First Barrette

Alyssa has enough hair to wear a barrette - it is a tiny one but a barrette none the less!!!

Math Whiz

Bryson loves math and does so well at understanding numbers. There are many addition equations that he can do without even using his fingers, it is just in his head. He also is beginning to understand bigger numbers and has figured that a trillion is more than a billion which is more than a million. We were practicing spelling when he said he wanted to surprise me with something so I couldn't look. A few minutes later he came over with this - he has counted by 50s before but not very high, only to about 200. I couldn't believe he did this all on his own with no help!!!

Clue

Kevin and I just watched the old movie "Clue" and thought it was funny when a few days later they called and asked him to help out with the combined youth mutual activity. They were going to play clue - the background was a laptop was stolen from a stake dance, Kevin's character was suppose to be this teenage boy who is way into dances. He did great with his costume, tuxedo shoes, spkiy hair, and all. He looked gorgeous!!!

Turkey Run

For Family Night on Monday, we picked Kevin up early from work and drove to the State Park, Turkey Run. Kevin had gone in the fall with the youth and had been wanting to take our family, it was the perfect day. It has a beautiful suspension bridge and then lots of fun hikes. The kids did better than we even hoped they would. Bryson was the leader and loved running ahead and checking everything out for us. Kaitlyn decided she was the break leader - she said, "I will decide when we should take a break" and she did:) Alyssa did great kicking Kevin lots with excitement and even tried to help him climb the ladders as we were coming out of a neat cave like place (you can see her big smile in the picture). Kevin also would tickle her anytime she raised her arms, she now randomly will just raise her hand high in the air, telling us to come tickle her! We had a great time and the kids are already asking when we get to go again and try another trail!

Siblings

We have plenty of sibling fights but it is great that they always have a friend to play with. Yesterday Bryson and Kaitlyn headed outside and played for the next 2 hours (no exaggeration). I loved watching them giggling together. They dug for treasure in the sand box, pushed each other on the swings,



chased birds, ran around the garden numerous of times, and just enjoyed being outside



Alyssa had a great time playing in the house (we were secretive about the kids being outside because Alyssa loves being outside but everything was still so wet and muddy and I wasn't in the mood to deal with her covered in mud). One of her favorite things to do is play with the recycling basket - she loves to go through the papers one at a time and then to, of course, throw them all over. The funny thing with this photo is that she is so good about not putting things in her mouth but she loves to do things to make others laugh and you can tell from her face that this is why she put the paper in her mouth.

She also loves playing in "her cupboard", the one that isn't off limits. She once again loves to spread out the dishes everywhere!


She is also a smart one, as soon as I took her photo with the dishes she dashed off and it took me a minute to figure out why she change activities so fast but she went right to the camera case and showed it to me - she knew what we were doing!


I took advantage of the opportunity that all three were playing nice and tried a new recipe: Curried Pumpkin/Apple Soup