Ellie

Is she cute or what?

Birthday parties

This past weekend Ellie and Isaac celebrated their birthdays with a family birthday party. Grandma and Grandpa came into town, which was the highlight for all three of the kids. They don't get to see them nearly enough so whenever we do it's a big event. Isaac surprised us and had a great time hanging with Grandpa. Usually he won't sit with anyone other than mom and dad if we are in the room. But he and Grandpa were buds and had a great time together.
Here are some pics of the party. We made Ellie's cake and got Isaac's cake from Byerly's. FYI-Byerly's gives away a free cake for a child's 1st birthday. It was great and saved us from making 2 cakes for the party! When I asked Ellie what we should have to eat at her party she hemmed and hawed for a bit, then suggested that we serve "poptarts". While my kids would have loved it, I didn't think everyone else would so we served sandwiches, salads, & chips instead. We had a fun time!

Isaac's 1st Birthday

Happy Birthday to Isaac, Happy Birthday to Isaac, Happy Birthday dear Isaac, Happy Birthday to you. It was Isaac's 1st birthday today and he got a very special present. It was a wonderful rash or some sort of hives. Take a look at the great pics below. He woke up this morning with these red splotches all over. After getting lots of opinions (insurance nurse line, doctor's office, pharmacist, neighbor, friend, mother-in-law, random moms at Micah's soccer game), I finally decided to take him in to Urgent Care. Of course, they couldn't really tell me what it was or exactly what to do about it. They did send me home with some cream and told me that it would either make it better or make it worse. I'm hoping for better. We'll see how he looks tomorrow morning. We have a much more exciting birthday planned for mid-October when he and Ellie will have their family birthday parties.

First day of school

Here is Micah on his first day of school. We started homeschooling yesterday and so far, so good. Check back in January and see if we are all still smiling about it! I'm a little worried about cabin fever come winter, but we had a great first day. Ellie has to join in with everything and has her "school supplies" with her in this picture. She does great and is happy to sit at the table and color and whatnot while Micah is doing his stuff.


And just a random picture of Isaac. He's a good eater and pounds down just about everything we put in front of him. I'm not sure what he was eating before this picture, but it looks like he enjoyed it!

Kid pics

It's nearly impossible to get them all together in one shot and looking anywhere towards the camera, so here are 3 separate pics of the kids.

OK, so why do we have a blog? Do I just write random things and send them off into cyberspace for no reason? Maybe sometimes, but the main reason that we have this blog is to share pictures and family stories with our family and friends. I think an additional benefit of the blog is that hopefully someday we will be able to have some form of it to pass on to our kids. I'm not much of a scrapbooker and I don't journal much, so this will be a record of a few of the highlights of their younger years. That being said, I'm posting a few pictures as a reminder of God's faithfulness and provision. It's too easy for me to take things for granted and move on, but I want my kids to know and to hear about the many ways that God provides for our family.

Here is Isaac with A LOT of baby food that Mimi found on clearance at Target! What a great deal! It still has a year until it's expiration date and he is loving it. Thanks Mimi!

I do a lot of bargain shopping and deal-seeking and was thrilled with this trip to CVS! I don't usually take pics and post about my finds, but I was very excited about only paying $1.81 for all this stuff! We'll keep some of it and send some of it to the food shelf. On a side note, we bought some fruit snacks at the grocery store the other day and the kids and I decided that one box will go to the food shelf as well. That was REALLY hard for my kids because they love fruit snacks and would eat them all the time if I let them. I thought it was a good sacrifice for them to make!


Finally, here is a pic with the kids and some "new" sand toys. A neighbor, who we hardly know at all, came over yesterday and offered a wagon-load of sand toys to our kids that her kids had outgrown. There were new trucks and bulldozers and sand molds and shovels (we seem to have disappearing shovels!). It was such a blessing and so much fun for the kids.

Thanks God for always providing in big and little ways!

Grand Slam!

Micah has started t-ball this year and is having a lot of fun with it! It's a riot to watch as many of them are playing for the first time. They don't keep score and there are no outs, so everybody wins...or as AJ puts it, "everybody loses". He's a bit more competitive! Several times Micah has been the last batter which means that he hits a grand slam! Check it out:

Happy Isaac?

This looks like Isaac and sounds kind of like Isaac, but this baby seems to be happy. Huh. Could it be? Could he really be happy? OK, OK I digress. We have more and more of these moments and he is getting to be a better baby. I could do without the 5am wake-up call, but otherwise most days aren't too bad.

Micah Day at MOA

AJ has a wonderful Grandma ("Gram") who enjoys spoiling others. Recently she decided that Micah should have a "Micah Day" at the Mall of America and he would get to do whatever he wanted to do. Of course, Micah thought that was a great idea. We all got to tag along and we all equally enjoyed his day. We started off at Underwater Adventures, which is a fun place to go. The kids loved the cool fish and all of the huge turtles. They each got to pick out something from the gift store. Micah chose a stuffed dolphin that he named "Swimmer" and Ellie chose a stuffed octopus that she named "Coco". Then we headed to Nickelodeon Universe to ride the rides. Our family has been there before, but just to look and not to actually go on the rides. It was a great treat to ride the rides and the kids had a great time. They stuck to the tame ones and AJ ended up riding most of them with the kids. The kids got face painting done except it was on their arms. We had lunch together in the food court where we could go wherever we wanted to get our food. The kids of course chose McDonalds with Gram, AJ had hot dogs, and I had chinese. After a short stop at LegoLand, it was back for a few more rides, some cotton candy, and then back AGAIN to Underwater Adventures. The passes were good for all day, so Micah thought we should go through it again. It was fun to see what different things the fish did in the afternoon (not much, they were pretty lazy compared to the morning activity!). We finally convinced Micah that we were worn out and it was time to go home. He had a great time and I'm sure it will be a memory he will talk about often. Thanks Gram!

Kid pics

Again, I have been an unfaithful blogger. How can it be a whole month since the last post? Anyway, I don't have much to say but I do have some pics of the kids to post. So here goes:


Mmmmmm....green beans

Micah with a mohawk and a mean face.
Ellie boycotted a nap in her bed, so later fell
asleep on the couch.

Yippee! We have finally found something that our littlest one seems to enjoy. He likes to bounce in the johnny jump-up! And I mean he REALLY likes it. And he doesn't REALLY like much of anything (unless, of course, you count crying).

A big shout-out to Mimi for taking him for the entire weekend. She offered to have our sweet (OK very crabby) little boy for the whole weekend to give us a break and enjoy some focused time with Micah and Ellie. It was much appreciated and very refreshing.

Baby giggles

This one is for grandma and grandpa who are missing out on all these giggles...

Micah's 5th birthday cake

Here are the pics of Micah's "Candyland" cake. AJ and my mom usually do the cake decorating, but since mom and dad weren't able to make it (and were greatly missed!) I helped out AJ. He's still the main man and did a great job. We tried not to overwhelm the cake with candy, but there was plenty of it and it was awfully sweet. Micah loved it!

Ring bearer

Micah was the ring bearer for AJ's cousin's wedding. He did so great and we were so proud of him!
He and Olivia, the flower girl, enjoyed some time on the dance floor:


This was their first dance...


Dance lessons from Olivia's dad...



How sweet is that? Then they went back to swinging around in circles!

Micah is 5!

Our firstborn is officially 5 years old! How did that happen so fast? He had a great birthday last week filled with many of his favorite things: preschool in the morning with donuts for snacktime, Caribou smoothie and a game of Go Fish with dad in the afternoon, and supper at Chuck-e-Cheese with Amara in the evening. It was a 5-year-old's dream day! He enjoyed every minute of it. We will be celebrating with extended family this weekend.
He had his 5-year doctor check-up this morning and was declared healthy and quite normal. He is 44 in tall and weighs in at 42lbs.
Here are a few pics of his day.

Verse of the day

I came across this verse this morning in my devotions:
John 16:33 "These things I have spoken to you, so that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have trouble..."

So that's been the verse of the day, week, last four months or so, but there's more to that verse that I have neglected and am going to start repeating more often. Here it comes...

"...but take courage, I have overcome the world."

Cool. I need to stop focusing on the trouble and start focusing on the peace, courage, and overcoming parts.
I've been a bit grouchy lately and was encouraged by this today.

The best pick-up line by a 5-yr-old

Overheard on the way to preschool the other day:

Micah: Amara, what does your tongue taste like?
Amara: I don't know.
Micah: We should touch our tongues together and see what they taste like.
Elisabeth (Amara's mom, thinking quickly and with a straight face): There's lots of germs on our tongues that we don't want to share so let's not do that.

First kiss averted. Whew!

Happy kids

Kids

Micah and Ellie enjoy entertaining Isaac, and he seems to like it as well. Here they are reading to him!

The kids made marshmallow/apple igloos today. They had fun making them, but ate them as soon as they finished them. Colored marshmallows are just too irresistible, I guess.