Thursday, April 30, 2009

Catching Up In Pictures

Happy Easter!

Swimming Lessons
Celebrating at where else? McDonald's!

A special treat

Happy Birthday Natalie!


Dancing Queen

Wedding Fun


Hotels are so fun that we don't want to go home!

Thursday, April 9, 2009

If Jesus Played Tag

I've found the times when I'm driving in the car with the kids are one of the best for talking with them. There's no TV, no video games, no distractions. So, on Sunday on the way to church we were talking about what Easter is really about. Everyone knows how commercial the major holidays have become and how easy it is for kids to get pulled in to it all. So, I wanted to be sure to talk to them about how important Easter is to us and how Jesus died to save us from our sins.

I think most of the conversation went over Natalie's head- she's still a little too young to understand. But, as with just about everything with Ethan, he was full of questions. We talked about Good Friday and what happened on Easter morning and then how Jesus rose to heaven. Of course, the subject of Jesus rising up to heaven produced the expected question. Jesus can fly? To which I replied that Jesus can do anything. Ethan's response? Yeah, if Jesus were playing tag he could tag you without even moving. I think I laughed the rest of the way to church as I pictured Jesus and the disciples in an energetic game of tag!

Thursday, March 26, 2009

What His Teacher Must Have Thought

Ethan brought home his report card on Monday, marking the end of the third quarter. He's been doing fairly well all year long, but the for the first time the X indicating improvement needed was present in one of the tiny squares. The corresponding line item was "Writes first and last name". I pretty much blame myself for this short coming. Every quarter we receive a list of benchmarks that must be achieved by the end of the quarter. It's not to say I totally discarded them; we did read over them. But, Ethan has had no problem attaining the benchmarks based on school learning and home learning hasn't been necessary. This time when it was time to do the end of the third quarter testing he was thrown off when he wasn't allowed to look at his name tag for the spelling of his last name. That night while I was getting Ethan out of the shower and drying him off we worked on learning to spell his last name. By the time he was dry, he could spell Alexander. The following day at school this was the paper he brought home:






The phonetic spelling can be a little difficult, so I'll decipher:

I learned how

to write my

name! It was

fun. This is

how I spell my

name Alexander.



The gem though, was the illustration that he included:


Wednesday, March 25, 2009

God's Promise




From front yard to back, we had the coolest double rainbow last night. I braved the huge raindrops enough to slide open the door to take pictures. But, I wasn't willing to get wet in order to see the whole thing.

What's Pink & Brown with Stripes AND Dots?

Natalie is the proud owner of her very own big girl bed. A couple of weeks ago Natalie and I sat in front of the computer screen and picked out her bedspread at Target. I had already reviewed and discarded Pottery Barn after taking a looking at those prices. They have cute stuff, but not THAT cute! So, after checking out the options I gave Natalie the choice between my two favorites. This weekend we took apart the crib and put together her bed. She was so excited- for some reason because now she could get into bed all by herself. Not quite sure why she couldn't before! Of course, I was a little sad to see the crib come down for the first time since before Ethan was born. But, we have a lot of fun times ahead with our almost three year old!

Sunday, March 15, 2009

A visit to our favorite baby (and Aunt Betha too)







The Budding Artist


Ethan was chosen to have a piece of his artwork displayed at an art show for the school district wide art show. One of only 25 kindergarteners chosen from his school!



The masterpiece: