The very busy month of May!

How we are already well into the month of May is beyond me . . . but we are enjoying the culmination of several things. We wrapped up our Mother/Daughter, Father/Son discipleship class (at a local church) a few weeks ago. It was a lot of fun, but it's nice to have another week night free again. Emily and Levi both enjoyed participating in drama productions at their enrichment program over the past few weeks. AWANAs has just finished for the year as well. The older kids were all very excited to earn book awards (for completing the activities and memorizing all of the verses in the books they were working in). We had a really fun Mother's Day. "Waitress Emily" ordered me back to bed as soon as she woke up, donned her apron, grabbed her notebook and took my order for breakfast in bed. After mine was delivered, she went on to take orders from the rest of the family and served all of us breakfast on mom and dad's bed! -- what a girl! Daniel, not wanting to be outdone, waited on me hand and foot asking every few minutes if there was anything he could get for me! We visited a new church and the kids made some sweet little Mother's Day crafts. Our usual tradition of planting our vegetable garden got bumped until nicer weather. We opted instead for a family attempt at cleaning the garage followed by ice cream floats, games and a movie night. The garage was a great success, except that Daniel took a few minutes to ride his bike afterward and donated a good portion of his epidermis to the cul-de-sac out front! After many, many tears and a pit-crew style nursing effort, we got him cleaned up and bandaged ~ and then he beat all of us at Rummikub (twice!) . He's thankful that he still has a week to recover before the kids triathlon next weekend (the older 3 kids are all participating in it). Emily has her spring worship dance performance tonight and Anna turns three in a few more weeks. She has asked me every single day for the past 3 weeks if it's her birthday yet! We have field day next Monday and we are wrapping up school for the year right before Anna's birthday ~ hurray! We decided we couldn't quite manage baseball and t-ball this summer, but the kids are looking forward to lots of playdates with friends, participating in a local track and field program, Vacation Bible School, dance camp (okay, the boys aren't looking quite as forward to it as Emily is!),camping, swimming, riding bikes, making snow cones, playing tennis at the park and most of all not having to do any math! (although Daniel will probably find some sneaky way to finish off his 4th grade math and catch up with Emily before September!)

"Look Mom, It's Christmas Day"!

That is what Anna exclaimed with great delight as she looked out the window Monday ~ at the already budding trees buckling under yet another blanket of new snow. Her holiday calendar is a bit off, but her whole world was white and glistening once again ~ with just four days left in April! Just when we think we can polish off the last of the cinnamon rolls, pack up the boots and snow suits and move on to warmer weather--it snows again! Sigh. Such is springtime in Colorado!

Levi had the distinction of having the first birthday party (in our family) which included sledding and hot chocolate! Fortunately, we are blessed with a great back yard, the side of which is sloped -- making a perfect sledding course!

We had a revelation while decorating Easter eggs a few weeks ago . . . we noticed that it wasn't as messy and chaotic as in years past. It appears that our kids have crossed that threshold (at least the majority of them have) which allows projects like that to be . . . do I dare say it? ~ enjoyable!

Even though the ground may be white, we are moving (at least mentally) into the days of winding down the school year and anticipating summer! Drama performances, dance performances, the culmination of AWANAs and other church activities are upon us.

We still don't have a definite sense of Kevin's next step (with work), but we are hoping to fairly soon. We will keep you updated.

Happy Birthday Samuel!

Sam has officially turned 4 on us. He declared a few weeks ago that he wanted a Mickey Mouse birthday party . . . something about "Meeska Mouska Mickey Mouse" and a clubhouse ~ I had to go watch an episode of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse to figure out what he was talking about! Sam didn't invite a single child even close to his age to his party (except for Anna!). The rest of his guests were older cousins or friends of Emily, Levi or Daniel ~ fortunately they all think that Sam is really adorable, so they didn't mind coming to his party!

Leaping Lizards!

and a leaping Levi too!! (with dad, Daniel and Emily not far behind!)

"Sibling Sofa Sandwich" ~ or some such silliness!

Hide-and-go-seek . . . taken to an extreme!

Valentine's Day

The kids enjoyed Valentine's Day and having a three day weekend (no school on President's Day). Emily waits all year for heart shaped pasta on Valentine's Day! (I still haven't figured out why she thinks it actually tastes better than plain ol' pasta . . . but she's convinced it does!). Anna and Samuel both thought that pink milk was really cool and Levi and Daniel couldn't eat enough pink mashed potatoes or heart shaped meatloaf. Many years ago we began hanging curtains of hearts in the kids' doorway(s)--with love notes or fun things written on them. The past few years it's been hit and miss with actually getting them hung up in the doorway (sometimes they've woken up in March to find that I finally managed to hang them up!) . . . but this year I made the deadline! Daniel seemed the most excited to read them, Anna seemed the most excited to run through them! Kevin moved his really quickly! (so he could walk through the door to his study)

Emily recently had a chance to do another worship dance at church. She put one together a few months ago, when she heard Mark Harris talking about his song "One True God" and it finally worked out Sunday to share it.

A big week for Emily!

The past week has been an exciting one for Emily. She got to go to a Father/Daughter dance with her daddy! (who looked dashing in his Pooh bear neck tie!). The following day she got her ears pierced (along with Auntie Penny!) and mom and dad got to have Emily to ourselves for the afternoon to celebrate her half birthday. We played tennis, goofed off a bit, roamed around Barnes & Noble and stuffed ourselves full of over-priced ice cream! A few days later, Emily welcomed her "newest baby"--her long awaited American Girl doll, Kirsten! How Emily acquired Kirsten is a very fun God story--she could not be more thrilled and has spent every waking moment trying new outfits on her and changing her hair bows!

It's almost February!!

February is right around the corner and Emily is counting down the days until her 1/2 birthday! (we're a weird family!!). Anna is absolutely thrilled with pre-school and tells us several times a week "I'm a BIG girl, I go to pre-school!" We've been having fun (and making lots of messes) doing art and fingerpainting lately! The boys had fun dressing up in Kevin's old Air Force uniforms for "soldier of the Lord" night at AWANAs. Emily is never found without her doll (Faith), they dress alike whenever possible and Emily takes very good care of her! ( . . . she even requested that we hang a stocking for her on our mantle at Christmas!)

Anna starts pre-school!

Our kids attend an enrichment program one day a week. They offer a pre-school program also and Samuel has been attending there since September. When we moved, Anna had remained at the Joy House day care center, where ALL of our kids have gone (for at least one day a week) since 2001. We recently decided that the drive was really very long (especially in snowy weather) and a spot opened up at Samuel's preschool . . . so, Anna enjoyed her first official day of pre-school with Samuel last Monday! She was very excited and Samuel was a wonderful big brother and watched over her all through the day ("a perfect gentleman", according to their teachers!). We think she was most excited about her lunch box, but the arts and crafts and books were a hit too!

Happy New Year!

As we all knew it would, Christmas break has gone by entirely too fast and we resume school tomorrow. We have enjoyed spending many hours with the kids, watching movies, playing games (Yahtzee is the current favorite) and trying to beat them at "speed stacks" (cup stacking) -- they're getting much too fast though! We have fresh snow outside right now and I'm guessing sledding is in our future for this afternoon. We've also enjoyed our daily trips to the mailbox, seeing new pictures and receiving updates from friends (which is, for me, one of the best parts of this season). One of our special highlights of the past few weeks was praying with Samuel as he asked Jesus into his heart (after a discussion we had while making Christmas cookies). Emily and I enjoyed a trip to the Nutcracker Ballet with "Auntie Penny" (and our good friend Patty). The kids were indulged in (again by Auntie Penny) a fun night at Chuck-E-Cheese's, while Kevin & I were able to sneak off for a date--which was 1 part dinner and 2 parts homeschool planning--but it felt like a date nevertheless! With enough sleep (and a little caffeine tossed in!), we're excited about getting back into our "school routine" and looking forward to what 2009 has in store. The pictures below start with Emily's worship dance performance a few weeks ago, as well as cookie making, Christmas Eve candlelight service & Christmas Day.

Snowy days and swimming lessons

Our week has been full of swimming lessons and a lot of snow . . . which the kids haven't minded in the slightest, since several years ago we began a tradition of eating cinnamon rolls for breakfast when we woke up to fresh snow (we've decided that we may be in for a lot of cinnamon rolls in Castle Rock . . . and if we ever move to Alaska or Canada, we'll have to change our tradition!) After returning home from swimming lessons this morning, we got back in our footie pajamas (well, the kids did!) and decided hot chocolate and popcorn were in order! Emily recently took over hot chocolate making duty, so she was very excited! Anna and Samuel discovered Emily's body crayons--and quickly began painting Samuel's toenails and face!

Beds and Brothers and Sisters and Such!

A couple of weeks ago, the kids woke up one morning and emphatically declared that they were ready to swap rooms (they've debated about this for many, many months). We now have a boys room (that couldn't possibly have any more firetrucks in it) and a girls room, with an awful lot of stuffed animals! So far, everyone seems quite happy with the new arrangement!