Parentheticals

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...

The kids and adults in our family have adjusted back to life together. It was a little exhausting the first few days, but things are going well. We started a new clean up procedure this week. Now for Team Clean the girls each have two loops of string, one in the front room and one in their bedroom. We pile stuff into the loops and they have to clean up everything in their areas. This has been especially helpful to Sara, who tends to lose focus when cleaning. Having a confined space seems to help her a lot, and we have to spend a lot less time redirecting her. This means that we're less frustrated, which is always nice. We also set a 30 minute timer for Team Clean and whoever has finished their jobs (one parent has the kitchen, the other arranges the girls' piles and then does our bedroom and the bathroom) gets to do something fun. Anyone who hasn't finished doesn't get any parental attention until they do. We like it so far. On Monday, Timmy was in charge of the FHE...