updates

excerpts from a letter i just wrote to our missionary Kurtis...

Katelyn- is a reading machine.  She’s out of control- like, reading chapter books, staying up late in bed reading, I can’t find her and I’m searching for her everywhere and I finally see her in a corner somewhere or laying on the floor or a couch or walking slowly out of the bathroom totally glued to the page of a book!  I don’t know how many times in the last 2 weeks I’ve had to say “Katelyn, put down the book for a minute.”  It’s SO cute and I just love that she’s finally figured it out, that she can read whatever she wants!  She can learn things and find funny things and meet new characters… okay so maybe you don’t love reading Kurtis??  I think you don’t particularly love it.  But I do, and she is so totally me!  I’m so happy that she has found something to do that she loves.  And now Whitney wants to learn, so she’s more willing to practice letter sounds. 

Which brings us to Whitney- she’s little miss extreme!  Either hilariously happy or terribly, loudly, violently angry!  She’s loving riding her scooter and her bike with training wheels, and she and Kate are taking a sports class this summer- they practice a different sport every week.  So last week was volleyball, and she spent the rest of the day bumping a balloon around that they got in class, with her arms together like they taught her, it was so cute.  I think she’s going to be a good little athlete, in some sport!  Whitney is so hilarious with Owen, she has this little voice she uses just for him, and he LOVES it.  He’ll be sitting in his little chair and if he can see her he’ll stare at her and start making little noises until she looks at him and starts talking to him and he just lights up with a huge smile and squealling happy noises and kicks his legs, he loves her.  Even though she bugs him constantly!  Anyway, I also have a funny story about the girls that I put on my blog, here it is:

The girls just burst in the door talking at the same time asking if they could "go on a jeep ride with Aaron" (little kid jeep).  I said yes if they got some shoes on, they leaned out to tell him and he said something that made them both erupt into peals of giggles, then they ran upstairs talking and laughing excitedly about the prospects of going on a jeep ride with a boy... as I cracked up imagining this exact scene 10 years from now!  hilarious!  apparently girls of all ages get excited about a jeep ride with a boy.  Let's just hope in 10 years it's still with a cute boy that I trust who's their good friend, and that they will still accept my conditions so readily. :)

So this happened a few days ago.  Then tonight, we were coming to the table for dinner and Whitney peeked out the front door for a minute, then ran back to the table saying “I just saw Aaron riding his bike and I waved and said hi to him and he said hi back and SMILED at me!” She was covering her mouth with her hands and laughing and wiggling with excitement as she said this, and Eric and I were just dying laughing, Eric’s like “how old are you???” It’s so funny that a girl that young can have that kind of reaction to a boy!  We’d better watch out!  He is such a nice kid though, I can see why she likes him. At least I know she has good taste. J

And Owen- I guess his update is kind of with Whitney’s.  But also, he is learning to roll over, and he can stand balancing on Eric’s hand- do you remember Eric doing that with Katelyn? 

As for me- I’m just trying to keep the girls entertained this summer- we had an art camp at home last week, and now we’re doing “history camp” using some of Elizabeth’s old American Girls books.  They have cool info about how people used to live, and little activities you can do, it is fun. 

Eric’s doing good, work has slowed down just a tiny bit, he actually went in at 7 all last week, instead of 6am like he has been for the last year!  It was so nice!  We’ll see how long it lasts.  And he actually got to go play in a golf tournament for work last Friday up in Heber City, that was a nice perk, first time that’s ever happened.  And for scouts last week (he’s the Webelos leader) he built this sweet rocket launcher out of PVC pipe, you use a bike pump to build up pressure and it shoots water-filled soda bottles like 30 feet in the air!  Of course the boys loved it, but so did our girls and all the neighbor kids, and so did Eric!  It was hilarious how excited he was to work on building it after work for a couple of days beforehand.  The girls were amazed that he built a “machine” that did something so cool.  J 

  

P.S. Katelyn just came down saying she’s not tired and I told her to stop thinking about things so she can sleep and she said “I can’t turn off my brain, it’s electric!”  Okay…. Silly girl. J