breakfast together before Lucas woke up. Seth took care of Lucas while I started getting ready. This is the sweet little face I walked out to!

Long Past Easter

Easter has come and gone, and yet I still haven't put up any pictures of my sweet boy! We had a great time spending the afternoon with the Banda side and the evening with the Narducci side. We had our annual Egg hunt ay my parents house, starting with Natalie and Lucas in the front courtyard and the older kiddos (meaning everyone 18 and older!) in the backyard after. Lucas got the hang of it really quickly! He spotted the eggs, snatched them up, tried to eat them, then moved right on to the next area! He loved it!

Americas' Oldest Gold Artifact Discovered - In Shem's Backyard

For those who don't know my little brother served a mission in Peru and served in an area near lake Titicaca, right in his backyard, an anthropologist from UofA made the discovery.

A nine-bead necklace discovered in Peru is the oldest known gold artifact in the Americas, archaeologists say.

The necklace, dated to 2100 B.C., was uncovered in a burial pit near Lake Titicaca next to the jawbone of an adult skull (see Peru map).

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Prior to this discovery, the oldest known gold artifacts in the New World were found in central Peru and the Andean highlands at sites dated to around 1500 to 1410 B.C.

The burial pit was found near the ancient settlement of Jiskairumoko, which dates back to 3300 B.C.

The beads were hammered from gold nuggets and suggest the development of an early sedentary culture, said lead study author Mark Aldenderfer, an anthropologist at the University of Arizona.

"What this discovery is really telling us is that the people who were living at this site were undergoing a rather profound social and economic transition towards sedentary life," he said.

"Once that process starts, a lot of the social rules of life when you're a hunter-gatherer change dramatically such that different kinds of institutions are beginning to be created," he added.

The discovery is detailed in this week's issue of the Proceedings of National Academy of Sciences.

Sedentary Life

Aldenderfer and his team found the site during an archaeological survey of the region in the mid-1990s and began excavating it in 1999.

The aim of the project was to understand how hunting and gathering cultures became more sedentary and created small villages.

"As we began to excavate, [the site] in fact did have a lot of very cool information—houses that were never discovered in the Andes before and a variety of other kinds of features," Aldenderfer said.