Quick Brag

From youngest to oldest:

Grary Fish:
If any one missed the news, I lost the family vote 4 to 1.  We're not having a surprise.  We're having a girl!  Just as a reminder, she's due 7 August.  But right now I'm pushing for 1 August so she can share a birthday with Abbie!  I know that's going to be making me stay pregnant longer than ever (eek, I'll have to make it ALL the way to 39 weeks), but I don't relish the idea of three July birthday parties.  We had been planning on the name Brook, but...  well as soon as the kids can spell their name a favorite past-time is to do a google image search.  And there wasn't a single brook that came up unless we added stream or river.  Adding water didn't even help...  Apparently there's some large breasted women that are perfectly fine taking pictures scantily clad (and sometimes in water).  So now we're thinking Aster.  Like the flower.  But more like the Greek root for star.  Grant wouldn't let me name her Nova or Astral so I got as close as I could!

Gauge:
Wow! His vocabulary is exploding again!  I guess he technically uses short sentences... if "Want more drink"  counts.  The one word he REFUSES to SAY is please.  I don't bother with baby sign language because my children have typically picked up speech fairly quickly (Gauge is the slowest now, but Cerise did hold out until she could jump straight to small sentences... she skipped the remedial part of using single words).  But I've started introducing the sign for please since he won't say it.  Well, he signs it (when reminded).  He loves to give his sisters hugs.  But if they don't outright ask for one first he manufactures a reason to.  He'll go up and slug Cairn or Cerise then give a hug and say "sorry."  And then repeat it a few times until they hug back wholeheartedly.

Cerise:
She now has short bangs (at her insistence last hair cut).  And we still don't have a working camera.  Sorry.  But more exciting is that she is picking up reading and writing!  She can write Mom, Dad, Cairn, Cerise and love without any help.  She can read I, Sam, see, am, me and a few others.  She still refuses to just learn the alphabet - even by sounds instead of letter names (hmm... sort of like when she learned to talk), but she's up to book 4 in the Sam Books.  She'd like to go faster, but I'm not ready for that yet.  So we take our time coloring and reading each one.

Cairn:
She can tell time on digital and analog.  She can add and subtract up to 15 ish (we're playing games and she's getting faster at the lower sums).  She was struggling with reading until we got her the first set of Barron's Get Ready! Get Set! Read! (here's the first book).  And now she's picking up Ferdinand and Frog and Toad and reading those with minimal help!  It's amazing what finding the right book can do for a kid!  Another source of pride is that she's outgoing with both kids and adults.  If she has a question at a store or the library that I can't answer she's off to ask someone who can.  When we went to the park to find it overrun by Thatcher Elementary, she quickly found the group of smallest girls and made friends.

Family:
We planted our garden!  Because of the nation of gophers that moved into our yard, and the rabbits and mice and who knows what other rodents we had to build some protections for it.  We dug down two feet and buried chicken wire.  That wire went up the sides and was overlapped with hardware cloth that went up a few more feet above ground level.  Then we threw in our compost and the displaced dirt.  Last year it took two days for all but one of the plants to be eaten.  It's been four days and they are all there and doing well... except the one that Gauge helped plant by pulling off all the leaves.

Carrie and Grant:
Eh, we're old.  He goes to work every day.  I work with the kids every day. We do have projects we're working on, but I just don't feel it's brag worthy right now.