Jamie will be 33 in exactly 3 months. He was glad that Adrian was born on the 19th, too. Makes it easier for him to remember the baby’s birthday.

Four kids officially makes a large family. Around here three is considered big, but we live in an area where people have one or two if any. But now that I have four kids I’ve noticed a few things.

1.) People are more likely to offer to come to us than to have us come to them. For example, Jamie and I are on the activities committee at church. The leader asked if it would be okay with us to have the last meeting at our house rather than at hers so we wouldn’t have to bring over our bunch of kids.

2.) Shopping is easier done on-line than in person. The cost of shipping is nothing compared to the time and frustration of dealing with the kids while shopping. This includes shopping for clothes for the kids.

3.) I find myself actually counting the kids now. I used to be able to just look at them and see all three. Now I actually count them off quickly in my head - 1, 2, 3, 4. I’ve talked to several other moms of 4 and they have said the same thing so I don’t think it’s just a new baby thing (especially since he’s almost always in someone’s arms anyway).

4.) I get told very often that I have my hands full. Like at least once every time we are in public with them.

5.) I really love being a mom of four. It is just perfect for me.

I’ve memorized the names of the books of the Old Testament, New Testament, and Book of Mormon in order thanks to the Primary songs. I also know the books of the Pearl of Great Price. It makes it a lot easier to look stuff up using scriptures that don’t have the index tabs.

As part of school we go through a Primary song a couple times each day. Currently we are working on the Books of the New Testament song. For the last 12 or so weeks we did the Books of the Old Testament song. Last year we did the Articles of Faith songs so I memorized those as well.

For our family club (Keepers at Home/Contenders for the Faith) the kids can earn pins for their banners for memorizing the names of the books of the OT and NT. Ani earned her books of the OT badge last Wednesday.

Adrian had his two month pediatrician appointment yesterday. He’s 14 pounds 6 ounces and 23 1/2″ long! He’s my big baby boy.

This morning Ani asked me if Pegasuses (Pegasi?) were in Greek Mythology. I told her I didn’t know where they were from. Apparently she read about them in a Saddle Club book she is currently reading.

I told her to look in the Greek Myths book we have for later in Core 1. She said no, that would be like school. She’d rather go to the library and ask the librarian for help looking it up. Because of course that’s nothing like school.

So then I told her to look in the P Compton’s Encyclopedia. She did and sure enough there is a Greek myth of Bellophron and the Pegasus. Then she decided to get the Greek Myths book and look it up. Amusingly the picture on the cover is Bellophron riding the Pegasus. She read the myth and then told me there was more in the Encyclopedia about it. She spent a little while reading the myths to Cameron.

And then something amazing happened. Fritz brought the Dr. Seuss ABC book over and was pretending to read it to Adrian. Cameron came over and volunteered to read it! He only a little bit, but Cameron actually voluntarily read something!

Though we’re not unschoolers, I really love the unschooling moments. They are always great.

My friend over at Homeschool Madness posted about these cute Tot Books the other day. I’ve been really resisting lapbooks despite their popularity on the JustMommies Homeschooling Forum. Now thanks to one simple post I’m being sucked into the dark side and my oldest is very enthusiastically going with me.

My first time lapbooking was a Chicka Chicka Boom Boom Tot Book for Fritz. I think it turned out really cute and Fritz loved it.

Here he is meeting the book for the first time.

Here he is checking out all the parts.

Here he is playing with the alphabet upper and lower case match cards.

Here he is folding it back up.

And here he is showing it to his Daddy.

We have a Canon PowerShot A80 that we absolutely love. We’ve had it quite some time, over 3 1/2 years now. We’ve taken well over 7000 pictures with it so far.

I take at least one picture of each of our kids every day. Last night I went to get the camera to take the pictures of the day and discovered it wasn’t working. It had an E18 error.

A google search revealed that it was a problem with how the lens thingy goes in and out. I found a thread on C|Net that included various ways to fix it.

So after several did not work, I tried sticking a piece of paper in the side that was coming out wrong and then I manually pushed the lens thingy back in. Something worked and when I turned the camera back on it was working just like it always has.

It seems that error can be caused by many things including sand or dirt, water, or being dropped. Considering Fritz had gotten into the cabinet where we keep it and was playing with it, it really could be any number of things that caused the error. I guess now we have to move the camera to an even higher spot.

The kids planted some sunflower seeds around the end of April. One sunflower died. Another two are about 4′ tall. But then there’s the fourth one. It has grown twice as fast as the others and is the only one with a flower on top. To put these pictures into perspective, Ani and Cameron are both right about 4′ tall, Fritz is 33″ tall, and the baby is just being held up in mid-air at some random height.