John can read...sort of.

I have been doing story time with John in front of the fireplace lately. It's cold for around here, but not really that cold (40's at night), but the fire is nice. John really likes to Make Fire! Also, by reading in front of the fireplace, John will sit still longer than in his room, where distractions abound.

We read "My Car" by Byron Barton a lot. It's John's current favorite book. Last night, I was a bit tired, and I opened the book and didn't immediately start reading. John took it as a cue that he should read the book, and he did. He needed a little help with "windshield wipers" and a few lines at the end of the book, but he read along, pointing at each word as he said it. I get a real kick out of hearing him say "I obey the laws" and "pedestrians." John read the book to me again tonight.

I know he's not really reading at this point; he has the book memorized. But he can spell his name, first and last, his sister's name, and he knows the entire alphabet. It's only a matter of time before he is really reading now. And Liz and I didn't sit down a drill him, either. Virginia taught him his letters and numbers (he can count to 15, maybe 20), and he taught himself the rest by just paying attention.

Pretty cool.

It's been raining in SoCal...Let's go sledding!

We've had a week or so of rain here in Southern California. It's been a bit of a bummer being stuck in the house (we're spoiled...we usually go outside all year), and I've been driving my car to work instead of riding my motorcycle. But rain here means snow in the mountains. And since yesterday was a good, hard rain and today is sunny, we went sledding! Good sledding in the mountains is about a 90 minute drive from our house, so we threw a couple of sleds in the trunk, made some hot chocolate and headed north into the mountains.

This was the kids first sledding trip, and they did great. Virginia is a speed demon! Once she learned how to ride her bike, she was seeing how fast she could go, and she only rides her bike fast and really fast. On the sled, she went as fast as she could, and she rode down the hill by herself. John liked sliding down the hill with me, but I think he enjoyed eating the snow as much as sledding on it. Hey, it just snowed last night, so the snow was fresh. No worries about him eating it. I took a few pictures between the snowballs and sled runs. Enjoy.

Throwing snowballs at Daddy.



Check out the snow spray.


A quick snack.

I tried uploading my first video, Virginia sledding. The file is about 7 MB.