March and April

This winter unfortunately brought us a lot of sickness :/. The poor little kids kept tag teaming with different things and Zach was the only one who managed to escape mostly unharmed. Hopefully that is all over now, though.

Brian is working on writing, spelling, and reading. He now knows most of his letters and can recognize some words. But for some time now he has liked to spell things for us - with totally random letters. He'll ask for "p n o e p b" and things like that. The only thing I think he really knows is "gb" for granola bar :).

Here's a cute picture of Derek: he doesn't do it much now but for a while he was always bridging using his head. This day he kept squealing while doing it :).
The little guy also got 2 teeth already! At under 7 months. They came in within a day or two on the bottom.

Jason was able to go to the Shepherds' Conference again this year (he didn't last year). It is always a huge blessing and he had a really good time. This time he went with Andy and there were several local guys that rented a house down there together. It was rough at home but we were able to watch a lot of the videos - even Brian and Emily really enjoyed watching them. The first one or two they even sat through all of the preaching :).

I knew it would be rough and was really concerned about Brian and Emily in particular. She seemed to do okay but Brian had several meltdowns because he missed his dada. One day right before nap he said to me, "Do you know why I'm so whiny? Because I miss Dada." and started to cry as he finished his last words. Poor little guy.

Here's a sweet pic of them eating dinner while watching a session.

And Emily enjoying the singing...

And of course a classic shot pretending to preach from the pulpit :).

We kept looking for people we knew (and specifically Dada) but didn't have much luck...until we spotted Dan's head! Andy is in the bottom row, first seat to the right of the aisle. Jason didn't think it was very special but Z and I thought it was pretty neat.

I'm not exactly sure what was happening here, but the kids must have been pretending to roar or something.

And sweet little Derek can't help but have his fingers in his mouth. Those two are usually there but he will sometimes use the other hand, too. For a while he would flip the other hand's fingers upside down but I think he likes his left hand more.

Emily loves to cook. She always wants to be involved with what I am doing and/or up on the counter. This time all she wanted to do was scoop flour from bowl to bowl. It's so interesting to see the difference between her and Brian - she'll sit and quietly and particularly work on just one or two things for a while and he is much more active and bouncy.

For some time we have been trying to potty train Emily and she currently gets a few jelly beans if her diaper is dry and she does something in the potty. Honestly, she doesn't seem very motivated but I don't want to go backwards and tell her it's okay to just use her diaper, so we keep going. Brian often wants some jelly beans as well and sometimes I'll give him some, but a lot of times I won't. However, at some point he decided to ask Emily to share and she almost always does now. She'll bite off half of a bean and give him the rest (hence our sicknesses, I think...). It's actually super sweet. One day they sat down next to each other on the kitchen floor to share beans and she told him she loved him. He said he loved her, too, and they continued eating their beans. It was super sweet.

Brian also tries to take care of her, even if he is soooo active and often just plows her over. A few weeks ago Jason took B to the gas station to get some propane and the gal gave him a lollipop. They went out and got the propane and Brian said he could go back in and get one for Emily. They did and she was super happy about it when he came home (especially since she also had wanted to go).

Another time they were up at the lake for a quick trip to drop off the golf cart and Brian was offered a lollipop. He asked if he could have two and was told yes, so he grabbed one for himself and one for Emily. He'll also often leave part of a candy for her :).

We found this cape at the thrift store and while the colors currently have a political meaning, it's actually a super cool cape. I've always really loved rainbow patterns, but this is also just the perfect material that flows behind them when they run. I was trying to take a picture of the cape for reference so perhaps we could make another one and asked the kids to lay down. They kept goofing around so this was the best I got :).

Jason took this cute one of Emily.

Shortly into April Derek decided he was ready to crawl. For a while he mostly did an army crawl with only a little on his knees. But after he figured out the army crawl he then just wanted to figure out how to stand. He would often be found (and still now is) up on his hands and feet more like a bear crawl. By the end of April he is a little better at crawling but for speed will army crawl. But he loves to stand! He will try to pull himself up and has even now been found standing up after a nap. He loves it when I hold out my hands so he can grab on and stand up.

Here's a cute one crawling through the tunnel - he loves it!

I recently managed to buy gobs and gobs of homeschool books. The gal I got them from also had several Magic School Bus books, which Brian in particular loves. Both he and Emily will often just sit down and "read" books.

Standing, laughing and with teeth!

Z is still very much into airplanes, particularly WWII. He knows just about everything there is to know about them. We were able to get about 10 kits from a local guy which currently takes his bedroom total over 20. He'll put them together, paint them, put on the decals, then send emails out with pictures and specs of that particular plane. It's pretty amazing how much he knows, and the level of reading he does to gain all the knowledge :). Here are a few of his most recent ones...

F-86 Sabre:

This was the plane he made for Dad for his birthday. Zach modified a Piper Cub kit to be a replica of Dad's airplane from long ago.

Over the winter we kept Bob's golf cart so as to fix some electrical issues. Once the snow was melted, Zach would drive the kids around in it. They loved it! Zach would go pretty fast, actually, and zip them here or there. They would often ask him for a golf cart ride. Now that the lake is open Jason took the golf cart back up there, but the kids had a good time with it here.

Spring has finally come and that means plants! I'm doing less seedlings this year than last. But this year we made a homemade seedling cart. We wanted an extra storage shelf for the basement so we finally bought one and are using one shelf for my plants. Some fluorescent lights and those little guys are doing great! I've also cleaned up a lot of the beds outside so hopefully this summer will bring lots of pretty flowers. I also bought several more perennials, so hopefully the work will gradually decrease each year as they establish.