Lack of Posts

Sorry it has been a while since Crystal has posted. This pregnancy has hit her hard and she is yakking like a supermodel. I'm not very good at posting this stuff, but most of the last few weeks have been pretty mundane (besides the vomitting).

Sincerely,
Dan

A Grand 60!

Happy 60th Birthday Dad!

We love you and wish we could be there with you to celebrate. We look forward to seeing you in 2 weeks! Have a marvelous day!

Primary Activity

We had a fun (and very cold) stake primary activity day in Charlotte.

Some of the kids in our stake. We started off by making scripture story bags to teach during family home evening.


Donovan making a prayer rock.

A relay race doing acts of service. Here Dono is folding laundry. (I'll have to let him help me more often. I thought it was funny when he "folded" the socks individually too.)

Holding onto the rod (using the word of God to help guide us)

Then we went on a hayride. First we got pulled by a tractor, then an amish neighbor brought his horses and wagon to take us on a more authentic ride. It was lots of fun. What a nice neighbor!

Donovan and Mommy

Surprise! Guess Who's 30??

It was fun being able to pull off a surprise party for Dan this year. I did a lot of fanagling and got our friends the Forsyth's to watch the kids and "set up" while I took Dan out for his birthday dinner 2 days early. Thank you Emily and Benjamin!!! Dan had no clue. In fact he was a little bothered that the Forsyth's had to leave early and we had to be back by 6:30 so that they could leave. Boy was he surprised! He came home to a house full of people. We counted 31 friends and their kids. I was surprised that we all fit into the front rooms! Thank you all for coming and making this a special birthday.

A hockey rink, what else??

I think the kids really wanted some cake!

They all helped Dan blow out the fire hazard.

Dan and his friend Jeff.

Jeff works with Dan and is also a professional magician. He offered to do a little bit of magic for the party. It was a hit!

I hope you had a wonderful birthday sweetie! Even though this was a few days before, we also got to spend his real birthday with him all day. We had a few days this week full of surprises! We love you!

More...

Isn't it great when you get to re-use clothes? This will be the 3rd time for this beauty!

#4's ETA = June 2010
We love surprises!

Star Student

Donovan came home with this badge today for being an awesome student! I'm so proud of you buddy!

Red Flannel 5K

Ever since I ran a 5K in June, Dan has wanted to do one with me. He looked up different races around the state and found one in his hometown. Cedar Springs is a small town that is well known for their red flannel pajamas. There used to be a factory that made them and now the name stuck -Red Flannel town. The street sign posts have metal red flannel jammies hanging from them all around town. It's really fun. Well, for the Red Flannel Festival, they also had a 5K. So of course we signed up. Our wonderful friends, the Smiths, took our boys Friday afternoon to have them spend the night so that we could have a night to ourselves and run without any worries. It was great! It's been so long since we've had a kidless night! We checked into a hotel in Grand Rapids (with a jacuzzi tub! which helped us relax our muscles) and had a night on the town. We got up early and headed further north to run the race.

wow I'm really short!

It was so cold! I was glad that the shirt they gave us was long-sleeved or I would have been frozen! It rained the day before and was threatening to do so again. We warmed up and then the race began. It was fun going with Dan. We both did very well. We stuck together the whole time except for the last sprint. Dan beat me by 15 seconds, and I was able to beat my last time by a minute. And the rain stayed away until we left. Yea! It was a great day. Dan wants to run again next year to beat his time, but I'm not sure I'll want to just yet.

1st Day of Preschool

I wasn't planning on having Elliott start pre-school until next year, but we have such a good group of friends that have kids his age that wanted to start a sort of joy-school. We decided to join in. He is loving it! He's still a little young to grasp everything well, but he is having fun trying and learning.

His cheezy smile - getting ready to go. We meet at rotating mom's houses once a week to learn ABC's, numbers, colors, shapes, etc. and to of course be social with other kids their age.

Elliott is catching on so quick, especially since he learns things that Dono does too. He's having so much fun.

Daddy's Little Shadow

Dan mowed the grass and Elliott decided he wanted to work with Daddy.

It was cute to watch him follow Dan's every move.

Conversation with Roswell

Make an on-line slide show at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Monsters in our Garden

This year we planted our garden very late. We're finally getting some of the rewards from it. Though I know the frost will come before some of them have time to mature. We had 2 garden plots this year. Our raised garden at home and also a community garden in the back of our church building. This was just from one picking. (I had already canned around 10 quarts of diced tomatoes at this point.)

Except for the tomatoes you see, that bowl was overflowing with green beans (which I also canned).
The comparable size of our monster saucer squash ( I think it's really called a scalloped squash).

Our 2nd batch of corn from our community garden (66 ears). Our first batch was devoured by raccoons. I think we got maybe 20 ears that time. We've really been having troubles with animals eating the fruits of our labor. We've got to figure out something better to do about them for next year.

We are so happy to be able to grow such wonderful fruits and vegetables. It is also nice that we know how to preserve them to last for a long time. It sure makes the grocery bills easier too!

Step by Step...finally!

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

We finally caught Roswell taking some steps. He's been sneaky about who sees him walk, but now it's getting more frequent, so we could video tape him.

1st Day of Kindergarten!

Today my big boy is finally growing up. Donovan started school. He's been so excited for this day. He has afternoon kindergarten at a nearby school.

Donovan showing a K for Kindergarten!

My big boy.

Elliott has a lot of kindergarten envy. He wishes he could be big and go to school too.
Donovan (kind of standing in the red shirt) spotted my car on the 2nd day in the CRAZINESS of the parent pick-ups.

Dono had a fun 1st couple of days. He loves his teacherand is learning to get aquainted with the rest of what school entails. We're still working on the initial drop-off at school which is still a sad, stressful issue (he doesn't like mommy leaving him). The 1st day, Daddy and Mommy both took him to school (and picked him up). He had a teary departure from us. I thought I might cry, but didn't. Instead, Dan got a bit teary. My tears came later. After school, Dono was so excited to show us a surprise when we got home. He told us that they read a story (The Kissing Hand) and that he wanted to see our palm. He put a kiss in it and said "Can you feel that traveling to your heart? I love you." Then I cried. It was so sweet. For those who haven't read the story, it's about a racoon who is scared to go to school and gets sad, so his mom kisses his palm so that he can take her love with him to school. So now I try to kiss his hand when I drop him off at school so that he knows that we love him and he won't be so sad. He's had fun (despite the drop-off) and is looking forward to a fun year.

Splish, Splash

Today was a fun day! We started with a good breakfast:

Roswell has taken to stuffing his mouth full of food. He ate some, but here he is showing the rest off.

Then we went to Hawk Island to play with some friends at the splash pad.

The boys are finally getting better at getting wet.

It was a fun day.

Can You Tell Me How To Get...

To Sesame Street!

Well, we got to go to Sesame Street Live because the boys have very nice grandparents! Nama and Papa Earl took all of us to go see the show because it was showing while they were visiting. What a great show! I believe we all enjoyed it very much. It was all about imagining and doing whatever we desire.

Sesame stage.

For Nama - Michigan State! The show was in the Breslin Center.

The gang: Dan, Elliott, Roswell, Nama, Papa, Donovan. The boys didn't know where they were going until they got there, even though they were dressed up in Elmo attire. It was quite the surprise.

The post mistress and Big Bird.

Elliott pointing, he was so excited. Some pictures are dark, I wasn't supposed to take pictures with a flash.

Roswell was in a trance. Every now and then he'd see Elmo and shout "La, la, la". He loves Elmo, the la's are part of his tv show.

Ernie and the S.S. Rubber Duckie

Bert and his underwater adventure.

The octopus in said underwater adventure.

Elliott doing a dance.

Nama and Donovan doing the dance.

A beach dance.

La, la, la, la Elmo's World!

Ross doing a dance with Elmo

The final dance in New Orleans (I think).

Thank you so much for taking us to see Sesame Street Nama and Papa! We really enjoyed it! The boys talk about it all the time. We're glad we got to spend time with you on your visit!