happy belated birthday, dad

robin turned 51 this year and while we did celebrate on the day, we're a little belated getting pics posted. love you dad!

field trip: crayola

the week before christmas a friend from mops and i took some of our kids (her youngest 3 of 5 girls and 3 of my youngest 4) to the crayola factory. despite driving through squall like conditions only to have it dry at crayola and at home (strange weather....) and a few wrong turns, we had a really fun time, and had almost the whole factory to ourselves.

more christmas

the boys had the homeschool choir concert which was so much fun (short and festive) and so nice to see them in ties (even if they were a little long, thank you salvation army).



friends gave us free tickets to the christmas production at sight and sound (for us over a $200 value). all peter could talk about was seeing his good friend garrett's new baby brother who sat a few rows in front of us (his dad is our children's pastor at church and in our small group):

karis gave pete a bath and took pictures (thankful she's willing to give the bath and remembers to take pictures):

easing back in....

some things we've been busy with the past few months:

picking and freezing (and eating) strawberries




slamball (basketball hoop pulled up to the trampoline)


field day for homeschool co-op
(jack and mike only)

easter cantata/pageant

this year everyone but haley and me had the pleasure of participating in our church's Easter pageant. they used a professional actor from sight and sound to play the part of Jesus, and the tricky part was that he was supposed to pick peter up at the end and carry him out. peter kept saying, "nope. it's not really Jesus. that guy doesn't even go to our church." so they never practiced it.


that's karis holding pete's hand as they walked in for the procession of Jesus entering. olivia is in front of them, and mike is wearing a brown tunic, while jack is wearing a green one. i don't have a great shot of just jack, which is a shame because they were supposed to look adoringly at Jesus, and jack nailed that. his expression was .......... moving. really. that's karis' boyfriend, t.j. playing the guard. at one point, when they came in the side doors, something happened (i think he kicked it and stubbed his toe) where he was trying really hard not to laugh. that kind of took away from the seriousness of the situation being portrayed, but otherwise, well done.




in the picture above you can kind of get a glimpse of jack's expressions.

at this point, below, pete was getting an idea that this was the end and started holding on to olivia *really* tight. but before he knew it, Jesus had scooped him up, olivia had scooped up another girl, and they started quickly walking out the center aisle. once he got to the back and was reunited with his sisters, he was fine. robin and nick were the props guys. i didn't get a picture of them-sorry!

fearless. or not.

mike, as our 6th child, has been the fearless one. during the summer olympics of 2008, we couldn't let him watch platform diving because after he saw them do it once, we caught him out by our pool stacking chairs/tables, anything he could find to make it higher for him to try it in our deep end. he will try anything once, and comes up with the craziest ideas.

except. when we lived in florida, he would not try to learn to ride a bike. not with training wheels, not with us helping him. we thought maybe he was afraid of the busy road we lived on, or the fact that he overheard our thank-God-jack-had-his-helmet-on story so many times that he was afraid that he, too, would take a bad fall going downhill and crack his helmet on the sidewalk.

fast forward to this year. now he is 7. and our neighbors ride their bikes to our house every day (they live two doors down). they had a few spare bikes, and offered him one. with no training wheels. he didn't need any instructions. he walked up our street (it has a gentle incline), balanced himself on the seat, and coasted down to said neighbor's house.



i could tell he wasn't fearless by how white his knuckles were from holding on so tight.
eventually, though, he got the feel of peddling and could turn around in our friends' driveway.
then he could turn around and ride back *up* the street.

and eventually he looked back at me as he drove away.
three cheers for you, mike.
we love you.

helping accountant dad brush up on his math skills

awana grand prix

each year awana does a pinewood derby and this year was no exception. the boys didn't win anything (and i forgot to take individual pictures of their cars!) but they had fun.



this car won best design. it was made by our 12yo friend, breanna.

happy birthday mike!

we celebrated in the morning since it was thursday, our c0-op and very busy day.
we had chocolate cake with peanut butter icing and crushed reese's peanut butter cups in the middle and quartered on top. mike was thrilled with his gifts (wii mario sluggers, a book he's been wanting, some candy, legos from karis and a sweatpants/zip up sweatshirt set. he was tired of pull over sweatshirts).

so hard to believe he's 7 already...
we were looking at his baby book, and i said, "grandma and grandpa were the first ones to see you after you were born."
he quickly asked, "where were you and dad?"
ahem. i meant after us....
we love you, mike.

craziness

the wireless internet didn't want to work all day so i could post these pictures of the craziness of our last 24 hours. tonight we're not expecting any more snow to *fall* but the wind is whipping around the additional 16" we got this go round.


the kids played outside in it most of the day.
the boys enjoyed sliding/jumping/doing flips off of the shed roof into the mounds of snow below.
even pete (he's 4).
i told the 2 little boys to be thankful they had two big brothers because i never would've let them do that without them.


this is looking out the atelier window....
yes, it is covered with snow. it is *that* windy.

and this is a picture of mike's frostbite that he actually got a few years ago while visiting my sister in michigan. it flares up any time he gets really cold. i know because when i was in college (messiah, fall of '84) my roommate and i walked to mcdonalds and i had a hole in my boot and got frostbite on my big toe. every time it gets cold it flares up the same way.

ah, well.
wasn't it helen keller who said life is an adventure or nothing at all?

half way through

we are officially half way through the school year.
the boys in 1st/5th grade are saying good bye to their bodies.......
and moving on to the next thing....

north museum of science and natural history

we love that our library offers free family passes to some local museums. this month we took advantage of the one to the north museum of science and natural history. instead of bemoaning the fact that we so rarely can do field trips with all 7 kids, i've decided to embrace the relative ease of keeping track of only 4 (and console myself with the fact that the oldest 3 have been to many, many more museums, even if they don't remember all of them).

it doesn't look very big from the outside, but inside there was so much to do. i feel like we went through it quickly, and we were there for over 2 hours. the discover room alone (with all those delightful labeled boxes of things the kids could touch, including animal feet, skulls, native american things, etc.). we're getting ready to study astronomy in the spring, so their whole section on that was inspiring, not to mention the traveling exhibit on blood suckers which was very well done and full of information.

also before christmas.....

we are blessed to have an awesome sledding hill behind our development, close enough for the kids to walk. on this particular trip, i was out looking for the wayward puppies (who keep digging out under the temporary chicken wire fence we've put out) and took my camera with me to catch a few shots before the sun went down. their friend, veeble (sp?) was with them, seen in the picture of the jump they made.









at the end of a beautiful day....

scenes from christmas 1

from the creativity files of olivia----
i gave her these and told her to try making a nativity scene or something christ-massy.

she returned them like this (three wise men):



the boys had fun making an igloo at the end of the driveway:


3!! some were easier to get in and out than others.....

trials

i've been thinking a lot lately about trials.

friends in a courtroom hoping for justice for the murder of their disabled son at the hands of his night nurse.

relatives fighting for their lives against a cancer that has no known cause.

friends welcoming a child into the world with a known genetic disorder that has already claimed the life of her sibling.

a sister losing her vision yet suffering with joy.

and i got to thinking, as i watch my kids wrestle and come and go with friends, that many of us have a very limited view of what a trial is.

we think it's a rough day.
or a situation that we don't know how to handle on our own (that we will have forgotten about by next tuesday).

but no--a trial in a court of law (certainly james knew his stuff) can go on indefinitely.
i guess that's why he continued:

and let endurance have its perfect result, that you may be
perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.
james 1:4

what a promise! we think.
if we just endure, we'll be perfect and want nothing.
the problem is, we cannot do that on our own.
we... don't have the wisdom.
we... don't know where to begin.
we... don't have the capacity for that kind of knowledge.

fortunately, he doesn't stop there. he tells us exactly what to do:

but if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God,
who gives to all men generously and without reproach,
and it will be given to him.
james 1:5

what's the catch, we ask?

but let him ask in faith without any doubting,
for the one who doubts is like the surf of the sea
driven and tossed by the wind.

for let not that man expect that he will receive anything from the Lord,
being a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways.
james 1:6-7

thank you, Father of wisdom, that You are The Way. The Truth. The Life.
we would be shipwrecked without you.

guest post: mike

all i want for christmas......

is my two front teeth!

one starry night

this year our church put on an awesome christmas dinner, complete with various entertainment and concluding with a children's play, "one starry night." mike was a shepherd and jack was a speaker. they did a really good job, and we were very proud.

mike, a shepherd


jack, the speaker

the group, including friends denae and mikayla

landis valley museum

another benefit of the library is a free family museum pass to some local museums. we were planning on going to another museum about an hour away, but their special festivities were cancelled due to the weather. it turned out to be for the best anyway, since it was only gray and slightly drizzly and robin got to go with us. the girls were all busy, so it was just me and the boys. fun!

they already had the visitor center decorated for christmas. the museum shop was having an open house, with carolers dressed in time period garb and free refreshments. jack saw his awana teacher, and robin met up with an old co-worker.

i love it all, but i especially liked the school house. that is, until the boys got carried away in their make believe outhouse adventure (but all that pretending did send us on a quest to find the nearest "real" bathroom).
silly boys.

neighborhood gatherings

have been happening frequently around here, mostly in the under 13 crowd.
our kids haven't had trees of their own in a while to make piles of leaves in, so they were eager to start raking.

they quickly gained a gathering of followers.the gloves prevent the "red hots" (rope burns).

(click to enlarge)

some just got buried.
some buried themselves.all had a great time.