Love notes

I found a book I had purchase YEARS ago when I was unpacking last month and I picked it up and started reading it.  I LOVE reading this book. I only read a few pages at a time, but it gets me so excited.  I'm even taking notes..... I'll wait while those of you who fell off your chair can get back on and start reading again.

Its called 'Love notes in lunchboxes'.  The saddest part is, I found this book as my children start a school with a hot lunch program and rarely take a lunch box.  It has such great ideas and now I get really bummed if I send my kids out the door with their lunch box and I realize about two hours later that I never put in the note!  Jessica posts them on her door and Maria asks for one on her chair even if she doesn't take a lunch box.

I've also been working on taking a monthly chart I have for praying for specific character traits for our kids and putting it on a calendar that I can print and frame.  So many projects.....

So, what have we been up to?  I can't believe its been almost a month since I posted.
We've had a few people over to our house for supper.
We've played lots of soccer.  All four have a game every Saturday!

Brandon has played some baseball and I am even talking to some of the moms at practices and games.
I unpacked about 10 more boxes and rearranged two closets.  Someone made fun of me that I wasn't done unpacking yet so I decided I better get to it.  Although, I'm still not done.  My goal is the end of June - we'll see.
I've decided there are some similarities between living here and where I grew up.  There are many towns in the area.  Each town has its own elementary, middle and high school.  When you play sports for one town, you travel to the other towns to play them.  Sometimes this can take you 30 - 40 minutes.  When you describe to someone where the field is you don't use road names or directions.  Such as, turn right at Kramer's corner, or turn left at THE blinking light in town.  However, when you are new to an area, you mapquest things and get names of roads.  The blinking light may or may not have a road sign, and Mapquest doesn't know that, so you have a hard time finding the field.  The directions to Brandon's last baseball game literally read in one part 'turn left at Lee's chicken'.  No address of where the field was, no school name, no park name.  I have a few people that look out for me and ask if I know where stuff is, so that's good, and Brandon got to his game early!
We went to Meijer Gardens with Aunt Kathy and saw all the beautiful butterflies.  It was Matt's first trip there. The kids love that place so we became members for the year.  They showed Matt the HUGE horse and we fed the fish.

The school sponsored a truck from Feeding America.  It provides food for low income families. Anika, Maria, and I helped distribute some of the food.
We planted flowers in pots with the neighbor.

Jessica 'traveled' to Washington DC.  I was airport security and hotel check in.  When I asked her where she was from, she answered MN.  After questioning her a bit more she remembered she was born in MN and lives in MI now. Phew!  Although I can't blame her. I was talking with a mom about how far her sister had moved from home living all the way in Virginia. Then she reminded me we only live 12 hours from Virginia now.  Yep, we've moved.

on the airplane

There have been some cool storms coming in off the lake, the cloud formations are fun to watch and change quickly.

We found our first MI letterbox in Grand Haven.  We walked all the way to the end of the pier to the lighthouse and then walked back to find the letterbox.

Mother's Day was amazing.  We went to our friends that live on the beach and just enjoyed life. The kids have dubbed it the best mother's day ever. We even shot rockets off from their deck.  The shoot went great, the retrieval, not so much.  We promised them new rockets and a better place to shoot in the near future.

Anika is going to Michigan Adventure with her class. Brandon is going to the planetarium and Hoffmaster state park.  Jessica is going to the zoo.  Maria went to Meijer Garden to look at the butterflies a few weeks ago.  They are keeping busy!
We missed Holland Tulip time due to soccer, maybe next year - although around here it was called the Stem Festival this year due to the early spring.
That's still hard for me to say - maybe next year.  We used to play the game 'Where do you see yourself in 5 years, or 10 years?'  Now, I don't look much past one week.  Its weird for me to think what we will be doing 'next year'.  We have been enjoying the times when we get to take adventures as a family.  Good memories.
But we did take in the Grand Haven Kite Festival.  Aunt Kathy met us after soccer and wow what a day to be on the beach!