Family Pictures

A month or so ago I scheduled an appointment with our friend and photographer, Amy Elkins. I was excited to get some updated photos of our family of five to put around the house. I also needed a picture for our Christmas Card. Unfortunately, Amy had to cancel because she was in a car accident (with her entire family in the car – can you say scary?). Thankfully, her kids escaped without a scratch, but she and the hubby were a little banged up and her broken finger was preventing her from being able to use her camera.

So, what to do, what to do? Since I already had “picture clothes” and a Saturday set aside, Brian and I decided to attempt to take some pictures ourselves. I was pretty impressed with what we came out with. They’re not professional quality, but I like them a lot better than what we would have gotten at Sears or Portrait Innovations… which was my next best option.

These are a few of my favorites from the day:





Oops… it was really hard to pick “a few” favorites.

Tractor Pulling Expo

Brian took the kids to a tractor pulling expo. I wish I could explain to you better what that involves. Wait… no I don’t. I have no desire to learn of or discuss the ins and outs of tractor pulling. But that’s ok. I don’t have to. That’s what Brian is for. My role is to stare at him blankly thinking, “where in the world do you come up with/find out about this stuff?” The kids had a ball, of course, because well, there were tractors. Loud ones. And they were pulling things expositionally. (Is that even a word?) It doesn’t matter… here are the pictures:

Wow, that looks safe.

Crawling skills

Noah is working pretty hard on crawling. So far, he can go from laying down, to sitting, to this:

Then he rocks back and forth and does this:

The above method does nothing to help him accomplish his goal of forward mobility, but it will give him killer abs.

Just for fun, here’s a comparison of Wee-wah & Benji Bear at about the same age, wearing the same shirt.

Alike, but different.

My little model

I love being girly with my Gracie. I was wondering if she’d sit still long enough for me to put rollers in her hair. The answer is yes.

I’ve been sewing a new dress for her. She loved trying it on as I worked on it, and here she is, thrilled that it’s done! 

 



USS Lexington

Liz was going out of town for the weekend, so Aaron invited Brian, Ben & Grace to go to Corpus Christi and tour the USS Lexington. The kids had a blast, of course. They took a ton of pictures… that is one crazy huge boat.

Ben at the controls… what could be scarier?

Oh, yeah… Grace at the controls.

The brig… I need one of these at home.

Best friends…. shooting off a cannon… like best friends do.

Fence or no fence… this picture makes me a little nervous.

I love how small the kids look next to the planes.

This picture of Grace cracks me up. It reminds me of the episode of Friends where Phoebe’s New Year’s resolution is to fly a commercial jet and she says, “Okay, I’m gonna go too. I’m gonna go to the airport. I figure if I hang around long enough, someone’s bound to leave one of those planes unattended.”

So long, suckas, I have an unattended plane to fly.

Ben can read!!!!

I could not be prouder of my sweet Ben lately. I have always been so impressed with how smart the little booger is (of course… I’m his mom!) However, what he has been doing with his reading lately has me simply FLOORED!

By his 3rd birthday Ben could recognize all of his letters and the sounds that they make. We worked with him at home (mostly with alphabet puzzles and his letter magnets) and he did lots of letter activities at his preschool. What helped him the most with his phonics was this video:

After watching this a few times, he was singing “the A says ah, the A says ah, every letter makes a sound, the A says ah!” (A note of warning: it is IMPOSSIBLE to get this song out of your head.)

For Christmas last year, he got the second DVD in the series:

This video taught him about building words and smashing sounds together. We would try to get him to sound out words, but he was not interested. It was much more fun to just have Mommy or Daddy read book after book (after book, after book, after book…)

This past Spring, I heard about a few friends who were using “Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons” with their children. You can read about it here. I ordered the book and Ben and I worked on it together. We did Lesson 1, and he LOVED it! We followed up with Lesson 2 and he was doing great. He loved the “games” where he would have to “say it fast”! A day or two later he asked to work on reading again so we did Lesson 3. We were right on track to complete Lessons 4-100 when our precious Noah decided to join us! The book of reading lessons has been sitting on the shelf, collecting dust, for the past SEVEN months. There have been a number of times that I’ve thought that I really need to carve some time out to do those lessons with Ben again, but just recently I learned that he could do this:

I guess my work here is done. In all seriousness, I can not take any credit for this. It's like he just woke up one day and reading clicked. I have no idea when or where he learned all the sight words. We actually got him some sight word books right after his birthday. I think it was a set of 10 books with 4 or 5 words featured in each book. I showed him the set when they came in and he proceeded to flip through the title pages and read all of the sight words to me. ALL of them. Again.... what? when? how? Oh, this child. I'm not really sure what to do with him next. He can read and sort laundry. I think he's ready to take on the world. ;)

Personal Hygiene

We take things pretty seriously around here. Dental health is very important and starts early.

They say that cleanliness is next to godliness. I’m guessing that’s why these three little angels are wearing their halos.