What's Going On There, Anyway?

Wow! That was a long April Fool's joke! Well, moving on...

Here's a little update on the folks around here:

Ella

Ella has decided to start picking out her own outfits so we sometimes leave the house looking like this:

I think she will work in fashion when she grows up...if she ever leaves my side. I asked her if she wants to go to preschool next year and explained she would go somewhere else and have lots of fun learning the alphabet and she told me no way and sung the ABC song to prove she didn't need any additional help in that area. Lately the only place she will independently go by herself, without bribes or lots of persuasion, is the babysitting at the Fred Meyer store. I really can't explain that one.

The other day she came up to me and asked me how baby birds fly. I told her the mommy birds teach them and they practice until they can fly. She said , "No Mom. They just wing it."

Ryan

Ryan recently had the puberty class at school, which seems to me to be some kind of huge milestone without any good way to celebrate. Wynn somehow convinced me that it would be a good idea for me to attend the parent preview for Ryan and he would go for the girls. It made some kind of logical sense when he was talking, since I already know all there is to know about girls, but I've never been a boy. Anyway, I thought I'd experienced all the embarrassment of puberty until I had to sit in a room surrounded by men I don't know and watch a movie with intimate pictures of developing male body parts, if you know what I mean. Sheesh! And now that I think about it, I don't really trust Wynn to keep up his end of the bargain. He has four years to come up with a good excuse to avoid the girl movie.

Here's a picture of Ryan dancing in a mosaic ensemble of dance explaining the different elements of creative writing. You have to love an arts school.




Maddy

Maddy celebrated her birthday during Spring Break this year. She had pancakes for breakfast and went to Red Robin for dinner, mostly so she could get sung to and get a birthday sundae. She still had room when we got home for ice cream cake though. Her special activity for the day was to go shopping with Mom. We went to Target and tried on piles of trashy clothes that Maddy picked out. No, we don't have the same opinion about what is appropriate for a 7 year old (we read the section on dress standards in the For the Strength of Youth pamphlet a lot in our family nights). I let her pick out her favorite least trashy dress to buy and we both left pretty satisfied.


Doesn't that look good? I wish I had some right now.

Carter

I don't have much to say about Carter these days. He turned 9 in February and I've always thought the odd years were easier years with my kids. So far that's holding true for 9 and I hope it keeps up. Carter is a sweet kid.


Last Friday we went on a date to get a haircut and look at Legos. We had fun together and it was nice to be with just Carter. He usually prefers to spend his date nights with his dad, so it's rare that we go out together, just us two. Usually it's more like this: