Parentheticals

Last saturday we got Rea's bike working, so this week she rode it a lot. Sara has been reading a book every day to learn more about reading. We are hoping that if we do this enough she will start to like it. This week Timmy has been singing a lot of songs that he invented himself. Gideon will crawl across the whole house and play by himself now. That is fun. Alison attended her second League of Utah Writer's meeting this week. It was a write in at a coffee shop. She hadn't worked on writing at all since the last meeting, so it was fun to spend some time writing. On Thursday Mike's work had a summer party. We were all invited to Lagoon. We hung out in the water-park area for the first few hours, and then after dinner went on a bunch of kiddie rides. All in all it was a fairly fun time. The kids loved the whale ride the most. It was a bunch of whales that you sit in and go around a circle while bobbing up and down in a sine wave pattern. It was fun to see them h...

To start this blog off, we will have each person talk about one topic of interest, and tell three things about it. First of, Gideon, who chooses "a-de de" as his topic. He has the following to say: A bu bu bu bu A de de Gi de de de de Timmy learned all about wolly mammoths this week. These are his top three facts: They have big feet They have fur They have nostrils They have a big head They have long legs They have furry things Their butts are furry They have fur all over They are so big (He did downward dog to show this) They keep their babies safe They put their trunks up and walk around for everyone to see like this (he put his hands above his head here) Sara wrestled with Daddy this week. Her top three things about wrestling are: We pinned him (Daddy) down Sara is five years old I (Sara) love wrestling Alison decided to launch an online business to sell homeschooling stuff this week. Her top three things are: She is still in the planning phase S...

I don't remember if I ever mentioned it, but Gideon is now crawling! Three weeks ago, on our vacation, he started scooting around on his stomach. By the time we got back, he could push himself up to all fours and then to sitting. Over the last two weeks, he progressed from scooting to crawling, and now he mostly crawls. He does the one-knee-and-one-foot crawl that most of our kids have done at this stage. It's very cute. Gideon has also started signing more, usually by clasping his hands together and bouncing them up and down, but sometimes by patting his tummy. He also occasionally sticks his finger in his mouth to sign water. Both of those were goals for Gideon, so we had a goal day party. Timmy decided to pass off on his color goal, so he identified something of the correct color each time we said it, for a dozen basic colors. So it was a triple goal day party on Saturday. Timmy picked the menu: shells with sausages and mushrooms, in a homemade white sauce with Havarti c...

On the way to our vacation last week we listened to some books on tape. The highlight of the books we listened to was "Diary of a Mad Brownie." It was a fun book about a faerie that was supposed to clean up a bedroom of a slob. It was highly funny. We arrived in southern Utah and eventually found the cabin that Mike's parents rented for the Yoder reunion. It was a bit of a difficult job finding it. The cabin was beautiful, and we had a great time there. The cabin had a lot of mosquitoes (the kids think that this is the most pertinent bit of information about the cabin.) We spent an awesome day at the mouth of the Narrows in Zion's. The kids slept on bunk beds with Max, and the trip was very fun. Apparently Mike and Alison are bad at taking pictures, because we have no pictures of the entire trip. Next, we went to California to visit the Poulsons. The trip was long, but the kids were pretty good. The thing that the kids think is the most important to tell about t...