Hi! Elizabeth here! Yesterday Wil and I had swim team time trials.Yes we are on swim team. Our first swim meet is tomorrow.On swim team we learn to swim and dive too.

When I grow up I want to be a famous ballerina the with the New York City Ballet. And after that I want to be a ballet teacher. I want to because I like ballet and stretching, jumping, the costumes, and making up dances. And I want to share the joy of ballet with other people like my teachers did with me.

By: Elizabeth Meade

What I want to be when I grow up

by:Wil Meade

I want to be a movie story board drawer when I grow up because I like to draw. I also like to spread out my imagination as much as possible. I like to work with others and share my ideas. I've always enjoyed movies more than books because movies are always moving and more interactive. My dad said I like stories.

Other signs of growing up going on in the Meade house:

Elizabeth asked for a watch, a jewelry box, and a locket for Christmas. This from the girl who had 30+ toys on her wishlist last year.

Sunday 7:50 AM. Wil: Daddy, can we play chess?

Elizabeth and Wil on the web

Back when I recorded the twins, more than 2 years ago when they were just in kindergarten, I tried uploading some of the files to Ourmedia, which is free. Well, it didn't work very well, so I never went back. But three of them did make it up and I want to make sure they're preserved for posterity:

Take me out to the ball game - Wil
Bethy's ZYXes
O Leaphart - Wil

If you have time, give them a listen. They are so sweet!

Sword fighting, Fencing, Taking a whack at each other

After sword-fighting with his cousins in the Biltmore gardens all weekend, Wil was cautiously enthusiastic about attending his first fencing class yesterday. Not surprisingly, he LOVED it. There are 4 other little boys in his class, but my guess is that he's the youngest. The coach was great - patient, fun, kept them moving. They played games, learned the parts of the foil, practiced beginning footwork, discussed safety, tried on gear, and then got to take a whack at each other with "foam sabers," as Wil called them. The coach called them quarterstaffs.

An Independence Day Interview with Wil

What do you want to remember about today?
"That I got my Ratatouille for DS from Granma for my birthday. I thought of Lord of the Rings: Family Meades and we played it outside while doing sparklers. I pretended I was Aragorn destroying the Black Riders with the sparklers."

Fill in the blanks: I feel ___ today because ___.
"I feel awesome today because I got my Ratatouille game; Daddy finished most of the Lord of the Rings game; and I made up a bunch of stuff which is like a world record for me."

I feel ___ to be an American because ___.
"I feel great to be an American because of freedom, liberty, and to be able to be here with my cousins and friends and not under the rule of the king or queen of England."

"Is that all?"

Wil got in to the spirit of 'The Silver Chair'. One night after reading he said he was looking forward to learning what happened. Then he said 'I jolly well want to know what happens next'. :-)

Wil is a sweet boy

Wil is, in many ways, at the perfect age. He's so helpful right now, it's crazy. Christine's got him earning money based on how many chores he does and he's absolutely looking for ways to do more. Yes, he's earning his way to a Nintendo DS. But he's also pretty happy doing the work. You might now believe it, but I promise you it's not all about the money.

When he wakes up in the middle of the night, he usually comes to our bed. These days, he's putting on his school clothes first so he'll be ready! When we wake up, in our bed, he's dressed! It's crazy!

He's often funny, too. Tonight he was being funny about me telling him what's going to happen in The Silver Chair.

They're learning patriotic songs at school, and he sang My Country 'Tis of Thee, just lying there in the bed, and it was beautiful enough to make you cry.

Then he got to talking about how people must be crazy to think Texas is sandy and has cactuses and cowboys, because he's been to Texas and he didn't see one grain of sand! In fact, he saw snow! It was so funny!

(I did tell him there were some big parts of Texas he hadn't seen :-) He said 'Oh')

And then I had to tell him it was time for bed. I said 'I'd rather keep talking with you and listening to you sing, but you've got to get to sleep so you can have a good day at school tomorrow.'

He said 'Are you serious?'

Oh yes, dear boy. I'm serious. I'd love for this moment to just go on and on and on...

2 in 30 minutes

Wil lost two teeth today - one on the bottom during supper and one on the top when we were clearing off the table. It hasn't been so long since he pulled one during lunch at school. We've lost track, but we think that makes 7.

Wil's Frends and the Time Mushen* by Wil

Wil was walking in the woods and fell down a hole. He was about to fall down into water and stop. Wil thought he was flying. Then two friends of his, the Dukes, appeared. I mean out of nowhere. But a time machine was with them.

"Where'd you get that?" asked Wil.
"Stole it," replied Rachel.
"Why?" asked Wil.
"The villain stole it from our dad," said William.
"The who?" said Wil.
"Villain," replied William.
Wil's eyes bugged out.
"What?" said Wil.
"Villain," said William.
"Did you say villain?"
"Yes," said William.
"Villain?" repeated Wil.
"Last time yes!"
Wil thought he would puke.
"Anyway," said William, "let's go get Beth."
"What?" asked Wil.
"You know," said Rachel.
"I do? I do!"

After they picked up Beth, they picked up Aubrey. Then Beth asked, "What did you pick us up for?"
"Bowler Hat Guy is on the move, and he's looking for you, Wil," William replied.
"Why me?" asked Wil.
"You've got the time machine he needs."
Wil remembered his time machine. But they were driving in William's time machine that Wil helped build. Wil thought that the Bowler Hat Guy was wanting to be king.

And he was right. Not too far away was the Bowler Hat Guy. He was following them, hoping that they would give him directions. Then Wil saw him and said, "To my house!" Then they zoomed to his house. (Picture of) four time machines in the races.

Doris went out of the ship and chased Wil. He operated time travel and poof disappeared.

To be continued.


*Wil's Friends and the Time Machine, edited for spelling and punctuation by Momma. The editor regrets that the original may be too hard to decipher for the uninitiated.

He's always Harry Potter-n to me

The twins don't pronounce his name 'Harry Pottern' anymore, but I still prefer it. Two stories that come from Christine having recently read them Prisoner of Azkaban:

1. Christine loves Jim Dale's reading of the Harry Potter books. She basically listens all the way through all of the books and then starts over. Sometimes she throws in a Jane Austen book on tape in the middle. And she mostly listens in the kitchen while she cooks or washes dishes, so, hey, she can listen to whatever she wants as far as I'm concerned. (Well, not Rush Limbaugh or similar...).

Anyway, we often describe Jim Dale in passing as 'the best reader in the world' or some such. But Bethy is firm that she likes Christine's reading better than Jim Dale's. I think, in Christine's estimation, this is about the nicest compliment she has ever gotten.

2. One night Wil said 'If I was a student at Hogwarts, and they had Guard Boys, and a dementor tried to mess with me, I'd be, like, 'Oh yeah, well I know a lot of spells! EX-PECT-O PA-TRO-NUM!'

What's better than working on one laptop?

We drove about 6 hours Friday night, heading back home from visiting my baby brother, Ryan, and his family in Houston. We finally made it to Vicksburg, Mississippi and up to our room in the Holiday Inn Express. The twins were ready for bed, in their pajamas, and I pulled out my laptops to start working. I said, 'Hey Bethy, do you know what's better than working on one laptop?' ;-)

I had supposed when I got my new work laptop that I would switch completely to it and pass on my personal laptop to Christine.

But I don't like my company Dell Latitude D620 as well as I like my personal Compaq Presario V5000. I much prefer the Compaq's HD widescreen and the 'touch' of the touchpad and the wider keyboard layout.

Plus, I can only access the company intranet on the company laptop because it requires VPN. And the company network requires Internet Explorer which I can use, of course, but which I do not like to use regularly. I'm a power Firefox user, using many keyboard shortcuts and keyword bookmarks that don't work in IE. There are still many things I can do for work outside of the company intranet, with Firefox, but going back and forth between VPN/IE and normal Internet/Firefox is annoying.

Solution: Work on both laptops at the same time. And it's working great.

Question: Is Christine left in the lurch? I don't think so, but she can comment here differently, if necessary. I can easily make one laptop at least partially available to her almost any time. And she still has the desktop...

We'll see how we adapt going forward, but that's the current configuration.

What can make you happier than opening your son's door to check on him and finding him reading his new Bible that he got for Easter?

Nope. I can't think of anything, either :-)

Probably too early to call him Bible Boy, but it has a nice ring to it ;-)

I said, 'Someone in this van has really good taste.' And Bethy said "Who, you and me?"

;-)

The Little Lepercon
by Elizabeth K. Meade
(all spelling, grammar and punctuation are original to the author)

One day a little lepercon named Lucky was looking for a good place to hide his gorld. He was defently, defently not goning to put it at the end of a rainbow! The last time he did some one stole it! He did not want that to happin agin. So, he set off to fide a plase. Now, after he had ben looking so, so long he finly fond a plase to hide it. Then...

he went back to his secrat cave to rest. When he wock up, he went back to his gorld, brot it back and, went to town. But Lucky forgot how to get thear. Can you help lucky get to town?

Hint: the right one has a fork. Take the left one. (Momma's note: the original story has a maze drawn here.)

Well, when he finlly go to town he went to a secret shop to buy some food, for his dinner. He had chang left so he bot ice cream for dsert. Then he went home, so he cold eat. It was a good diner.

The next day was veary difent. In the morny he had what he always had. Lucky Charms! They were good! Then he had his moring walk in the woods. He fond some gorld! He was in luck!

Lucky toke the gorld. He went to his cave and put it in his gorld mine. Lucky had a lot of gorld!

Bye that time he was ready for some lunch. It was good. He desided to read some tips form his Tips On How to Be a Leprechaun book. He was on tip #1,005. He LOVED reading his book. Well, this is prity much waht he did for the next 5 days. No one knows what hapened ater that. So you can see I cnat tell you what happed. So your going to have to fide that out from Lucky the little lepercon.

Momma's notes: I love the twins' stories. I can't remember a time that I didn't enjoy writing, but I certainly don't remember writing such elaborate stories when I was 7-years-old! I am very pleased with how much Elizabeth's spelling has improved since she started speech therapy in December. The obvious exception here is the r- before l- in "gold," but that's fairly close to how she says it. Some of her other misspellings, I think, are still a factor of a slight southern accent, e.g. "going to" often pronounced "gonna" becomes "goning" because she knows from reading how it's suppose to be spelled but that's not how she says it. "Finally" gets spelled "finlly" because the "a" is slurred or skipped. I also think it's interesting to note that she looked up how to spell "leprechaun" for the title of a book but not for the title of her story. I love, love, love watching my kids learn!

Last night Wil and I dropped off Sean at the airport for his trip to DC and NYC. On the return trip from the airport, we played Clone Wars in the car. Sean was an Arc Trooper (?) leaving for battle. Wil's and my mission was to go pick up the princess. I was the pilot. Wil was the gunner. We had two "pretend" missile loaders in the back. The UPS trucks were on our side. We saw a lot of UPS trucks headed east on I-26 so that was fun. This morning Wil continued the game with a new mission of destroying the shield generators at the Leaphart base from the inside. I made a big point of saying that today was only a spy mission. They were there to collect data, not to draw attention to themselves, to behave, stay on green, and keep their undercover secret. It would really spoil the game to have Wil destroy anything at school.

Paidion hellainikon

(That's a HORRIBLE Greek translation for 'Greek children'. Anybody want to help out, I'll accept it :-)

We're into Greek Myths around our house these days. It started with the Disney 'Hercules', but happily progressed nicely into the real classics. It's sent me to the library to pick up some good kids' books and to Wikipedia, etc to refresh my own memory. And I found this cool site as a result: Theoi Project.

Eirainai ;-)

I didn't mean to make Bethy cry.

I asked the twins last night at the supper table if they would still love me when I have robot hands...

It's just a nod to the fact that I use my hands and arms a lot, especially for computer work, and they alternately burn and hurt in different places from the shoulders down (especially across the backs of my hands these days). I think it's a live possibility, if not a certainty, that I will need surgery someday.

And I've said this to Christine before. She said 'yes'. ;-)

But it made poor Bethy cry. Of course, she'd had a big day, so maybe she was emotionally fragile.

She came and sat on my lap for a little while. Poor Bethy!