Shedd Aquarium

Gary finally has a break in his work schedule and it is Winter Break for our school, so we decided to take a mini vacation. At the last minute we decided to go to Chicago for a few days. Unfortunately, we timed our trip during a time when Ryan and Lisa had already made plans to go out of town as well. Fortunately, we were able to get together with them for a quick visit and dinner our first night in town. On the way home from our trip, Justin and Megan said visiting with their cousin, Baby Matthew, was the best part of their trip. I can't wait until Matthew gets a little older and is able to start playing with the kids, I think they will all have a great time together. Above are some photos from our trip to Shedd Aquarium in Chicago. The kids loved the dolphin show.

Pal comes to visit

All of the kids in Justin's kindergarten class get a turn to take Pal home for a visit. Pal is a stuffed dog. Your family is to take picturs of your adventures with Pal and journal in the notebook about your visit, so that when Pal returns to school all the children can learn about his travels. Justin was lucky to receive Pal at the start of Winter Break, so instead of having Pal overnight, we have Pal for 10 days. We took Pal with us on our recent trip to Chicago. Pal enjoyed staying in a hotel, going to Shedd Aquarium and to the indoor waterpark at our hotel. Now that we are home, we have to be creative and think up some more adventures for Pal during the rest of the school break. Pal really enjoyed watching the fish at the aquarium. Pal's favorite book, Biscuit, was packed in his suitcase, Justin did a very good job of reading almost the entire book to Pal by himself!

Valentine's Day

Grandma Betty and Papa Randall sent the kids a Valentine's package filled with treats and craft items. Here are a couple of pictures of the kids enjoying the chocolate and making some fun craft projects.

Snow Day

Last Wednesday we received about 6 inches of snow overnight and school was closed for the day. Here are some pictures of the kids enjoying the day off and the snow. Kyle insisted that I let go of him, but every time I let go he either fell over frontwards or backwards and got "stuck". Despite the great effort it took him to navigate he had a great time outside and was quite upset when I took him inside to warm up.

February Pictures

Here are some general pictures from the month of February. Our old sofas finally died so we got 2 new sofas, here is a picture of one of them. Also, note the kids on their new bean bags.......our solutions to keeping sippy cups and snacks off of the new sofas. Kyle loves to do "everything" that his siblings do, it doesn't matter if it is coloring or being a princess. Any time Kyle sees an ink pen, pencil, crayon or marker....he says, "I want to color" over and over again until he gets to color.

A Good Day To Stay Inside

Hi All,

After we got all ready this morning, we discovered school had been cancelled for the extremely cold weather we are having. The thermometer was reading -4 this morning with a wind chill of -25. Justin was excited to get to stay home and immediately asked if he could go outside today to play....... Instead, I think we have play every form of video and computer games we own today.

We had a great time when we went to Splash Village in Frankenmuth. The kids were really suprised when we drove up. I didn't get very good pictures while we were there, so I won't bother posting them.

Gary is still working a ton, but hopefully that will taper off in the next couple of days.

Last week Megan, Kyle and I went on a field trip with my MOPS group to a chocolate factory. It was an interesting visit and a yummy taste treat!!

The kids are looking forward to Valentine's Day and all the treats that it entails. I am looking forward to participating in both of their class parties. It is always fun to watch them celebrate.

Take care, Danielle

Winter is really here

After the pleasant end of 2006 and beginning of 2007 I was beginning to get spoiled. But winter is officially back, it has been cold here all week. Only about 3 inches of snow on the ground though. I am not sure how well it is going to work for the snowman building and sledding that Justin has planned for tomorrow.

I haven't posted in awhile, not much newsworthy going on here I guess. We have all been ill once since the new year started, but everyone is well at the current time. Unless you count the fact that Kyle ended up with (another) sinus infection after his cold from 2 weeks ago and ended up on antibiotics (again) this week. They have kicked in quickly and his nose is finally clearing up. He does not like having a dirty nose and is constantly telling me "nose" so I will give him a tissue for his dirty nose.

Justin started Floor Hockey a couple of weeks ago and really likes it. Several of his friends from school are on his team. It is basically some padded sticks hitting a crochetted ball. No worries about injuries for this form of hockey. Justin was a little confused when we started, I think he was invisioning ice hockey. Now he tells me he wants to take more ice skating lessons so he can do ice hockey next year..... I convinced Gary he should help coach Justin's team and since Gary is one of three coaches I think he is enjoying it. Justin is number 7.

Gary has been working a ton the past few weeks, but we are looking forward to him staying home for the next four days. We are going to Frankenmuth (a little German town about an hour north of us) for an overnight stay at a waterpark hotel with some friends. We went once last winter and the kids loved it, so I am sure they will love it again. We haven't told them yet, we figure we will just show up there and suprise them. And to not break any traditions we will make sure we visit Bronners (the world's largest Christmas store) and go to the Bavarian Inn for our Chicken Dinner (yummy-yummy)!!!!

Take care, Danielle

more photos

Happy New Year!!!!!!

I am a little sad that the holidays are over and it is time to get back to our normal schedules. I have enjoyed having the kids and Gary home with me for the past 10 days. We celebrated Christmas with my parents here visiting. We definitely had a great time watching the kids open packages and enjoying their new toys. Gary was working quite a bit before Christmas, so it was really nice to have him be able to spend some much time with us. We are hoping his schedule doesn't get as crazy again in January. Gary may be glad to get back to work, as he has had quite the "Honey Do" list to get completed...not that I wasn't right by his side sharing the work. We managed to get our storage/furnace room cleaned out (you literally could not get in the room any more for all the stuff we had stashed in there), we cleaned out our master closet (not as bad as the storage room was, but definitely needed cleaning out), purchased some new home electronics for the living room and a new entertainment center to put them in (which had to be put together and the old mammoth entertainment center disassembled (thanks for your help mom!!)) and lastly after almost 6 years in our home, we finally painted our dining room. The original flat paint the builder had used had definitely seen better days. And yes, can you believe it.....in February we will have been in our house for 6 years, it just doesn't seem possible to me!!! Oh.....I and I also got my husband to go furniture shopping for a new couch. We had to order it, so I am anxiously awaiting its arrival. Our old furniture is from the pre-children era and has definitely been abused by them, I am not sure they are really old enough yet to be kind to our new furniture, but we are just going to have to work on it since the arm is falling off of our current sofa :) We also took Justin and Megan to a place called The Fridge last week. It is an outdoor toboggan run. They clock your speed on the ride down, one run we were cruisin at 31 miles per hour....weeeee!!!!!

3 days until Christmas

Today the kids and I took our second annual trip downtown to see Gary at work. They have a really great Santa for the kids to visit with, we had lunch in the food court and the kids got to see Gary's cube. To the kids, they were all equally as exciting. I was just happy that everyone had a good time and we got there and home safely. As much as Justin likes school, he has thought it very unfair that Megan has been on break all this week and he has had to go to school. Although, he is looking forward to his class Christmas party tomorrow.

Which one do you like best???

I have managed to squeeze in some time for a little digital scrapbooking this weekend. And I am pleased to say I learned some new techniques along the way. While my pages aren't as awesome as some I have seen, they are making progress. Anyway, I tried a couple of different things on the same page and was curious which one you liked best??? You can click on each picture to make it larger so you can get a better look at it. Email me or leave me a comment. Thanks!!!!

Thursday

Well I just looked at my calendar. Did you know we only have 11 days left until Christmas. While I am mostly ready, I better get in gear and finish what needs to be done. Justin stayed home from school with a slight head cold yesterday, but seems to be much improved today. The kids and I never left the house yesterday. Boy was it a long day....keeping 3 kids entertained at home all day long is more than a full time job, it is 3 full time jobs. I was really glad we were able to go about our normal activities today. Megan had her last day of preschool until after Christmas break and I had a MOPS meeting. At MOPS we did a cookie exchange and it went really well. I am going to enjoy the variety of cookies I brought home. Gary has really been putting a lot of hours the past few weeks. I am also anxious for Christmas to get here so we can spend more time with him. Hope your holiday planning is going well. I did complete a couple of scrapbooking pages of Megan and Justin. I took the pictures at their ice skating lessons. The pictures aren't the best quality, but it was the best I could do through the glass and at a distance. If you double click on the images you will be able to see the images in a larger size. God Bless, Danielle

Happy Monday

I worked in Justin's class last Friday & today. It is fun to watch your kids interact with their teachers and their peers. Tomorrow Kyle & I will attend Megan's Christmas party and performance at her preschool. Hopefully it will be a good photo opportunity as well. To the right is a scrapbook page of Megan and Justin playing outside one cold day last week. I am mostly ready for Christmas, just a few odds and ends to "wrap" up :) We had our small group from church over yesterday. We made and cut out sugar cookies and let 9 kids decorate them with frosting and sprinkles. It was really fun and really messy!! I think the adults enjoyed the decorating as much as the kids. On Thursday I have my last MOPS meeting of 2006. We are doing a cookie exchange, I am looking forward to trying out some different types of yummy taste treats. Gary has been working a ton the past couple of weeks. We are looking forward to Christmas break so Gary and the kids can stay home and we can all just hang out and if I get really lucky I may even get to sleep in once or twice!!

My disorganized days!!

Sorry for the long delay since I last posted. We enjoyed our trip to Iowa for Thanksgiving, but it has caused me to become so disorganized.... Oh Well!!! It has just been a struggle to get caught back up on day to day stuff. While we were in Iowa we didn't do much traveling about, we never even made it from Adel to Greenfield. So, those that came to see us, THANKS!! And those we didn't see this trip, we will try again this summer. The kids also saw Santa while we were in Iowa. Justin thinks we should go again now that we are home in Michigan as he has thought up many more things he would like to add to his Christmas list since he last saw Santa. Kyle did better than I thought he would sitting on Santa's lap. He actually was fine at first, but then he turned around and saw that he was sitting on some strange looking guys lap and started to lose it. In this picture you can see his lip is starting to stick out.

I think the highlight of our trip was meeting my nephew, Matthew. He is an adorable little guy. Since we have returned home, Megan has renamed her life-like doll to Baby Matthew. She is always the baby's mommy. Sometimes she is mommy Megan and sometimes she plays that she is "Aunt Lisa" and Justin gets to play the part of "Uncle Ryan". It is so sweet!!! Little mommy Megan gets so very upset when her Justin then decides "house" is over and drop kicks the doll across the room....you would think he actually hurt someone. Isn't it funny how 2 children will play with the same toy in entirely different methods???

This past week in addition to school we enjoyed ice skating lessons and Justin had a soccer game today. He was so proud that he scored a goal!! This evening Justin and I also had bowling. He scored 85 & 65. It is actually pretty impressive considering he just throws the ball down the lanes without much consideration for aiming at the pins. At ice skating it was painful for me to watch Megan as she fell repeatedly and then decided getting up wasn't really worth the effort and crawled around on the ice. I can hardly believe she thinks it is fun and actually wants to come back. Meanwhile Justin showed great improvement and even though he spent his fair share of time on the ice, he was actually working on some new techniques like skating backwards and learning to stop (or as Justin puts it, "I put the brakes on").

This coming week Kyle has his 18 month check up and Megan gets another immunization. It is so hard to believe Kyle is actually 1 1/2 years old already. We put our Christmas tree up last week and Kyle has been enjoying removing every ornament he can reach. Luckily, everything within his reach is non-breakable. The first thing he did with the balls was to take them into the kitchen and throw them on the floor...it is amazing how far they bounce. I am trying to teach him to put the ornaments back on when he takes them off, but so far no luck!