FHE = AOK

Boy howdy is it humid here!  So our family home evening this week took us to a really awesome bit of Wisconsin nature - Pewit's Nest

 Oooooooo!

 Sand!

Hot but happy, and homebound.

thwth!

Solei made her very own panpipe this morning!  She found it in the book, read the instructions, and made it all herself while I was distracted and trying to do the dishes.   I was shocked!!  I put up a post on ATreblemaker about it.  This girl never ceases to amaze me.

All about Forster

A few weeks ago Forster's speech therapist was asking me how many words he has in his vocabulary, and I could remember about 5, but during the course of the session I kept adding to the list.  She said that's fairly common - and a list will help us understand where he is now and give us some hope for all the work we're doing, so I'ma gonna make one.

If you are just tuning in, our dear boy is talking just below the state benchmark so we get therapists in here like we are some cool club.  They keep saying he's such a physical kid that he doesn't care about the verbal yet, so we have to try harder to get him to introduce new words into his diet.  It's very cool to have these nice therapy ladies come in and get charmed to pieces by Forster.  WE think he's pretty fabulous, but it's lovely to see him sharing the wealth :)  He really doesn't care very much about verbage, he spends his entire day trying to get people to jump, run, play and wrestle with him.  Solei, by the way, is much closer to the ground than Jared and I, so the poor thing usually has a hysterically giggling Forster jumping on top of her.  It's so dang funny that even she laughs about it.  Sometimes :)

I took this of him just as he jumped on me - notice how his face is saying "AAAAAAANNNNDDDDDD...  ATTACK!!!"  This is pretty much the look I see all day long.

So here's the word list I can think of.  I listed it phonetically because it's way cuter that way - and brownie points to anyone who can understand what these all mean!

Reh-ee... seeehhh.... GO!
nana
peaaaa-sh
Jesuh
bah-uhl or bah bah
up
dow
no
yeah or yeh-shshsh
oh-tay
bawl
awl duh
uh, tee-oo, fee, fohhr, fie, sih, seh-en, ey... (he loses count at this point and after he fumbles around for a few words trying to remember nine, he yells:) TEH!!!!
aynk oo
mama mama mama mama mama mama mama mama mama mama mama mama
dada
oh no
why
oh mahh
no....s
mahw
eeee-r
jooos
coooo..l
hi
buh bye
chow chow (okay, that one is actually Portuguese, but he still uses it when he is with our Brasilian friends!)

(and these 2 are sound effects)
chooo choooo!
chirp chirp (Solei loves this one.  She tries to convince everyone he's actually a cricket)

There are plenty of things he'll say if you tell him to.  And when he parrots back "I love you" - you know he means it.  His hugs are the most honest, awesome hugs that were ever hugged.

Oh, and he has proven my theory that if you read Dr. Seuss' ABC book to a child ad nauseum, they'll learn the alphabet ahead of schedule.  Since he's not talking as soon as Solei was, I'd just assumed everything else would be at a slower pace (I know, I'm still a novice at this parenting thing).   I didn't realize anything had sunk in until we were at the library a while back and he started picking up the wood letter blocks and telling me the name of each one.  I started screaming and bawling.  The librarians know me, so it wasn't  huge surprise.

he will NOT stay still lately - the only way I could get a picture of him smiling was if I let him chew on one of Solei's barrettes!

He'll be 2 in just over a month!  We've got Solei who is full of sunshine, and Forster who is full of mirth.  You couldn't ask for a better pair!  We are seriously lucky... and so are you, if you come visit :)

We love to see the temple....

We hit the ATL this last week and had an amaaaaazing time.  One thing we got to do was head to the temple to take pictures of the kids like I did with Solei back in 2008.  This was Solei then...

And this is her now:

Here's one I snagged of a very tired Forster:

Our fiddling star!

She's playing the VIOLIN!!!  Woohoo!!!

Graduation!

I have to admit, the idea of a preschool graduation ceremony seems ridiculous.  But the sight of this melted even my cold heart:

There was singing.  SINGING!!

We got seriously lucky with her preschool this year.  Her teacher was amazing and because Solei was fine academically, she really focused on her social skills - manners and classroom etiquette.

This is the face of a girl who - drumroll please..... can WAIT HER TURN!!! (sometimes)  That's worth a ceremony!

Happiest Mother's Day to all!

I couldn't have asked for a more perfect Mother's Day. From the amaaazing hand-delivered breakfast that included an entire bowl of bacon, to the Primary kids who managed to sing the right words beaauuutifully in Sacrament meeting despite the fact that I had all their cue cards in the wrong order.

I asked Jared to take some pictures of me and the reasons why I'm getting pampered so beautifully on this Mother's Day.
Trying to keep these two kids still for a nano-second is just impossible.

I know that motherhood is a wonderful, important job, but there are gazzillions of women doing it right now on this earth, far better than I am. I recognize that - and yet Heavenly Father gave me these incredible kids to get to grow with.

I feel like the luckiest mother on earth. Thanks to all of your for your amazing examples, I hope your day was just fantabulous!

The revenge of the bovines

We braved the rainy chill today to celebrate the return of the cows.  If you had a good ARM you could probably throw a rock from our driveway and hit one. Yeah, our neighbours are cows.

Solei wanted to pretend to be a cow, Forster wanted to swing and watch them, and I kinda wanted a burger.

Happy Easter!

Growing up, my mom dressed us to the nines on Easter and always got a big family picture of us in our finery, with our Easter baskets.  I don't know what she did when there was a one year old around, but we were less than successful at capturing that one, poised moment.  Let's face it, we're never poised anyway...  so here are a few of the *best* representations we got of our Easter selves.

The Easter Bunny sewed these baskets up, all by herself.  No joke.  I'm shocked too.

The kids were kinda thrilled.

Aaaaand, the finery.  We have some dapper menfolk, the closest we could get of a picture of the two kids together, and a a darling lady.

And in full disclosure, here's the more typical pictures.  Happy Easter, everybody!!!

Perks of living in a small town.

The local grocery store has a mechanical pig. The price of this magical experience?  One sweet nickel.

hslkjsdjflkjsd

We're snowed in - iced in this time.  Sigh.  This displeases me.  But there are lovely things to think about.  Things like Daddy's sweet pancake making skillz.

Seriously, this was the view from my front door yesterday.  Do you see all the green??? Gorgeous!!

We were sent home from church after sacrament meeting today because - despite there being no snow on the ground when the meeting started - the accumulation was well over an inch already by that point.  Freezy, nasty stuff.

They were the biggest snowflakes I've ever seen!  When they fell on your head, it was like they were punching you!

Regular posting will resume as soon as decent weather stays around.

Life lessons

Santa was a dear and brought a sled for Christmas.  We didn't get out of the house until 2 days after, but we live across the street from the best hill in town, so it would be ridiculous not to enjoy it.  Getting a kid all dressed up to sled is an ordeal, so I of course decided to make it way more complicated and insisted on coming along with Forster.  We had a snow suit, we had boots, but they just didn't fit quite right and were too tight in the wrong places.  But, I figured, he needs to be outside!  He's been inside for months, he wants this!

True, when we got out to the street, there was wonderment in his eyes.  But there always is.  I let him down and he took some excited, curious steps before he plowed face first into a snowbank.   His face was covered in snow and he was seriously mad.  But that crazy mom gene was going full force and I knew this was a life experience my 16 month old needed RIGHT.  NOW.

We got to the top of the hill, and Jared, Solei and Forster all piled on the toboggan.  To my credit, I did must that they were pointed towards the seriously steep side of the hill, but they went off any way.  I watched them got faster... farther... and CRASH!  There was a cloud of snow and a bit lump of Pagets in a snow drift.  I ran down the hill, positive they were all maimed or worse, but I got what my dear Lola calls the "funeral giggles" and couldn't stop laughing.

The scene was seriously bad.  Jared was shaken, Forster was howling and his head was bleeding, and Solei was laying there, screaming at the top of her lungs "SANTA BROUGHT A BAD PRESENT!!  HE SHOULDN'T HAVE GIVEN US THE SLED!!  WHY, SANTA, WHY?!?!?!"

It was so awful, especially because I was laughing hysterically.  Jared took Forster home where he was much happier, and I convinced Solei - despite her insisting her leg was broken - that we could try just one more time, on the other side of the hill.  The outcome was significantly different.  We had a ball and I snapped this on the way home.

I learned a valuable lesson.  16 month olds do not, in fact, NEED to play in the snow.  If he could talk, I'll bet he would have chewed me out for inflicting that on him.

Awesome advent idea

Just a quick note - I stumbled across this cool idea for an advent activity.  We never did one growing up, so I'm not as obsessive as the rest of the blog-osphere, apparently.  But this idea is to wrap 25 books up and unwrap one a day to read.  I scoured the house for bible books and Friend magazines and copies of the Book of Mormon and managed to wrap up enough to start today.  Even though it was a book she already owned and had read before, she loved the activity and can't wait to do it tomorrow!  (cool aside, she read the book to me!!  I had to help her with the word "Gabriel," but she already knew "Bethlehem" and a few other weird words apparently. !)  Plus she's been begging me to let her unwrap the presents she already has, so this gave her a chance to rip the paper off of something.  Whew.  This tradition is totally a keeper!

Thanksgiving

This Thanksgiving season has found me reflecting more on my thankfulness than I normally would.

It has occurred to me over the last few years how blessed I am. Anyone who lives in the USA and has traveled anywhere beyond its borders knows that we have something special here. I’m not on my rameumptom here. In fact, I’m not sure that any of us deserves it.

I was born to wonderful parents who love me and have supported me in all of the good things that I have ever done. By our standards we weren’t rich growing up. We never starved but we were penny-wise. Even in this situation I was much more blessed than the majority of people who live in this world. In my adulthood I’ve been blessed with great blessings. I have a wonderful wife and family. My job is good and stable (famous last words). We have a beautiful home in a very safe location. We have friends, food, transportation, freedoms and happiness. We have everything I could hope for.

I look around at the wealth and prosperity that I see and I can’t help but think that I really haven’t done anything to deserve being where I am. On the grand scale of things, I’ve done nothing to create the stability or prosperity around me. Frankly, I don’t deserve to live in these conditions any more than anyone else you meet in Africa, South America, Asia, Australia or Europe. These blessings are nothing that I deserve. As much as I think Americans try to fool themselves, we individual Americans don’t deserve any of this. We simply lucked out. We were born in the right place at the right time. There is no real reason that I couldn’t have been born in a hut with a dirt floor in Africa. That was all up to God. I am unbelievably thankful that He put me where I am, but I know it is all Him and not me.

There are so many people around me who suffer in ways that I do not have to. People who do their best to prepare for the worst can still be overwhelmed by circumstances that they cannot control. Children get sick. Accidents come out of nowhere. Storms ravage. Waters rise. Regardless of what I do to prepare, I know that everything that I have could be taken away from me in an instant. I see how this has happened to wonderful people. People much better than me. My heart breaks when I see the trials of others. Not only for them but because I know that I could just have easily been placed in their shoes.

Sometimes I complain about this or that, but on the grand scale of things, I really have nothing to complain about. I’ve not had to face any of the trials that some around me have. For this I am grateful.

So this season, I am especially thankful for all that I have. I’m amazed at the love the Lord has for me. I’m amazed by his grace and blessings. I’m amazed with the wonderful family that I have. I’m eternally indebted for the blessing that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is in my life.

gezundenschniffle.

My parents are both officially retired now (HUZZAH!!!!) and I have seen them four times now since school got out last May.  How lucky are we?!  They took a trip to visit us a week or so ago for my birthday and it was marvelous.  I haven't been able to spent my birthday with them since I was 17!  Since Forster still takes morning and afternoon naps religiously, we couldn't venture out very far, but we discovered many loverly things around us.

We checked out our local zoo.  Did you know Baraboo has a zoo?  It has prairie dogs and bears and a monkey and some deer and a pig and a goat and a llama... and maybe one or two more things.  It's small, free and adorable.

We played with the Stomp Rocket Solei got for her birthday.  So much fun!

We played at the park...

And went to a fall festival in the Dells.

And took lots of walks and played at the park across the street.  The season for being outside is quickly coming to an end.  &^%$&^$&^%.

My dad also has a fancy schmancy camera so I asked him to take a few pictures of us, in between Jared's migraines.  That season is upon us too - pray hard for him!

Which one do you like the best?  Hope y'all are enjoying the last few days of autumn before the evil-terrible-no-good winter comes!  Jared just got the garage ready... which means he put the motorcycles and the tractor and the mower in the back, and brought the snowblowers out in front by the Jeep.  Grrrr.