Rebecca counts beats

After drilling extensively on the long three-beat note at the end of All Creatures of our God and King, our six-year-old played her violin solo for her grandparents. The final note was extra long, and I congratulated her on remembering the 3 beats. Apparently she was working so hard to get that long note right that she told me, "I actually counted four!"

On progress

Why was I so excited for her to learn to walk? Now she can pull things off of counters!

Mornings

Picture me working this morning--toddler sitting on my lap with me combing her hair (the only way to keep her quiet) while I scroll through snippets of Viking epics looking for scenes with axe fighting so I can write a martial arts essay

Why is she wetting the bed more?

"Because the nights are getting longer!"

Conference sunday

This is how we celebrated conference today:
1) turned on conference on our TV
2) mopped up the water leak downstairs bathroom
3) saw even more water dripping from the ceiling
4) tore out the plastic shower shell to find the leak
5) propped a plastic cutting board under the leaking shower handle to direct the water into the tub instead of the wall
6) separated our children who were squabbling about fort building
7) wrestled with our son who was throwing a tantrum
8) finally calmed everybody down in time to hear the prophet's last sentence, the closing hymn, and the prayer.
Boy, do I feel more holy!

As I reported to the Hulterstrom Highlights

We spent about every September Saturday swimming at the lake. Lucky we had a few extra warm days!

In September, Katherine started middle school, Alex started 4th grade, and Rebecca started 1st grade. They are all at different schools, but luckily each school is less than a mile from our house. Katherine is in a small school program that's connected to a bigger school, so she will have a small-school environment and excellent education with lots of field trips (they've already done 3) but also be able to do regular middle school programs like badminton and orchestra. Alex and Rebecca are playing soccer.

Baby Genevieve is working on walking, complete with inventing her own walkers.

We just started taking professional music lessons at a nearby music studio. This is quite an endeavor, as I take all four children. Everybody has a lesson, and Katherine and I take turns with the baby (who is not formally taking lessons, but no doubt will absorb all she hears and become a musical genius).

I just got my advance copy of Candy Experiments 2, and it's beautiful! Katherine is disappointed that I didn't give her credit for inventing one of the best experiments--how to turn a red and white gummy worm completely blue.