About her birthday

Charlotte Elise arrived the first week of December, a full week after her due date. She weighed 6 lbs 15 oz and was 20 inches long, making her my longest and smallest baby yet. She's also the only one who came on her own time and I think that's infinitely preferable to being induced.This one is a funny angle but we were in my giant queen sized bed where all three of us slept for many hours together. This is a horrible picture but it proves that he as there.Going home. She was so long that she didn't fit in the premie outfit I bought for the occasion. My other two fit in theirs for two weeks.

Sadie and Madoc love her to pieces. Sadie tells me that Charlotte is sooo cute about twenty times a day and Madoc always wants to hold her at the most inconvenient times.

Where did you learn that!?

This is another Rocket Scientist catch-up post

Cute girl has been learning to read over the past year. Her learning accelerated when she started kindergarten last fall. We'd been having her read some of the simpler parts out of her story books and she would regularly read out of her phonics workbook but larger words and sentences were beyond her... or so we thought.

We have a family home evening book that we use for when it is the kids' turn to do the lesson. They pick an object out of the accompanying bag and then we help them give the lesson that goes with that object. Some of the lessons can be on the longish side and we are regularly running up against bedtime so there is often some paraphrasing going on between the printed lesson and the parent whispering into the child's ear.

About a month ago, it was my turn to help cute girl give a lesson about the Brother of Jared and the 16 stones. I whispered the first sentence to her and she repeated it. I started paraphrasing the second and third sentences and she looked up at me and said, "That's not what it says." So I said, "Well why don't you read it, then." And she did. The whole rest of the lesson. I kept looking up at the wife in amazement as she read words like 'righteousness,' 'Promised Land, and 'frightened.' Apparently, the wife was just as surprised as I was. She stumbled a few times and had to be prompted but read the whole thing mostly by herself.

At the end, when the wife and I both asked her where she learned to read all those words, she replied, "Well, I am in kindergarten."

Christmas Mail

This is another Rocket Scientist catch-up post

Cute Girl and Handsome Face love getting mail. Christmas is a good time of year for that as they get several Christmas cards. Aunt Abby's cards are a favorite since they are usually musical.

The kids enjoyed rockin' around the Christmas Tree to this card.

Aunt Becky was so excited to have the kids for Christmas this year that she couldn't wait until the 25th to start giving them presents.

Inside were all the fixin's to make Christmas sugar cookies. I think it was obvious what Handsome Face's favorite part was.

There were also cookie cutters, hot chocolate, window stickers, and wrapped in cream cheese boxes was an outfit for the new baby. Rather convenient timing as she was born early the next morning.

Much thanks to everybody for cheering up the season.

"Deck the Halls..."

This is another Rocket Scientist catch-up post

The day after Thanksgiving.

We can officially start decorating for Christmas.
Yeah. I'm excited too.
Or in the throes of a pancreas rattling cough.
That's ok, the kids are still happy to put up ornaments.
Or wear them.
Last year most of the ornaments ended up on the same two branches at the bottom of the tree.
They got spread out a little better this year.
Grandma came out to give us a hand.
I don't think I stopped coughing long enough to get off the couch.
Decorating is thirsty work.
Cute Girl figures out what stockings are for.
And they're both really happy about it.

Now we have somewhere to put all my presents.

Handsome Face

In the middle of November the young women had an activity to learn how to make pie crust. The Rocket Scientist was going to teach them to make the crust but there wasn't going to be enough time to bake the pie too so we baked a pumpkin pie the day before. Handsome Face was really excited about the pie. He helped mommy mix up the filling and stood guard over it while it baked.

This is a pretty standard pose around here. I don't think we've had an alien infestation yet but you can rest assured that if we do, Handsome Face will take care of it with his astro-blaster in short order.

Thanksgiving

This is the Rocket Scientist cleaning off the camera and catching up the blog while the wife rests.

We hung around at home and had a pretty low-key Thanksgiving. It was so low-key that one of the highlights was getting a crazy good deal on the turkey (29 cents a pound!) My brother-in-law brought his girlfriend down from Utah for the occasion. We made a bunch of gyoza on the Wednesday night before that was super good. We fried up one batch and still wanted more so we fried a second batch out of the extras we'd stuck in the freezer. That still leaves us with enough to have for dinner tonight.

I have an unfortunate tradition of injuring myself during Thanksgiving; it is usually incurred playing football but last year it was a freak accident where a flake of metal from my belt buckle got shoved through my thumbnail. This generally leaves me incapacitated and incapable of providing any real assistance cooking, cleaning, or taking care of children. Pretty much the only thing I can do in my disabled state is play video games and watch football; it's an excruciating ordeal but I usually recover despite the dirty looks the wife gives me. This year, as the wife was 8 3/4 months pregnant, and we were all alone hosting and cooking the dinner, I was forbidden to hurt myself and so declined the traditional turkey bowl. I stayed healthy. but failed in the job of taking pictures because this is all we got of the meal.

I did still manage to get some pictures of the pies.

Including my apple pie in which, as per tradition, I carved an un-boring steam vent.

I didn't bother taking a picture of the wife doing dishes as that would just be boring. Much more interesting is what the rest of us were doing:

Talking on the phone...

...and watching funny youTube videos.

She's Here!

And getting more love than she can handle.