Love to all from THE TESKE5!
Biggest news this year? Baby Gabriella Grace. Now ten months old, Gabriella is very mobile, pulls herself up on about anything she can reach, is working on her 6th or 7th tooth and adores her brothers. She uses a couple of verbal words, one that sounds like "Dah! Dah! Dah! Dah!" and functions like aloha or meow, sometimes indicating Daddy, in another moment she's apparently using it to indicate "bye bye" (accompanied by the recently acquired bye bye pageant wave). Her other word-ish verbalization is "Dhiss!" (aka. this), which is accompanied by the deliberate and often emphatic finger point. Some baby signs are starting to show up on a regular basis, including the aforementioned FINGER POINT, hand wave, the (traditional?) hand-squeeze for MILK, and sometimes MORE and (quite often) ALL DONE. All Done is interesting in that she uses it to indicate that she's done playing, done sitting in her car seat, done being on the floor, or that she's all done eating (often accompanied by her quick little hand batting away a spoonful of whatever food she's decided that she's done with). Gabriella is delightful: she's almost always in a good mood, loves people, will let other people hold her, gives great hugs that often include her sweet little hand patting us on the shoulder, sleeps well. We sure love our little punkin'!
Click! -> First pictures of the kids and family with Gabriella.
Josiah enjoys preschool twice a week. It's been fun seeing the difference a year makes in terms of confidence and he still enjoys the creativity, outdoor play, stories and his teachers.
Ben is in 2nd grade now and his reading skills have really blossomed this fall. We really enjoy it when he reads a book to Josiah or sits down to share stories with Gabriella. He's also in his 3rd year of Upward Basketball and off to great start this season. Drawing continues to be his passion, and his style and subject matter are broad and varied, though cars make very regular appearances in the stories he tells through his pencil drawings and comic-panel style illustrations.
Lisa joined a fitness program and her favorite part is the kick-boxing workouts on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. (yikes!) She continues to do an awesome job encouraging the boys' creativity, and on Tuesday she "home schools" Josiah. The "home school" mornings may involve a craft (one of many that Josiah seems to come up with each week), some educational TV and some work on letters or numbers. She's also teaching two days this year to accommodate the additional classes at her school.
Kevin is still plugging along on staff at the ISU research center where he works in IT support. He serves on the Tech Team at church as a sound tech and enjoys those opportunities. This Christmas season his skills were stretched and honed during our church's original musical production.
This fall we had some work done on our basement that should keep the water at bay come wet spring or rainy summers. It has left the basement in some disarray and us with a handful of finishing projects to complete so that we can regain full use of the basement space.
Click! -> Christmas Photo Session 1
Click! -> Christmas Photo Session 2
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