Taylor's Special Day

At the beginning of May, Taylor was inducted into the "5 Book Report Club." In order to be a part, one needed to read 5 chapter books and then write corresponding book reports. He was the only kindergartener to join the ranks, along with selected first graders. He was the focus of a special "circle time" with his class and another kindergarten class and the principal came to present the award. He received a bright yellow button, an award certificate, a coupon for a free kids meal at Taco Bell, and a hug from the principal. :-) ("That part was silly!" he said.)

We are very proud of the hard work he put in! Good job, Taylor!

Ascha at 10 months



As you can see, she's got a lot of teeth (five now) and a huge smile.


She's going everwhere she wants...she's an expert crawler and cruiser.


She's also getting into everything! What else would a 10-month-old want to do?

A Visit With Uncle Shane

Shane was able to come down for a weekend and enjoy Saturday and Sunday with our family last weekend. We had a lot of fun with him and the weather was beautiful on Saturday, so we took him to a few of our favorite spots. Here he is with the boys at Lucia Falls.

Here they are hiking one of the trails near Moulton Falls.

Here is Ascha doing her new trick - making a kissing sound. Since this photo was taken, she's developed a great ability to suck in her cheeks until she looks like a fish while trying for the sound. The funniest part is when we ask her for kisses. She still goes in with the wide open mouth for baby kisses, but when she gets close, she ends up blowing raspberries as she tries to figure out how to put the closed-mouth sound with the open mouth she's associated with kisses. She also had her 9 month appointment the other day (although she's 10 months old as of today) and was in the 30th percentile for height and the 90th for weight. She's definitely our child...following in the footsteps of her long lean brothers.

And here's a rare picture of "the mommy." It's an odd thing for me to be on the receiving end of a picture, but since it happened, I figured I'd document it. :-)

Happy Easter!

He is risen! He is risen indeed!

The Mousetrap Car, Slurpy the Snail, and Easter Egg Fun

Last week was spring break, so Jeremy and the boys worked on creating a car propelled by a mousetrap. They got a great introduction to physics and Jeremy got to relive his childhood a little bit.

Ascha is getting close to walking. She's an expert behind her little walk-behind hippo and she's been balancing for periods of time before sinking slowly down into a sitting position. I keep reminding her she isn't allowed to walk until she's 1. We'll see how well she listens to Mommy's rules. She also just got her fourth tooth. I'm very thankful and hopeful that it will usher in an era of renewed nighttime sleep. 

Look how cute she is for spring in this lovely vintage-looking outfit, courtesy of her Grammy.

And how sweet she looks in her Sunday best alongside her handsome big brothers:

Introducing Slurpy the snail - our new pet. He is expected to stay with our family for three days. Daddy has been gone upriver, and as soon as he's been introduced, Slurpy will be "released back into the wild" (a.k.a. put outside where Taylor found him). It's been a lot of fun to learn about snail habits and habitat, and although the boys think they'd like to keep Slurpy long-term, Mommy has decided she doesn't like the smell.

Today was the day to dye eggs.

Gotta be goofy:

Ascha actually napped through the egg-dying process, but she was incredibly excited to see the colorful results when she woke up.

Happy Almost Easter! Remember, Jesus is the reason for the season! We are SO thankful for our life in and through HIM!

Daily Adventures

* Ascha is officially 9 months old. Can't hardly believe how fast it's gone...and is still going!

* The boys had two neighborhood buddies over today for a few hours. They disappeared outside during a break in the rain. I "kept a visual" on them for most of their adventure, but after they disappeared into the trees for a few minutes, I decided I'd go check on them. I found them under the trees just beyond our property, digging into some logs for grubs and roly-polies. Their instrument of choice? A very old, very rusty steak knife they'd discovered stuck in a nearby tree. THANKFULLY Aric hadn't had a turn with the knife yet. :-) He was so disappointed I decommissioned the tool without his having used it, but I figured even the six-year-olds were too young, so my four-year-old definitely didn't "get his turn." I asked the disappointed troop what they thought they should do next time they find something sharp or unsafe...you could see the wheels turning in their dejected heads (as one of the other moms said, we're sure they were thinking "Hide it from Mom at all costs!"). In a great Eeyore impersonation, one six-year-old sighed, "Don't touch it." 

I guess boys will be boys...sometimes it's a lot of work sneaking and spying to make sure they don't poke that proverbial eye out. :-)

A Quick Trip to Seattle

We zipped up to Seattle yesterday to see my little brother, Shane, for a few hours. He is volunteering for a disaster-relief organization and is temporarily stationed in Seattle helping to fix up a donated ship. We got to see the ship (here are the kids at the helm) and then we took Shane for a nice tour of Seattle. (Read in between the lines - we changed our plans because of the weather and drove ALL OVER trying to find a kid-friendly place to eat. Thanks to cell phones and family members with the internet, we finally managed to net a restaurant, and lucky Uncle Shane got to spend a bunch of time in the back of a mini-van with kids. :-) The boys were so happy to see him and talked his ear off the whole time, and Ascha was happy to see a new face from the vantage point of her carseat, so I guess it could have been worse. :-) After lunch we went to a park on Lake Washington for a few minutes (it wasn't exactly a balmy day - it had snowed quite a bit that morning on the drive up), then dropped Shane off at his ship, and zipped back home. It was a long day but it was SO good to see Shane and hang out for a bit.

In other news, Ascha has her third tooth and is crawling VERY quickly these days. She still prefers to say "ba" (or "bra," which we're SURE means "brother" :-)  over any other consonant combination, but every once in a while she'll let a "da" or a "ha" or even a "ma" slip out. With teething has come another round of interrupted sleep at night - she's been up at least four times a night lately. We're really hoping that after her second top tooth comes in, we'll get another reprieve. Thankfully, she doesn't have any sicknesses on top of teething this time, so hopefully a full night of sleep is only a few more days away.

Aric is picking up steam in the reading department. He's getting very good at sounding things out (IF he doesn't guess - he's a VERY talented guesser, which leads to some amusing "interpretations"). His latest funny phrase came the other day when the sun was shining and the boys were enjoying popsicles on the back deck... "Ummm....Did you know??....My teeth are allergic to popsicles."

Taylor is going along with kindergarten and growing up. He's such a dichotomy right now - he seems to be both little boy and big boy at the same time, all rolled into one package. He is changing before our very eyes and although the vestiges of babyhood have been gone for a long time, we're losing some other part of "little-boyhood" right now and I mourn as I see it less and less. However, at the same time, we are so proud of the kind-hearted and helpful big boy he is becoming.

February Update

For the month of celebrating sweethearts we, of course, have to feature our little love bug! Ascha's seventh month was incredibly eventful. She went from rolling to crawling to pulling up (and practicing taking steps with Daddy, much to Mommy's chagrine) in a matter of weeks. She acquired her first two teeth. She also got her first ear infection. She started trying to do sign language a little bit ("all done" is the sign for just about everything, but she is starting to put her fingers together for "more"). She has learned to clap her hands and has also gotten into enthusiastically waving "hello" and "goodbye." Her favorite waving moment is the first time, on any given morning, that I carry her past a mirror. She loves to start her day by waving "hi" to the mommy and baby in the mirror. Here she is in all her grinning glory:






Hanging with her favorite playmate:











...And my, how the time has flown! Where has our little baby gone? This is one of her newest favorite pasttimes - watching brothers from the top of the stairs.




Showing off her two new pearly whites:





In other "tooth-related news," Taylor has had four loose teeth for a while. We went to the dentist ("Gentle Rental," according to Aric) in February and Taylor was quite pleased and proud to learn that he was looking at losing four teeth rather than just the two he knew were loose. As of this blog posting, Taylor is down one tooth. Today he and Aric were looking out the window when Aric flung his arms in exclamation (from what I can piece together from the varied stories :-). His hand bonked Taylor's tooth, which went flying onto the floor. Taylor immediately started crying when he saw blood and Aric started happily shouting that Taylor had lost a tooth. It was chaos, but in a few minutes, after Taylor realized it didn't hurt, he was pretty pleased with himself. He's so excited about the coming of the tooth fairy that he decided she ought to have a note. He wrote it all by himself and taped his tooth to it before sticking it under his pillow. The note says: "Have a grate day and night thanks for the thing you gav me" - not bad for a kindergartner, I think. :-) (I always get a little giddy when he thinks to use the silent E as he spells things - we haven't worked on spelling at all, and the fact that he already grasps the concept makes this language-loving mama happy.)





Taylor also had an eventful "Open House" at school last week. He and his classmates had created many special projects to show off, and he got to take home his work in a custom-patterned, custom-laced portfolio he made himself. (sorry about yet another disoriented picture!)





Since February is Valentine's Day, each child had decorated a big heart for the wall, but you can guess how they looked. Much more interesting to me were the drawings of Washington and Lincoln that they had created in conjunction with Presidents' Day.

(can you believe those ears?? Tee-hee! I love it!)

Taylor's wrestling program wound down with a big Jamboree last Saturday. Unfortunately, Taylor had a virus and a fever and had to miss out. However, here's one last picture paying homage to this fun chapter in our winter:

We're planning on growing a big garden this year and I've been working on tilling up a plot. The boys and I are taking these down days to plan and plant so we have seedlings to transplant. Taylor and Aric are excited to grow another garden - they were outside digging in the mud a few weeks ago for HOURS. I came out to call them for dinner and they excitedly showed me their handiwork - they'd raked and smoothed the mud and made nice straight lines in it. Then they'd taken a little stick and poked holes to drop the seeds in. Of course, in mid-February, in the mud of one of our half-finished landscaping projects, one cannot find ideal growing conditions, so I congratulated their efforts and promised we'd plant things inside very soon. Now, it's officially March, and we've officially planted 72 pots worth of seedlings (with 72 more planned for tomorrow). Happy almost spring. :-)

January Update

I guess I'm a "once-every-few-months update" blogger at the moment. We've been pretty busy enjoying life and kids and projects.

I'll start the month with a few sideways pics. I need to work with them and get them oriented, but I've been holding off posting for too long because of my perfectionistic tendencies, and it's time to just go for it (so...my apologies for crooked pics. :-)

I have a favorite group of pictures of Jeremy with each of our kids from about this age. I might (in about 20 years, when I have time :-) post all of them together to compare our children as 6-9-month-olds. Of course, Ascha's not out of the stage yet, so I might take some I like even better, but so far, these are a few of my favorites. :-)

I haven't updated about the house in a long time. It's extremely liveable and Jeremy keeps plugging away at the trimwork whenever he has a spare moment. The only major interior project left is the tiling of the master bath and shower. Here is a pic of our completed dining room:

Now, on to the "kid updates." :-) Taylor is a very creative 6-year-old and when he puts his mind to something, he does an excellent job. In a recent example, he has been getting Highlights magazine for a few months (thanks, Great Grama and Great Papa! :-). After seeing the reader-submitted page, he decided he'd submit a drawing. He sat down, got right to work, and quickly presented "Rainbow in a Race." We took a picture of it, then sent it off to Highlights. Who knows whether or not they'll eventually publish it, but he got a very official letter thanking him for the submission and telling him that his art made the editors happy. That made his day.

Taylor has also been participating in a recreational wrestling program during January and February. Unfortunately, his one big meet was last Saturday but he had to miss it due to a fever. He still LOVES to wrestle Dad and Aric for fun but is a bit burned out regarding the official sport at the moment. It has been a good foundational year, though, and he understands a bit more what the sport is really about.

Taylor is doing great at school. He's come out of his shell a lot and we've been really pleased with his teacher. He gets to have individualized reading training for half an hour four days a week to keep him challenged and motivated. We are very proud of him and his love of books is such a blessing - he is never bored in the car, at the doctor's office, or anywhere else. :-)

Both boys are so sweet and loving with their baby sister. Her seventh month has been quite eventful (more on that later) and she is now extremely mobile, which provides the boys with daily challenges as she eats and tears their paper airplanes and as mommy requires all tiny toys to stay downstairs at all times. Taylor loves to hold Ascha and "help" her as much as I let him (and then some :-).

Aric loves to help out with his sister, too. Both boys need a daily dose of "holding Ascha" time and have a quota of smiles from her that must be met (Aric needs "my morning smile" and "my goodnight smile" or life just isn't right).

Speaking of Aric, he's always such a character, but I'm behind on posting some of the funny things he's said, so I need to play catch-up.

~He got an "Armor of God" knight suit from my parents for his birthday, and he insists on calling it his "Nightmare Suit."

~He was talking to Jeremy on the phone one evening and telling him about the stars he'd seen. On my end of the conversation, I heard an indignant, "I am NOT a little sus-tronomer!!"

~I've put all the board books on the bottom shelf so Ascha can look at them/eat them. :-) He found one of his "special" books in the pile and complained bitterly. When I explained that I'd put it there because it's a board book, he was very offended: "But it's not bored to ME!!!" :-)

He keeps us all in stitches with his impish ways.

Ascha has been growing and changing by leaps and bounds. She learned to crawl at the end of January and is increasingly mobile every day. For the most part she is a very smiley baby and we love seeing her personality developing more every day.

In January, both Aric and Ascha were dedicated at Daybreak Community Church. Both sets of grandparents were able to come out for this special event, which was such a blessing. The visits were a last-minute whirlwind, but we all enjoyed our time together so much.

Here we are at our favorite park on the day Lyn and Janet came into town.

The boys still LOVE Grandpa's dog "Whifford."

Here we are at the dedication. It was a very special day (and it was kinda neat for Aric to be old enough to appreciate the ceremony. He was very proud of his "special day.")

Grammy and Grumpy with kiddos:

Grandma and Grandpa with Ascha

Of course, we had a lot of fun just hanging out together for the little bit of time we had together. Grumpy always has babies stand on his hands, and they usually love it. Ascha is no exception.

Aric got to show off his skills as an archer to all the family:

Once everyone left and the hubbub subsided, Jeremy decided it was time to embark on our ambitious landscaping makeover. It will probably be a few years before we get things how we want them, but we have at least seven trees to take out, so he decided he may as well get started. He did a great job felling this tree exactly where he wanted it to go. Once it was on the ground, the boys and I went out and helped haul limbs to a chipping pile. In the matter of a few hours, the tree was felled, limbed, and sawn into firewood rounds. The next day, the boys helped him transport (by the trusty old Red Flyer wagon, of course :-) the firewood to our lean-to where it can sit and season for a few years without being in the way. It's a shame we don't have a fireplace! A few days later, Jeremy had all the limbs chipped and was talking about taking out the next tree. He's an amazing guy!