Go Gabe ... Go!

Last night Gabe and I were snuggled in, reading "Go Dog ... Go!" (a classic!) When he insisted that he could read it to me. To my astonishment, he did just that! I pointed to each word, and with the help of the pictures, he read each word! I was shocked! Granted, the book uses simple words and phrases, but the fact is that he was RECOGNIZING them! And when he got stuck, he would sound it out. He sounded out the word "Green" all by himself and you should have heard his whoop of excitement when he figured it out. Yes, I said "WHOOP!" That's the only way to describe it. So now, it appears that my little man is a reader.
He's also been trying to figure out (and use) longer, more complicated words. We've had some humorous moments in our house during the past few days as he tests the waters with his new vocabulary. For instance, we went on a hike this weekend. (That's where the pictures are from, by the way). While getting his shoes and socks on, he called out to me, "Hey mom! Something in my shoe is embarrassing me." !!!! I think I had told him that when you're embarrassed you feel foolish or feel bad. So his foot felt "bad" so it was "embarrassed." Funny! Oh, and just this morning, Nate was getting Asher dressed when Gabe wandered in and asked what he was doing. Nate said, "I'm dressing Asher." To which Gabe responded, "Oh, that must be expensive." I have no idea what he meant by that, but it was pretty funny!
We hiked at the Ellwood H. May Environmental park this weekend (called Maywood by the locals). It's right up the street from us, so I'm rather "embarrassed" to say that this was our first time there. They have gorgeous trails! While hiking along the Pigeon River, which is a sizable little creek with small areas of mini-rapids where the water flows a bit faster ... we saw a Hmong boy jumping along the banks. At first we couldn't tell what he was doing, but then, as we wandered out on an embankment, we saw that he was fishing and had a HUGE fish on the line. He fought with it for awhile, running past us up the banks. To our astonishment, we then spied more large fish leaping up the creek by themselves -- fighting the current. One was just sitting there, so we got a good look, before it skittered and flipped about 30 feet up the creek. I've never seen a fish do that! When we walked further upstream, we saw the boy on the bank of the river, with his fish. Turns out, it was a HUGE salmon! With teeth!! I'm not kidding when I say it was 3 feet long! The boy was so proud of himself, it was really cute! He told us all about his catch and how long it took to real him in. It broke his line and he lost his lure, but he didn't seem to mind much. He tied it to his bike handlebars, and the thing still dragged on the ground! Gabe had fun looking at the fish, but he wouldn't touch it!
The photos are from our hike. The one of me and Gabe with our sticks, is when we were pretending to have guns ... we were "hunting" turkeys. (There were wild turkeys in the park) The other photo is of Gabriel, finding "turkey" tracks. We had a wonderful weekend!