Signature moves and Time out

The middle picture is a shot of the mountains that run east of San Luis. This was taken a few weeks ago, and yes, that's snow on them thar hills.

The bottom is a picture of one of Ashlynn's cooking conquests. Grandma got her a kids cook book for Christmas and she loves it. We are trying to do a new recipe each week and she is doing quite well. This picture was a strawberry parfait. "Everybody likes parfait!"

Going up to bed the other night, Ashlynn turn around on the stairs and strikes a "rock star" pose. She does this by sticking both hands in the air with thumbs and pinkies out and her face in a mock scream (refer to the hot tub video from earlier). She tells us, "This is my signature move."
I asked her, "Where did you learn a term like 'Signature Move'?"
"Monsters, Inc." of course.
After laughing I said, "Ashlynn. You are so smart. I was not as smart as you when I was your age."
She then started dancing around and, half singing, she stated "That's because you didn't ask as many QUESTIONS!" With that she launched herself accidentally into the wall.

Briggs's Sunday school teacher told us a funny story about him from class. He was explaining the difference between doing something on accident and on purpose. He said if you do something on purpose you get a time out. If you do it on accident you don't. Then he explained, "That's why I always tell my mom it was an accident." Briggs is our little ninja.

Nap Time!

For those of you who enjoy a good Sunday nap, this is for you.

When I announced today that I was going to take a nap after church, Ashlynn said, very petulantly I might add, "Mom. I'm sure you can survive one Sunday without a nap!"

Brian heard her as he was walking out of the room and and could not pass up an opportunity to razz his little smart mouth. He would say over the next 5 minutes, "Ashlynn. I'm sure you can survive one Sunday without watching a movie!", "Ashlynn. I'm sure you can survive one Sunday without wrestling your brothers!", "Ashlynn. I'm sure you can survive one Sunday without eating mac and cheese!" She had finally had it, put her hands on her hips and exclaimed with a smile, "Can we please change the subject now!?"

I think she got our point.

Can you say hyperlexia!

Here are some of Ashlynn's latest installments:

"You raise a good argument, Dad" (to Brian about something he said)

"Maybe Ty just looks like a person on the outside but he's really a puppy on the inside" (about Ty being out of control-all-over-the-place).

"Now that's a problem." (stated out of the blue when she saw the crayon scribbled all over the computer screen by Ty.)

If any one's wondering - No. We can't control Ty. He is beyond us.

Briggs has recently started reading at an even higher rate than before. He is starting to sound out words with a high level of accuracyand recognizes most small words by sight. I borrowed some Level readers from Ashlynn's first grade class today just to gauge where he was with his reading. I started out with Level 1, which he breezed through, no problem. Just you give you something to compare this to - Ashlynn is currently at a Level 12 which places her second or third highest in her class. When she started 1st grade she was a Level 5/6. Briggs is probably at a Level 3/4 and he is still in Preschool.

If any one's wondering - Yes. I think it's healthy to brag about your children's intelligence. It's just so cliche and self-gratifying, I can't resist!

We found this cute video of Ashlynn when she was 2 or 3 singing. I can't believe how fast they grow. There's even a little cameo of Briggs.

New Loft

As many of you have already seen, we did a small addition to our house. The upstairs was a funny shaped loft with an open space to the downstairs entryway. To make better (and safer) use of the space we knocked out a wall and added a couple of closets and Voila! instant play-room (well, not exactly instant).

Here are the before pictures (taken while the previous owners lived here).

Here are the after pictures (use the window and the bedroom doors as a point of reference):

Country Song

You must read this from Amanda's blog (yes, I plagerized).

I honestly don't know where she gets it.

Amanda writes:

Ashlynn asked me to tell her another story about me when I was little. So I told her of the time I was on the swim team and my relay team beat the school record. I explained that we swam faster than anyone from our school had ever done before for that race so they painted our names up on the record board. Ashlynn replied, "And was it up there for so long that they wrote a country song about it?!"

Kate later asked her if she knew what a country song was and she said, "It's like, you know, "I been working on the railroad..."

Briggs the Chess Master

Briggs has recently taken up a new hobby. He loves to play chess. We got him a game called "No Stress Chess" that teaches the basics and how to move the pieces. He got hooked. Then his Uncle, the real chess master, got him a great computer software program that is a great learning tool for kids - "Learn to Play Chess with Chester and Fritz" . Needless to say, we can't get him off of the computer. He has learned alot. Mom has even been known to sit down and play a little "opposition"

Thanks, Mark and Lisa for the game. He absolutely loves it.