Just when a few blades of green started showing through the brown and we thought spring was on its way...

The first day of spring shows up looking like this!

Oh, and we got a mailbox! Didn't Wade do a stellar job? I think it looks great!

Just ranting

I've realized for quite some time that the English language is a collection of bent and broken rules. Everyone knows "i before e except after c or when sounding like a as in neighbor and weigh." But as I attempt to teach Isaac all the intricacies of the language it has become even more apparent just how horrible our language is.

Why is it that you can say you are going to raise a building or say you are going to raze a building and they mean opposite things?

And why don't "book," "tool" and "floor" rhyme?

And how many different ways do we need to say the letter "A"? There's ay (as in lay), a-consonant-e (as in vale), ai (as in vail), ei (also as in veil), ey (as in grey) and eigh (as in weigh). And although ea is supposed to say "E" as in leak, sometimes it also says "A" like in great, steak and break.

I have a proposition to recreate the English language phonetically. Each vowel makes it's regular short vowel sound when it stands alone in a word, and it's long vowel sound when it's doubled (the words bee and fee would stay the same, but today would be todaa). The "ow" sound could still be ow I suppose. Since we already have an s and a k, we don't really need c, so c should say the ch sound. We don't really need x either, so x can say the th sound, and I'd add one new letter called "Shay" to make the sh sound.

I xeenk xis wuud bee aa graat iideeu and wuud maak lerneeng eengli"shay" muc moor simpul. Noo moor haveeng tuu memooriiz seven diferent speleengs foor xu werd vaan or vaal or raan. Wiil wee or (xat's "are," not "or") at it, wee "shay"uud cuk ol uv xu duuplikit werds liik xooz listed ubuv. Noo moor wereeeeng wexer fulfil has wun "l" oor tuu oor haveeng tuu eksplaan wii "run" has wun "n" wiil "running" has tuu -- it's just run and runeeng now! Ol in faaver saa ii!

A Better Use for Chairs

Since all of our dining room table chairs were being used for this fabulous castle...

...we ate breakfast like this this morning. Sometimes creativity is that important.

The Dark Side Encroaches!

The Sith have taken over one of my lighthouses! I'd sick my little crew of Jedi knights on him, but I strongly suspect it was one of them who brought Darth Maul to such a place of power in our home in the first place. You know you live in a house full of boys when...

Taste of Spring

We hit a balmy 60 degrees today and hit the park! Wade joined us on his lunch break bringing food for a pinic lunch.

Lij enjoys swinging -- but only on the "big boy" swings now, he has to do it just like his brothers do!


Luke and Lijah enjoying the view from the tractor.

Levi climbing, of course.
Although you can't tell, the merry-go-round is actually spinning pretty fast here, thus Isaac's big grin.