Quickie

Quick fam update from Tiff emailed Mar 9, 2008... I'll work on her to put in some pics - maybe even some vids for you all to enjoy :)

Hi everyone!
We're doing great up here in Oregon. The flowers are blooming, we have blue birds, blue jays, humming birds and crows in
yard all the time, everyone's grass is way green ('course it's always green here), and the sun is shining. Now if we could
just get healthy, life would be almost perfect. I stayed home from church for the second week in a row today. This week
it was for Ellie and Stew. They have bad coughs and runny noses. They've been a little fussy, but not too bad.

Dave and I are extremely sleep deprived. Ellie gets up a couple times a night now, since she's been sick, and Stew thinks he
has two or three bedrooms. He starts out in his, then moves to Chris', then on to ours. We moved his bed into Chris' room
a couple days ago to eliminate one of his rooms, but I think he's going to be coming in our room for a while.

We just got a new tv, too! We got a 47 inch LCD tv yesterday, and we're planning to get a blu-ray soon. Dave REALLY didn't
want to yet, but I twisted his arm :).

Braden and Chris have one more basketball game, then the season is over. I guess I missed the baseball deadline, darn it.
They've both really loved basketball. Most of the time Braden can hit almost every shot, but it's been a couple of weeks since
he and dave played, so Braden has forgotten a bunch of the pointers Dave has given him. He only made 2 or 3 shots
yesterday. two weeks ago, the refs asked him to pass the ball instead of shooting, becuase he made about 15 or more baskets
and none of the other kids were getting a chance to shoot. They also call travling on him, but none of the other kids. Funny!
Chris made a couple great shots in his game, too. He's just about the shortest kid on his team, but he makes up for it with all
his determination.

We had parent-teacher conferences this week. Chris is doing great. He loves school, loves his teacher, gets along great with
the other kids, and is picking up reading really well. Braden is doing good, too, but is having a hard time with reading. He has
such a hard time sitting still, and his teacher thinks he just hasn't found his genre yet. He has finally started letting me read to
him, though. Just a couple weeks ago, he started being able to sit and listen to books without pictures! We've been reading
chapter books together, and hopefully soon things will click. He's doing great in math and science, and he has a bunch of
friends, but he does alot of negative self-talk. It's been hard to know what to do for him sometimes, but he sure is a good kid
with a heart of gold.

That's about it for us. We hope you all are doing good. We miss you all!

Love,
Tiff