Otto

Allen has always loved the name Otto. He's tried to convince all of his kids to name one of the grandbabies, Otto (yes, even the girl babies). In fact, Eliya's nickname is Otto. Imagine how delighted we were when we discovered that the Dr. Seuss book "A Fish Out of Water" starred a fish named Otto. We asked Allen to read it to Sheinah and enjoyed the look of surprise on his face when he read the fish's name.

Is hotdog a Vegetable?

Travis has been talking about shooting a deer for a few weeks now because we have so many in our backyard. With his parents coming to town, he actually got a deer tag. Coincidentally, Travis bought some straw last week to cover our septic area since we hadn't had enough snow to keep it from freezing. Who'd have thought that deer would want to eat the straw! Now, deer baiting is illegal in Minnesota (but legal in Wisconsin, and thus, quite controversial). At one point we had 9 deer in the yard. So, Travis and Allen got out the bow and Travis shot a deer on his first try. They waited overnight, went out on our property, and found the deer just a few yards past the edge of our yard. Allen took care of skinning the deer and all that stuff. We were very open with Sheinah and talked about the whole process with her so she wouldn't be freaked out. Luckily, she hasn't seen Bambi :)



Anyway, Lori took this video this morning while Allen was cutting the deer up into steaks. Here is a transcript for those of you who can't understand Sheinah-ese:



Travis: What is this?

Sheinah: A deer that doesn't walk anymore

Travis: A deer that doesn't walk anymore? Do you like deer?

Sheinah: NO

Travis: How come?

Sheinah: Cuz they walk.

Travis: Cuz they walk? Where do they walk at?

Sheinah: Grass

Travis: In the grass? What are you gonna eat if you are not gonna eat deer?

Sheinah: Vegetables

Travis: Vegetables? What kind of vegetables?

Sheinah: Broccoli...

Travis: Broccoli!

Sheinah: and, uh...hotdogs

Travis: and hotdogs!

Sheinah: and carrots

Travis: Broccoli and hotdogs and carrots. I don't know if hotdogs are vegetables. You don't know, but you're not going to eat deer?

Sheinah: no

Travis: no, because they walk, huh? You want to touch it.

Sheinah: no

Travis: Look it, Opa has some, you want to touch it?

Sheinah: no

Travis: OK

Dance Class

Now that "baby sister" has arrived, we were looking for a way for Melissa and Sheinah to have special time together...enter Mommy and Me dance class. Melissa saw an ad for the class in the local paper and decided to sign up. Melissa and Sheinah go to class for 30 minutes on Saturday mornings. As Sheinah likes to say, "no daddys can come." In addition to Mommy and Me, Sheinah's best buddy from her old daycare, Gabrielle, also goes to the class so it's doubley fun for Sheinah.

This Saturday, her Nama was in town so we all went together to class. We decided to get some pictures and video to capture this momentous ocassion. It should be noted that Melissa managed to leave the camera there (she has a long history of losing cameras, just ask her Aunt Jo-Ann). Luckily, someone turned it in!

The little girl in the green shirt is Sheinah's friend, Gabrielle. You'll see that they are the only two little girls who are not wearing fancy dance clothes. Maybe Auntie Shannon can make Sheinah a little dance skirt for Christmas? HINT, HINT, HINT :)

In this week's class, the girls learned first position. In the video below, you'll see Gabrielle and Sheinah practicing first position and doing a Plié and then doing a dance at the end. The teacher uses some neat terms to help the girls learn the positions. To get them into first position, she talks about zipping and unzipping the feet. To do the Plié, the girls "open a window." Sheinah really doesn't like first position at all (she won't unzip her feet in the video). I guess we'll be doing tap dance class instead of ballet in the future! Enjoy the video!

Abi or Amaris

Now that Amaris is a little bit bigger, she is starting to look a bit like other family members. Melissa thinks that in this picture she looks just like her cousin Abigail (Abi is the baby on the right).

Twins?

We've been thinking that Amaris looks a lot like Sheinah so we decided to duplicate a picture we had taken of Sheinah when she was six weeks old. Can you tell which picture is Sheinah and which one is Amaris?

Shannon, the master seamstress

Shannon's gift to baby Amaris was the gift of sewing. We sent Shannon some fabric and she made a nursing shawl and new cover for the glider in Amaris' room. The result was quite amazing. She even found matching buttons for both fabrics! Check out the glider (to the left). To see the nursing shawl, check out the Marshall Kids' blog: http://marskidsinterest.blogspot.com/

She also made Sheinah a really neat jacket and matching doll for her birthday. Sheinah has been wearing it every day since we opened the package.

What's Missing?

Check out this photo and see if you can tell what's missing. Hint...it used to be attached to Amaris and went missing today.