One of my goals for my kids was to teach Janessa to ride her bike (without training wheels) this year...well 3 days ago, Micah taught himself to ride without training wheels he is very proud of himself and is giving me frequent heartattacks. Camocauzi doesn't even begin to describe Micah's bike riding, he just learned, he's four years old, and he barely ever uses the brakes, and already he goes to the top of our driveway and just flies down but he never complains even when he crashes multiple times in one sitting.

micah's message

micah here, i can’t write much cause i gotta go race around the house and try to beat my fastest time (17 seconds), then i have to race my bike down the neighbor’s hill (Jimmy & Pam’s cause it’s steeper than ours), then i need to jump off the porch or the furniture (depending on if my mom remembers that i’m not allowed to). so some of the things i’ve been doing since you last heard from me, riding my bike, playing with my new neighbors john and michael (they have cool toys), climbing on daddy (everytime i see him i have to climb on him or tackle him, or wrestle him) and sometimes i get lucky and he throws me on the bed or tickles me), finding bugs with janessa, playing with my cars, asking what we are going to do next that is fun, and then after that what are we doing to do fun (i love to have fun) but lately i’ve been getting in trouble for always asking what we are going to do fun next cause my parents say i’m not being grateful for the fun things i am currently doing. oh yeah and i’m not three any more i am four now and next year i’ll be five. but i don’t get to go to school yet cause i won’t be five until after school has started…but i already get to ride a bus to Awana. i am in awana cubbies and we play games and learn verses and color and hear bible stories. i’m getting better at coloring (i don’t scribble everything blue) like my friend Justin. he colors in the lines. but i am almost the fastest when we have races. there is only one boy who is faster than me and that is the grey shirt guy. awana is almost done this year and next year i get to be in sparkies with janessa and alysha will be in cubbies. I have starred in 3 plays so far and 2 out of 3 I totally fell apart on stage because the first one, someone was supposed to pass me the bread and they skipped me and I just huffed my mouth and crossed my arms and pouted and cried the whole rest of the performance. the injustice of such a thing happening to me was too much for me…the second play was at Christmas and I had practiced and knew all the songs and verses by heart and I was so excited to redeem myself after my previous catastrophe as an actor. but no body informed me that we had to wear these choir shawl thingys. I mean, can you believe, they wanted me, a boy, to wear a robe, shawl thing!!! I was horrified at the mere thought of it…so I pouted through the entire performance once again. but this time, Easter Sunday, I finally made my big debut without a single frown. you see I got to be a soldier in this play and not only that but I was a soldier with three of my good friends and i got to carry a sword around...it was great! well i better get to runnin’ track season is in full swing and i need to practice so i can race everyone and win. did i mention i love to race…losing i’m not so good at but winning i can handle.

from Janessa

(if you got our mass emailing this will be a repeat)

Hi this is Janessa Colburn, I am six now and I go to kindergarten. I love my teacher Miss Wroe. She teaches me all kinds of new and fun projects and we get to do crafts and color a lot which I love, and we are doing math now and learning Spanish and I love those too. There is only one other girl in my class and seven boys. But we all have lots of fun learning to read, write, and doing math. I also love Awana and Sunday School! I love to sing and we even learned a jewish dance for the Easter play I LOVE catching bugs and worms, and snakes, and lizards. And when I’m not catching them I am arranging the containers for when I do catch one. I have a hard time when they die though. I get pretty attached to them. This week Alysha found a frog and she “gave” it to me (well actually I begged and pleaded and manipulated her until she consented to calling it mine) but when I was trying to “fix up” it’s cage I thought I’d give it a warm water bath and I accidentally cooked it in the warm water. That was pretty traumatic for me since I didn’t know that it wouldn’t like my warm water and I didn’t know that I would kill it. I cried for a good hour over that precious little frog. But today Alysha found my snake that my friend Annika had caught and given to me, but it had gotten out of it’s cage somehow. So I’m happy again cause at least I have one critter. I also LOVE to do crafts. I’m not sure how catching bugs and critters has anything to do with crafts but I love them both. Every day I ask my mom what kind of craft I can do. she-she (Alysha) is into crafts too but she’s still to little to use my box of scrapbooking stuff cause she will ruin everything, just everything! I love to play with Micah and Alysha as long as they play what I want to play and how I want to play it. Sometimes I do what my parents are trying to teach me to do and I try to be kind and use kind words with them, but it’s soooo hard. I also love hearing “REAL” stories that my dad tells us at bedtime. Instead of reading fiction books to us at bedtime he has started telling us stories about him and his brother and his parents growing up. And even some stories from college, and stories that he knows about mommy too…we all love it Especially the story about Uncle Mark getting fouled at the end of an important basketball game and shooting two free throws to win the game. We even have motions to that one. Alysha is the puppet that daddy moves as he is telling the story and it is sooooo funny. Pretty much everything we do with daddy is funny, unless we need discipline L. Well, I have to go now because there are a lot of bugs outside right now that I need to find and catch to feed to my snake (gardener snake).

Potty Training

I despise potty training more than I can express with words. Alysha "decided" that she was ready but half of her potty training experience has been me cleaning up the brown excrement that she drops on the floor out of her pull-up as she is attempting to get on the toilet to put it in there, wiping it on and off the toilet as she slides her rear across it to get on and across it to get off. And then she attempts to "clean it up" herself. UGH!!! Disgusting! Oh and did I mention that I also despise the smell of urine? Janessa and Micah were easy, to potty train...I mean one day of accidents tops...but this is just too much! I need a raise!

Janessa: my favorite thing about going to Grandma & Grandpa's house is their worms!!! They have huge worms! Grandpa caught one for me that was 16" long! And mama and I let them go in our raspberry patch cause we don't have any worms in our dirt and we need some.

Say Cheese

yes you do have to have more pictures and you have to like it. now say cheese.

kids: (unenthusiastically) cheeeeeeeeeeese

Do we HAVE to have our pictures taken?

a la naturale. mom do we have to take more pictures?

morning hair

morning hair...it was a wild night for she-she.

get with the times

so after reading some friends from multmonah's blog's I decided I need to get with the times and get one myself. Especially after laughing so hard I cried when I read Mike and Steve's blogs...and Beth agreed with me that I needed to get with the times...I didn't want to be left out....so here goes nothin