Out with old...

I want to do all I can do to stop pollution. When I grow up, I want to write adventure books, and i iz vry cmart.

Micheal is a mean lean video game playing machine. He also is an excellent reader, amazingly thoughtful and a very funny guy!

For the past three months you could not see Emma without a Harry Potter book. She is currently breezing her way through the sixth!

Marian is the sweetest girl you will ever meet. In her prayers she is thankful for rainbows and butterflies, princesses and mermaids....

We're glad he's finally starting to talk! He loves to say prayers and is quite the singer. Of course he loves the Beattles.

Eliza is a very happy baby. She has a special talent of reaching out to others with love.

Lizie-isms

We have a strict rule about all food and drinks being consumed at the table, but since I was nursing Norah, I brought my water with me to the rocking chair. Eliza followed me and I reminded her to go to the table. Of course she protested that I was drinking water in the toy room. My rebuttal was, "But I'm Mom." Her immediate response, "But I'm Lizie!"

Another time I was nursing Norah I was giving directions to Nate in the kitchen. I asked if I was being bossy. Eliza, playing on the floor a few feet away responded, "Yep! I am too!"

Just as Derek gave her a nick name, she might have nick named Nora - Norie.

Derek loves to hold her, he wants to do it by himself.

Once Michael offered to burp her, but at her first burp he quickly passed her back to me.

Megan loved to rescue her from her bassinet when she wakes up (she's excited that she gets to walk around with her) and Emma comforts her when I am busy.

When Derek came to the hospital he said he got to ride on the crocodile. (elevator)

Derek is a thankful guy. The other day when he was getting dressed I told him he picked out a cool shirt. He thanked me for getting it for him and then thanked me for his socks when he put them on.

He loves Sunbeams and works all week on the papers that Sister Powers sends home. He says he is one of Jesus's knights. I think he'll love learning about the Armor of God someday.

We have been going to Lowes for their Build and Grow workshops. On Friday when I told him we would be going the next day he turned on the computer so I could show him what we would make. Early Saturday morning he jumped in my bed with his clothes and started to get dressed. He kept telling me to get up so we could go to "Woes." He's even asked me to tell him a bed time story about Lowes and every day he asks me when the next "Woes Day" is.

For St. Patrick's Day, Merian made green foot prints and placed them around the house. They stopped at each bedroom door and left a tiny origami frog for each occupant of the room. (She loves making frogs and taught her class how to make them when they were studying frogs.) I was dually impressed when the next morning she had cleaned them up!

Derek wasn't ready for them to be gone, however, so he made his own to scatter around. Every time I would clean them up he would make more. One time they were orange and he called them volcano footprints.

He's also been ripping up white paper and dropping them from the loft. Then he goes downstairs and makes angels in them.

Get Aboard the Potty Train

The easiest way to potty train a kid is to have one of the same gender about six years before. Granted, it will be up to you to potty train them. but it will all pay off.

When it was time for Derek to be potty trained I just asked Michael to take him when ever he went. He would call out, "Come on Derek. Let's go shoot some bad guys." And he would happily go. It was the quickest any of our kids were potty trained and without any accidents or relapses. All I had to do was supply the candy for both boys. Michael also taught him about modesty and to this day Derek is very private. (Except sometimes, when he is in there for a long time, he gets bored and calls for Eliza to keep him company. Poor girl!)

Now it is Eliza's turn and Emma and Merian were more than happy to help out. They were so excited to show her the new potty chair and panties how could Eliza not be thrilled at this new adventure? It is only day two, and at risk of jinxing our luck, she is doing great. Emma and Merian are too. They jump at the chance to take her; I don't even remind them. In fact, when Eliza went today and picked up the inside of the chair to show me the results, Merian whisked them out of my hand to go clean up and help her wash her hands, lest she be at risk for not earning her share of the candy.

Our old chair was dangerously broken after so many kids so I went to find another one. It's hard to find any basic baby things now days. I guess they want you to buy two of everything: one pink and one blue. I debated a long time about which one to get but decided that the ones that make noise might just freak her out and hinder her progress. I got a frog chair like the one below, except with a pink insert. Today when all the kids were gone I asked her if she needed to go and she said, "I'll go hop on the frog!"

It's good this next one is a girl. Maybe by then Eliza can potty train her!

dahaha hellow!

ewmo [elmo] here! ewmo likes to play imaginary! lately ewmo pretend he in play! ewmo take break from sessame street and be in "beuty and the boot"! it fun, and elmo wear a ton of makeup to make me look innattural! ewmo awso go to di! we win second place, and top secret extra instant challenge! in chawenge, we have chawecter, and i selfecsly greedy person and we win second! we so good at the videogame of wife.

-michae-i mean elmo

The REAL D.I Champions!!!

By Megan

I did D.I too! My team name was "The No Name Team." (We had a tough time agreeing on a name) The people on my team are: Tirsah, LaNae, Ryan, Kaitlin, and Jeffery. Our challenge was to make a skit that involved a puppet: ours was about "Goldylocks and the Three Bears." I was Momma Bear (who was a hippie), Jeffrey was Pappa Bear, and Ryan was Baby Bear (a jobless 28 year-old who still lives with his parents). After the bears left the home to find Baby Bear a job, Punkylocks broke into the house. A pizza (our puppet, puppeteer-ed and voiced by Tirsah) convinced Punkylocks to stop breaking into houses.

Tirsah was so nice and bought us all pins with this year's motto ( WADIng in Creativity; the WADI stands for Washington Destination Imagination). Tirsah is also going to be home schooled next year!! Whoohooo! I'm super excited!!