Update from Iowa

Nothing too exciting to report on us. The big news I guess would have to be my belly. It’s big. Now that the 4 month flu has subsided (some people refer to it as ‘morning sickness’), this baby is hungry. A lot. Feels like there is an 8 pound kick boxer in there already, but in reality he/she is just over a pound. We won’t know if we have a he or a she until the arrival, but the kids are absolutely convinced they have a sister. Everyday I have a talk with them explaining that it could be a boy. Cade is slowly coming around to accepting that, but Ava just says he will turn into a girl before she’s born. We shall wait and see! For those of you who aren’t keeping track, I’m 24 weeks along and more than ready for June to be here!

Nick is staying busy. He’s at a conference today, had a wedding last Monday, another planned for a week from Tuesday, teaching several classes, meetings, services, etc. He upgraded his church cell phone plan and got a blackberry a couple weeks ago. HIS 2 cats are doing well although one of the crabs in our fish tank died last week.

Cade is loving learning. I will ‘officially’ register him for homeschooling this fall since he will be 6. A reading list assessment test puts him at a 7-8th grade reading level, but he reads faster and more comprehensively than that. He reads 1.5 times as fast as I do and can tell you the story or facts afterwards. He will sit down with a Little House on the Prairie book or Hardy Boys book and finish it in a couple hours. In math he is working on adding and subtracting double digit numbers. After one discussion with a local homeschool teenager, he started explaining basic algebra to me. It is just fascinating to watch his intelligence run free. He is still a 5 year old boy, though! Spring soccer season starts soon, and he would play on the iPad all day if I let him.

Ava definitely got some Huelsman genes. She is very tall, fast, and verbal for her age (3 next month!). She says absolutely hilarious things all the time. She knows just how to push Cade’s buttons and she won’t run away from a fight. And she looks just like her dad when she is doing something ornery. I really appreciate how helpful she can be with dishes and putting things away. If there is a baby or smaller child around, she totally melts and becomes a mother hen.

That’s it for now. Does anyone have a recent picture of the whole family? Perhaps someone took one at the wedding? I think over the past four or five years, the awareness of these issues has grown dramatically, so it is writing research paper really on the radar screen of many policymakers, said michael w