The Driving Has Begun....

Everyone said that you just get used to driving a couple hours for appointments and shopping and it's no big deal. I don't like driving for hours..... In the past month I've been to four different cities an hour or more away. I've been to Oscoda (Evie's swim meet), Tawas (Boys ENT), Saginaw (Evie's swim meet), Grayling (Girls orthodontist). I'll be heading to Tawas and Grayling again in two weeks. Tawas is about an hour 15 minutes away, so it's not so bad....but Grayling is almost two hours. Today we drove there, spent two hours at the orthodontist, then drove the hour and 45 minutes back home. It was not so fun, the boys did great for about the first hour of our time at the orthodontist and then were not so well behaved the second hour, the drive out was clam and quiet as the kids listened to the Silver Chair, on the way back there was much more hitting, kicking and complaining. I am not looking forward to the monthly orthodontist visits that are starting, hopefully it won't be for too long.... Evie will be getting an upper and lower expander and probably head gear after that as well. It should be fun! Yeah........hours of driving and appointments fun.........I'll just keep telling myself that.

Conversation of the day

Nathan and I were sitting at the table talking after dinner. We had sent the kids upstairs to play and Evie comes downstairs.....
Evie: Kaleb's dying

Nathan: there goes the stipend
Me: That's exactly what I was thinking! Is he bleeding?
Evie: No
Nathan: Is he really okay?
Kaleb heard talking clearly and enthusiastically upstairs
Evie: No
Nathan: were you playing the game where you put something on top of someone and then jumping on them with the boniness parts of your body
Evie (without thinking twice in a totally normal conversational voice): Yes, my knee went in his stomach and......

At this point I just started laughing so hard the conversation degenerated. And just to clear things up, they apparently don't actually put something on top of the other person, they just jump on them. Oh the fun games kids play! :-) 

State Meet

Yesterday Evie and I drove down to Saginaw for the state swim meet. Warm ups this morning were at 7:30 am. Evie had fun and did okay. She dropped a second in her backstroke and had a great swim in that. Her breaststroke you could tell she was trying too hard and went almost a second slower than her best time and her freestyle was just a little slower than her best time. She placed 5th in her breaststroke and backstroke. They handed out awards through out the meet giving the swimmers the opportunity to stand on a podium if they were top eight.

Her first race, the 25 free, she's third from the top, black cap, pink goggles

This is the backstroke, she totally nailed this race. She has the white back on her suit.

And here's the breaststroke, she didn't have the best start on this one as you can see...

Hanging out before her race

At the blocks ready to go (black cap with white writing)

Receiving her medal! She's in the pink bathrobe, at least she made it easy to spot her!

You think you could be a little happier Evie? Maybe smile?

That's better!

Thunder Storms in February?

The last two days have been super nice again. The kids were out riding their bikes a few days this week. But today it cooled down a little, there was snow on the ground when we woke up and then it started to rain. Not only rain, but thunder storms. Who has ever heard of thunder storms in February in Northern Michigan??? Why is there rain instead of snow? This morning there was a VERY bright flash of light, the kids and I all looked at each other wondering who had taken a picture. None of us had the camera. And then there was thunder that shook the entire house. It was several seconds later, which was strange but obviously it was close enough. It scared all the kids pretty good, but they were excited to call Dad and tell him about it. :-) The thunder has continued off and on through the day. It was a strange day.

License Plate Renewal.....

The state of Michigan does some weird things. Like base your license plate renewal off of your birthday. When we got our plates last year I thought this was weird, and now that I have the renewal notice in hand my question is who thought that a license plate renewal notice was a good birthday card? Happy Birthday, you owe the state of Michigan $250 to renew your license plates! This does not seem like a good plan. Who comes up with these ideas?

A Sunny Day

I know we were not the only ones who enjoyed the beautiful sunny blue sky Spring day in the middle of February! The kids enjoyed playing outside (Hannah had shorts on!) and after dinner and the kids and I went for a walk. The sun was just starting to set and as we walked we watched an airplane with a trail that turned a gorgeous orange/pink from the setting sun, the boys thought that was super neat. Then the girls noticed a bird sitting on the powerline, and then it turned it's head all the way around and they started yelling very excitedly at me to come see because it must be an owl, because only owls can turn their heads like that! It was in fact an owl, I'm pretty sure it was a gray Eastern Screech Owl. Unfortunately I did not have a camera on me to take pictures of the excitement of the day, but you can find a pretty good picture of one here.

Finally to an ENT

Today we finally made it to the ENT! He's about an hour and 15 minutes south of here. He asked if I knew what happened to the ENT in Alpena, as he didn't know either. I still haven't found anyone who can tell me what happened. The ENT today assured me he's been practicing for 20 years and hasn't missed a day and isn't going anywhere :-)  Anyway, the conclusion is Damen needs new tubes in his ears (surprise!) and he wants to remove his adenoids. That will be our excitement on March 16th. I have to say the lack of doctors in the area is frustration, but as I was relaying the appointment to Nathan tonight, I did realize the one positive things about all the doctors I've been to in Michigan is they all have taken us back on time (or early!) and the doctors have come in right away. There were times at the ENT in CT where I'd be waiting for almost half an hour in the room before the doctor came in. Today the appointment was at 2 pm and we were in the car on our way out by 2:22, that's good stuff when you have four kids! I liked the doctor today, he was direct, kept it short and handled the boys well. The office staff was super impressed by the girls who waited nicely in the lobby because they wanted to watch the TV. The good news from today is that nothing needs to be done with Kaleb, they just need to continue monitoring him because his tube still has not fallen out. Really? It's been in over 4 years, that's just craziness! So until it falls out he'll be being seen every six months along with Damen.

School is cancelled...

On account of 100% of the students, faculty and staff being sick. We've had a pretty miserable week here. Nathan has been sick since Sunday, poor guy had a couple talking gigs at church and by the end he barely had any voice left at all. The kids and I have been going down hill all week, yesterday we barely did any school and today I just gave up (okay, not quite, I did read a couple chapters of history), as everyone except Kaleb took a voluntary nap.

Here's Damen asleep on the couch where he's been most of the day.

Evie spent a couple hours snuggling in our bed trying to stay warm. 

Hooligans

I have my own gang of hooligans and I'm not sure what to do with them......three of my four children went on a walk yesterday. They were told to stay on our road and on the street. They put snow in four peoples mail boxes, one car and a dead mouse in a mail box as well. They are currently not allow to go on walks, one is ban from reading, they are all writing apologies and will be delivering them along with a verbal apology and cookies. I'm very thankful for good neighbors who keep an eye on my kids and aren't afraid to tell me when they've done something wrong. I do not remember doing anything like that when I was a kid....did I and I have just forgotten?

Yesterday's excitement....

Yesterday we woke up and our heat was out....this had happened on Sunday as well and someone was out then but couldn't figure out the problem. Yesterday they decided to replace a part and it seems to be working well now. We thought that was enough excitement for the day. But that was the minor excitement for the day. We had co-op in the morning and Nathan had a doctors appointment which all went fine we came home and Nathan was actually taking the day off since he hadn't had a day off in awhile. We were doing a little quiet time after lunch and the boys were in their room and then we here blood curdling screams and Damen comes out dripping blood everywhere.....something in his mouth was bleeding, but there was so much blood it was hard to tell what was going on. We figured out he had knocked (or maybe ripped is a better description looking at the damage now) his top two front teeth out. We called the dentist and headed over. He took a look at the teeth and said the roots were damaged so they couldn't go back in, fortunately they were only baby teeth. They took some x-rays and were confused by what they saw so they called a pediatric dentist in Petoskey, which is just over two hours from here. The dentist here thought Damen's roots were damaged and arranged for us to go to the pediatric dentist today. This morning Damen and I headed across the state. The pediatric dentist said things looked just fine, there was no need for surgery (which our dentist here thought he'd need) and we'll just play the wait and see game. Apparently the adult teeth roots aren't developed yet, which hopefully is a good thing and it will all heal normally and he'll be fine. Worse case is the root develop and we'll have to deal with that later on. But for not we're praising God Damen didn't need surgery! We were in and out quickly and made it there and back in just over five hours. The other good news is for the next year or two everyone will be able to Damen and Kaleb apart :-)

Isn't he cute without his front teeth?

At least if they're smiling you can tell them apart! :-) 

Evie's swim meet

This past Saturday, the 4th Evie had her second swim meet. She won every race she swam and dropped lots of time. She was disqualified in her backstroke, but she didn't actually do anything wrong.....the officials did not like our team after the coach let one of the swimmers ask his girlfriend to a dance by putting a sign in the water at the end of the 500. Anyway, I got some videos of Evie's races, so you can see her swim!

Swimming the backstroke

Here's the breaststroke....I started a touch late on this one.....

Evie hanging out with her friend Evie (not short for Evelyn). I think there were at least three Evelyns (my Evie said she thought there were five!) at the meet and one other eight year old one, it was crazy

Seated and waiting for her event

Behind the blocks, getting ready

Focused and ready to go! 

Science Fun

Here are some pictures from a recent science experiment we did. All the kids had a lot of fun blowing bubbles!

Hannah and Evie were blowing bubbles and measuring how big they were. 

Damen had fun making lots of bubbles instead of just one

And Kaleb managed to make a huge bubble! 

Flooding

The last couple weeks of January were really warm here. Which resulted in lots of water in our yard.

That is what our backyard looked like.

This is what the field next to our house looked like

Hannah and Damen playing in the water

Nathan, using a long copper tube to blow bubbles in the water

Damen trying to blow bubbles through the tube

Kaleb coming over to see what's going on. 

Baby Shower and Birthday Party

On January 14th the girls and I headed to a baby shower for the lead pastor's daughter. There were over 100 people invited to it. Evie was in awe of the whole party and at the end said "Mom, I want a baby shower like that!" We talked with Kate (whose shower it was) a little more on Sunday and told her what Evie said, and she said it's the blessing and the curse of being a PK.
After the girls and I got home from the shower the boys and Nathan headed off to the pool for a birthday party. They had a great time swimming, eating cup cakes and playing with their friends at the pool.

Blue Ice!!!!

Since Nathan didn't really end up with any day off for Christmas or New Years the lead pastor let him take Friday the 13th off. We had some fun as a family climbing on ice and visiting the NOAA museum.

The kids had a blast climbing and walking around on all the ice. And you can kind of see in this picture, the ice was really blue. It was pretty sweet!

Up on top!

It was a beautiful day, but really cold. 

This flat patch of ice gave the kids a chance to slip and skate.....

The patterns in the ice were incredible. 

I really think people here don't realize what they have! But we definitely enjoyed the beauty and the ice.

Hannah's Birthday!

Hannah is 10!! She enjoyed going down about 20 minutes south of here to a diner for breakfast with Nathan. She got a huge cinnamon roll that she couldn't even eat all of!

Hannah happy to have a giant cinnamon roll and some time with Dad!

Hannah ready to blow out her candles! 

Hannah was very excited about her rip stick from Nana and Grandad. 

Here's one of her first attempts at using it. 

A different kind of week

Nathan got to preach again on New Years day. He did a great job, you can tell he's getting more comfortable. You can find his sermon here. But because he was preaching New Years day that meant the week in between Christmas and New Years, that he's had completely off as holiday for the past 12 years was not off. In fact he worked a full week not even really having a day off for the Christmas holiday. This completely threw me, as I'm so used to him being off for that week. And needless to say New Years was not very exciting in our house. :-) After New Years was another busy week and he had to work the Saturday following New Years as well. Since I knew he'd be working (he had an elder's retreat) I arranged to get together with some people from church and took the kids to the Home Depot kids work shop.

Doesn't Hannah look thrilled to be there? We were the only people there when we got there...it was strange. No liability forms to fill out, no other people.......

This is Kaleb, he worked really hard and did a great job!

The girls did theirs pretty much completely on their own.

Damen working on his

The finished product!

Christmas

Since Christmas was on a Sunday this year there was Christmas Eve service on Saturday and there was normal worship service on Sunday. The boys were super disappointed that there wasn't Sunday school on Christmas or New Years day, but we made it through. After service Sunday we had someone from church over for Christmas, as she had not family to do Christmas with. We came home, had lunch and didn't let the kids do presents until after lunch.

Enjoying cinnamon rolls for breakfast before church

Ready to open presents!

You want to know how the present opening really went? All excitement and kindness right? 

Ummmm.....NO. 

Because wait, we have to read the Bible first and they weren't supposed to be opening gifts yet....

I took the kids to the dollar store and let them each pick out a gift for Nathan...Damen got him a lightsaber. 

We found these great whacking sticks at the thrift store

The boys (and girls) have been enjoying them. They're pool noddles covered in duck tape :-)

Aunt Debbie had some fun with the camera

They left their stockings until last and in general fun was had by all. 

Hannah and Evie enjoying their new socks!

And being super cute :-)

My parents got the kids some play-doh, Debbie was a little skeptical of this gift, thinking my kids were too old for it, little does she know! :-) Play-doh is great for all ages. Hannah made this impressive person

And all the kids made some nice cups

And pitchers.