AWANA

We wrapped up the season for AWANA tonight, celebrating with a potluck and awards banquet. The kids had a great year in AWANA and all of them worked really hard. Emily started out behind her peers (b/c she hadn't been as motivated at our last AWANA and was a whole book behind them). She worked hard and caught up, earning several different awards! We're proud of all of the kids and are glad that they enjoy memorizing scripture. We're also thankful for the faithful folks who organize and run the AWANA program every week.

Scenes from Easter 2011

I'm posting a random assortment of pictures from Easter. It was a busy weekend. The bunny rabbit photo (Levi and Anna) is from a block party that our church held (and we helped out with) the day before Easter. Emily and I were also able to squeeze in attending a Mother/Daughter tea! Anna and I worked in the nursery at church Sunday morning. Anna's favorite baby was there and she had fun reading stories to her! The rest is probably self explanatory. We enjoyed an egg hunt and potluck get together with extended family after church (it was a bit on the chilly side, so we hid the eggs in the basement).

Emily's cool new camera

Emily has been babysitting a few times a month (bright and early, for the little boys across the street ~ whose mom works the night shift). She has been saving up money to buy a new camera. She finally did it and is enjoying her new "toy"! She's been experimenting with all its nifty modes and features. Her favorites are the black and white mode, the 'smile feature' (where the camera will automatically take a photo when it determines that you are smiling!) and the color highlight mode (where it takes a black and white photo, except for one particular color which it will highlight for you). Fortunately she has lots of willing (and did I mention silly?) subjects to practice her budding photography skills on!

Levi's surgery

Normally we eat apple pie and pizza to celebrate Tax Day, but this year Levi celebrated by having surgery ~ a 4 hour outpatient procedure to repair a hole in his inner ear. They did a great job and he is recovering well. Because of the size of the hole, they had to take skin from behind his ear (to use as the inside patch). So, he's now sporting 19 very impressive stitches just behind his ear. He's had a great attitude about having to wear a strange contraption around his head and refrain from many of his favorite activities (which would include nearly everything except for lying down and standing still!). He isn't even allowed to blow his nose!, so I'm trying to be a good sport about not constantly reminding him to =) The kids were so excited when he arrived home, he got a bit bombarded right when he walked in the door. We had to pull them away, so he could eat some applesauce and head to bed!

Spring Break

We don't really officially take a spring break. However, we have cousins and friends who are out of school and some of our normal weekly activities (Community Bible Study, homeschool enrichment, etc) take one as well . . . so we end up with a day off here and a day off there. One of those days off happened to coincide with Levi's birthday, so we enjoyed having some friends over for the day ~ and also got to indulge in an "open gym time". Levi and Emily were both thrilled that they were able to master doing a back handspring and a back flip (with a lot of wonderful help from Daniel's gymnastics coach). . . guess what they've been doing on our trampoline ever since?!


















On Mondays the kids are normally at enrichment all day . . . but since there wasn't enrichment today, we took advantage of the opportunity to "serve up some fun"! We went to our favorite 'soup kitchen' (a church downtown that serves food to the homeless every Monday) and helped out for a few hours. Some of Emily's friends were able to join us, and Grandpa too!

Anna's AWANA class takes turns sending "Cubbie bear" home with a different child each week (they get to chronicle his adventures in a class journal), this has been Anna's week to enjoy having Cubbie at home, so any guesses about who else went along to serve the homeless? ~ yep, Mr Cubbie Bear himself!

Levi boy!

Ten years ago, today, God blessed us with a 10 1/2 lb bundle of little boy . . . twinkly eyed and tender-hearted, hard working and happy-go-lucky, clearly gifted at working with his hands ~ fixing and fashioning; hard wired for pursuing possibilities ~ dreaming, scheming and 'thinking outside the box' . . . a faithful friend and full-time fun magnet, all rolled into one amazing boy named Levi! Happy Birthday, we're SO glad you are part of our family!

Another birthday boy!

We had a fun afternoon/evening celebrating Kevin's 50th birthday today. After MUCH deliberation, he decided that what he really wanted to do was to find a way to share his celebration with the homeless. I made several cakes and we took the kids (and the cakes!) downtown, walked around several different parks and found as many homeless folks as we could to share Kevin's birthday cake with. The older kids helped serve the cake, Samuel kept the napkins from blowing away (it was a beautiful day, but very windy!) and Anna enjoyed her 'very important' job of handing out forks! It was a lot of fun! Afterward, we had a "fine dining" experience at Chuck-E-Cheese!