My how you have grown my dear

Everyone has been commenting on how much my kids have grown lately, and it is true.  I am happy it is now shorts weather because it was getting embarrassing seeing how much their pants were looking like floods towards the end of March, not to mention the holes in the knees that I refuse to patch for the third time.  Yeah for warm weather!

 Jacob is loving being outside and going to any park.  He is getting really good at holding on to the big boy swings and loves it when I do underdogs "u-er-ah-ease" (under dog please) for him.  We have recently been taking his scooter with us to the park we play at while Maren has soccer practice. He loves riding it up and down the hills there, always turning heads as he goes along, as he is super coordinated on a two wheeled scooter for his age.  

Of course he is...he has Spencer to keep up with.

On another note his speech is showing huge amounts of progress these days.  He is using about 7 constenants regularly and putting lots of three word sentences together.  "Bi un ease" (big one please), and "o el ease" (do self please) are his favorites.  Of course he is still hard to understand if it is not in context and you aren't mom or dad, but more and more others are getting him!  Yeah!  He has even gone to nursery without me two weeks in a row now, as I was released and called into YW.  It was great timing for both of us!

 Spencer loves riding his scooter with Jacob at the park, but he doesn't last nearly as long, before he is off finding someone his age to play with.  He loves to "cook" food with the wood chips and try to catch fish with sticks in the pond.  He is also getting very good at pumping himself on the swing, and then later jumping off, scaring me to death every time, of course.  Spencer got two deep cuts on and behind his ear this weekend and needed stitches.  You might remember the last time he needed stitches it was super traumatic for him.  And it still was this time, but he handled it like a champ, and did fabulous.  It was neat to see how much he had matured since the last time.  He is growing up. 

This picture of Maren just makes me laugh.  She keeps talking about wanting to fly, and had made several sets of paper wings to help her on her quest.   It all started with a weather unit she did in school, they made a wind sock, out of paper of course and if it can fly so can she.  The funniest part was listening to her tell her whole soccer team about tornado's one day when the weather turned sour at practice one afternoon.  She really had a few of the girls scared that they were just going to be picked up  and blown away right there and then.  

She also participated in a "no screen week" challenge, as her teacher promised pizza and root-beer floats for who ever refrained from watching any TV or computer games for a week.  It wasn't easy, but she stuck with it even when grandma was visiting.  Making art during family movie night and  staying clear of her beloved poptropica computer game all week. 

And Maren also has our quote this week.  Dave made dinner one night, I threatened my meatloaf, not one of his fav's, and he offered to give me a break and make his meatloaf.  Now this never really happens these days, so we were all a bit surprised to see dad cooking.  The kids took one look at the finished product and made very funny faces, and Maren when saying the dinner prayer asked "please help it to please taste good".    It must have helped because she had like three helpings and said it was really good..

 Amanda has been working on her running this year for PE.  They are graded on running a mile in a certain time.  This has been hard for her, but she has really progressed through the year.  They had a fun run a few weeks ago for the whole family, and she took second place in the silly clothes contest for it.  But she also ran the mile in what would have been a great time for her class.  

Amanda also took sixth and seventh place finishes in two events at her last swim meet, earning a few points for her team and getting some really great times on events she had never swam before.

  

Amanda has gotten really smart at recently at figuring out how to best help mom and dad notice her needs.  For a while she has been mentioning things she would like done in her room.  After not seeing any progress (like six months) she finally figured out that she needed to help us remember these things, so she made a list and stuck it on our bed.  The original list was about twenty items long...mostly hanging things up and buying a few helpful items like hooks and such so she can better organized.  The best one though was the request for a a few extra garbage cans, apparently I haven't taught her how to take out the trash...yet.  After we progressed sufficiently on the list she shortened it into five or six things we had left to do with a congratulations at the bottom for when we accomplished them.  Yep, she knows how I operate, lists are my friend!