No Pictures Came...

My camera is officially worthy of the children taking pictures.  For some reason they're the only ones who don't mind a black, burned-out-pixel area in the dead center of every picture.  That being said, they love taking horrible pictures and I don't have to pay for anything to be developed.  I also don't have to put any of those pictures on the computer...  which is to say you're not likely to see them.  Ever.

Broken camera is a bit sad.  The Christmas pictures were all abysmal... so unless you were lucky enough to watch them open their presents in front of the web-cam, you'll never see how excited they were to open the gifts.

And the video we tried to take of us dancing silly, trying to stay awake on New Year's Eve is thankfully blemished enough to never make it online.  By the way, Grant is the only one of us that could actually stay up till midnight.  I was the first to pass out... at 9 pm.

After trying to upload and photo-shop those events I gave up on the camera.  And with no pictures I gave up on blogging, but there's just so much happening that I want to share with ya'll to keep you in touch with us!

So from the youngest:

Grarrie Fish:

In case you haven't heard, we're expecting again!  This is super exciting timing because Melissa is due in June, Blair is due in July and I'm due in August.  Melissa and Blair are both having girls.  We don't know yet and we might not find out (I'm open to hearing arguments for both sides), but that appointment is within the next few weeks so we should make that decision soon.  True to our family tradition we asked a close friend to name the fetus.  Jenny Sullivan combined Grant with Carrie and the idea of it swimming around in me (Jenny started out as my swimming partner in college). 

Gauge:

His vocabulary is growing in all the perfectly boy ways.  His most frequent words are, "truck" (anything with wheels and a motor) "bum" and "poop."  He discovered the word "gunk" and laughed whenever it was said for a whole night.  And his boy sense of humor has evolved as far as it ever will:  he smelled a fart, said "Poop" and laughed, then repeated it for everyone.

But his sisters do influence him.  He occasionally brings hair clips, tiaras or girly hats to get put on his head for dress up time.  And frequently he walks around the house in my shoes, purse and holding a baby doll calling himself "Mommy."

Cerise:

We started the school year with her actively refusing to learn letters... even with silly arts and crafts.  So I dropped it.  Part of homeschooling (even in the preschool years) for us is to teach the children what they want to learn/ are ready to learn when they are ready for it.  Well, so long ABC's for Cerise.  She has declared herself ready to read.  So we're starting with the Sam Early Readers (which we found we like more than any of the others... including Bob Books).  She can read Book 1... which tells a story with only the words "I see Sam."  

She's also taken to writing messages the same way Cairn does.  It goes something like this: "Mom how do you spell I love you?"  And then I dictate one word, one letter at a time, often stopping to describe the letter or show her what it looks like on a different sheet of paper.  Keep in mind though, she's new to this so the letters in a word are usually clumped together, but not in line usually and the words are almost never in the left to right succession.  Still, we're rather impressed by her.

Cairn:

She is a Daisy Girl Scout.  And it's cookie season.  And I"m the Troop Leader and Cookie Manager...  Which is to say she's making new friends (and experiencing the drama of intertwining friendships among girls) and I'm hoping I can regain my sanity in a week when all of the cookies are (hopefully) sold and the cookie money is (hopefully) deposited.

One of her goals for the school year was to learn how to tell time.  We encouraged her with this by promising her a watch when she could tell time on both out analog and digital clocks.  She got her watch last night.  So today I was told the time every few minutes.

A while ago Cairn got fed up with learning to read.  About the same time a friend loaned us some Bob Books and she practically got belligerent about it.  So we laid off reading for a while.  Then we came across Baron's Get Ready, Get Set, Read! Series at another friend's house.  She loved the few they had from the library.  So we went out on a limb and ordered the first set.  And she's in love with reading again!  If you catch her with one nearby she'll offer to read it for you.  I like them because they have cute, developed stories, nice colored illustrations and a combination of phonics and sight words.  Cairn is not a phonics learner.  She memorizes the story then learns the words as she reads it over and over and over again.  

Grant:

Do you really want to read about us adults?  He works all day.  I work all day.  We've become sort of boring and this post has become sort of long.  I'll fill you in on us later.

Nica Nite!

Hey, it's Grant writing this post (I know, shocker!) mostly because Carrie said any post about anything to do with Nicaragua should be done by yours truly. Anyway...
After looking through the pictures, there's a story on them that isn't contained on the blog. A week or so ago, Carrie spent all day making a new dress for Cairn. Here she is showing it off:

And wouldn't you know it, she happened to learn a brand-new trick the same day: She can climb into one of our failed-gardening-experiment flower pots all by herself!

  I just thought that was funny. And cute. But the real story is about yesterday. I was supposed to spend all day with the sheriff's department for my Criminal Procedure class, and had to show up at 6:00AM. So I got there five minutes early to watch a couple of cop cars pulling out. I figured, "no way would they just leave without me" so I walked up to the front and rang the doorbell... and a second time, and a third time, for ten minutes. No answer. So I spent another five walking around the building and looking for lights on or open doors, without any luck. Then I tried the front door again for another five minutes, and when there was still no answer at the door, I gave up and went home.
  Two hours later I get a phone call from the officer I was supposed to get out with, who said he went all around looking for me, and that "sometimes they get busy with stuff" and can't answer the door, and not to leave next time. I'm fairly certain that my persistent doorbell ringing would have disrupted any meeting, so short of an escaped prisoner I can't imagine what prevented from promptly opening the door! We rescheduled and I emailed my professor, so I guess I get to turn my paper on it late (during finals, when I should be doing other things). Sigh.
  So instead, and I guess partially to make me feel better, we went up to my parents house to have Nica Nite, which is the annual cooking of Nicaraguan food I remember from my mission (sometimes with extensive internet research to find the recipes) and sometimes the sharing of a mission story. After about three hours of straight cooking this is what we ended up with:

Going from the top in clockwise order to the center, we have chile relleno, which is a fried breaded green pepper stuffed with cheese (rare to nonexistent down there, but we thought it would be fun). Next, Nacatamale, which is like the Mexican tamales, but with different stuffing and steamed in a banana leaf (yes, that's actual banana leaf underneath, we found out they sell them at food city).
  To go off on Nacatamales for a second here: They are FAR, FAR superior to tamales. The banana leaf adds its own distinct flavor, and keeps the masa moist and flavorful, as opposed to the dry, crumbly, often gross-tasting masa from Mexican tamales. Carrie and my parents are in full and total agreement with me here, so stick that in your assumption-of-bias and smoke it. Better yet, go try them yourselves:

Nacatamale Recipe

Okay, back to the wheel of food: Next is fried cheese (an everyday part of meals down there) a mango-pineapple-kiwi-red banana mix (all found down there except the kiwi... mangoes are so common buying them is almost ludicrous) Fried plantains (yummy!) and guacamole in the center.
  This is a less than traditional meal. Mostly you get rice and red beans (fried, often mixed) with one or two sides of one of the following: Plantains, fried cheese, guacamole, gineo (like a plantain but short, fat, and tasteless... Nicaraguans say their full of vitamins and good for you if that's any indication) and some sort of fruit juice (watered down, usually). My favorite was passion fruit, which you can get here except that it's about half white grape juice, and to be authentic you really need the seeds still in your glass.