Why No Pictures?

To the long distance Grandma and Grandpa, and aunties (and Uncles, to some degree :-) ), who like to see pictures as frequently as possible... for some reason our computer isn't wanting to talk to the camera.  :-(  I don't know what the problem is, but hopefully, we can get it resolved soon. 

Pictures or no pictures, we are well here.  The weather has been freezing the last few days, but I have a cozy house and a husband to fire up our woodstove, and my girl is getting big enough to offer to put more wood on the fire and even volunteered to go out and get another load of firewood.  And get it she did, though her pile was comprised of small, almost kindling size stuff.  Sweet girl.

Yesterday, we had two little boys with unhappy tummies and GI tracks.  The big boy vomited three times, and kindly did all of those before Daddy left for work in the morning.  What a HUGE blessing washers, driers, and tubs with running hot water are!!!  Can you imagine being a pioneer in the dead of winter with sick kids???!!!!

Though, Clara hasn't yet mastered all the letters and sounds of the alphabet, she is dong fairly well with that, and yesterday I decided to try her on sounding out REAL words: mat, rat, sat, etc.  At times, we were both frustrated, and at others we were both very pleased with her successes!  At her request, we did even more then I had been planning to!  And one of the very cute happening was that Hilkiah seemed rather tickled that Clara was "learning to read!"

The other day Clara popped out with the observation that "Artichoke starts with an 'R'".  She wasn't looking at the word, but just how it sounds.  I started explaining about the sound "R" makes and the sound "ar" makes.  But Hil's reaction to big sis's observation was just too sweet!!!  In a impressed, sincere, almost "big person" way he says "Good job, Yahyah!"  (Yahyah is his name for her)  The way he said it was just incredibly adorable.  The tone of voice was like "Wow!  That's really impressive that you figured that out!!!" 

Well, that'll be it for now.  I'll try to be back soon with more from 'round here!

More Hilkiah-isms

A couple days ago, said to some friends who were over, and talking about his little brother:

"Don't look at him.  He's shy."

Tonight:

"My tummy has a headache inside."

At supper:

"Can I have some more cow."



And a bonus precious moment.

You break up fight after fight and tell your kidos over and over that they need to share with each other and need to include little brother, etc.  And then you see a precious moment when they are doing just that. 

We recently got a hand-me-down toy for racing two matchbox cars.  Last night Clara and Hil and two cars all set up to race down the little spiral tracks.  All that had to be done was push the little lever that gets them started.  And there they were, both urging Ittai to push the lever.  "Come on bubba.  You do it!  You do it!"  He just stood there looking at them as they urged.  So I helped him do their bidding. 

Thank You, Lord, for these dear moments!

We had forgotten to give an ice chest back to some friends.  Clara had informed me as we came chapel one day that she would remind me to give it to them.  As we were pulling away later that day, we realized that we had forgotten AGAIN!  Little Miss Organizer said something along these lines, with some distress in her voice  "Mom. We're both going to be so sorry for each other."  And then a bit later, "I guess we're not very good at this."

So sweet.