Beach day in May

It has been a cold and rainy spring here. This week has been the first nice weather week we've really had. That however does not deter my children from the beach. They asked several times in May to go to the beach. On May 11th it was sunny in the morning, so I finally gave in and brought them even though the high was only in the 50s (maybe if that) I believe that day.

Preparing to get into the water, please notice no one is in shorts

Excited to be getting in the water

Entering the water.....

And coming back out almost immediately (if you click on the photo to enlarge it you can see Kaleb's face of shock from the cold water :-) )

They did go back in and go under the water....

Crazy kids!

As you can see the beach was really empty! I think we were maybe there half an hour, but they could say they did it.

The boys birthday

For the boys birthday we again just kept it simple with two families coming over to help celebrate. We blew up LOTS of balloons (a couple hundred) and let the kids play.

Excited about the cake, who wouldn't be? This was from their actual birthday, we had a chocolate and angel food cake on their birthday.......

Then, at their party we had two ice cream cakes. It only makes sense to have to cakes since it is two boys birthday right? The two families we had over were big, so I figured I needed two cakes anyway and they both wanted different flavors of ice cream, so it was all good. You can't have too much cake, can you? :-) 

I failed to take pictures of the balloons before/at the party. But here are some from the fun the kids had with the balloons in the following weeks. 

They sorted the balloons by type and made fences for them. Here you see Hannah feeding the goats. 

They made food out of paper for their animals. 

Here are the cows

Chickens

Sheep!

And pigs

The random balloons that don't match are the farm dogs :-) 

Hanging around

I was so thankful for our large basement this winter! The kids at points were literally running in circles around it. The boys really liked hanging off the ceiling as well.

Getting ready to hang.....

Just hanging around. Kaleb really enjoyed doing pull ups as well. 

At one point we had a parent come to us after his kids had been at our house and said "My kids were telling me they were hanging off the ceiling at your house. Are you aware of this?" we assured him it was all good :-) 

The big open space was also conducive to be toys like the cardboard bricks!

There were lots of walls, towers and other creative things built. 

Valentines Day!

Before Valentines Day I had seen people mentioning heart shaped donuts. Since we don't have a donut shop in town except for supermarkets and they didn't carry heart shaped donuts I decided to make my own :-)

They were really tasty. 

Then on February 13th we had four additional girls over while Nathan was helping their parents move. Since I had a bunch of extra kids I decided doing Valentines cookies would be fun. 

This is one of the cute kids I got to watch :-)

Everyone enjoyed working hard to decorate their cookies and then eating them!

Yum!

Serving Others

In late January our small group went and severed dinner at "Sunday Super" which provides free meals for anyone in the community who needs it. We had a large group of people so we were not only able to serve the food, but also got to sit and talk with the people who came. The kids did really well helping set things up for dinner and such. We were asked to bring two fruit pizzas. I had never made a fruit pizza before, but I think they turned out well!

Everyone really enjoyed them. 

Hannah's birthday

Okay, I'm going to try and catch up on blogging this week. We'll see how far I get, but we'll start with Hannah's birthday (only six months behind, but you know...) We kept it simple for Hannah's birthday this year, she had two friends over for a sleepover and made some horse cupcakes. We had a giant cake at home group the day before her birthday (also known as my birthday).

Here's the giant cake at homegroup

Here are some pictures of the cupcake horses!

Here's Hannah

And Hannah's horse

Hard at work on horses

Another horse

Hannah's friend with her horse

Nathan gets really into this projects

And here's his finished project. 

Everyone enjoyed making and eating their horses!