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!

The dangers of home exercise

This is what happens when you run through the room while mom is performing a home version of BodyPump.  Perhaps renewing the YMCA membership is becoming more of a NEED than a want.

Another Adventure

Yesterday I went with Brandon's class to the West Michigan Symphony in the Frauenthal theater.  We are really starting to like that place!  I would guess its about the size of Calvary church's main auditorium.
Anyway, when you hear that there will be over 1000 recorder wielding third and fourth graders in a large theater, most people would run in the opposite direction. I however, braved the elements and walked IN. I even PAID for my ticket. And I was greatly rewarded.

Imagine the whole bottom level and the sides of the upper level filled with a third of fourth grade students holding a recorder.  They were instructed to keep their recorders in their cases until told otherwise - they even unzipped the cases all together at the count of three.
The classes have been working for MONTHS on this. The orchestra played nine songs (or parts of them).  One song had Can-Can dancers on stage, one song had a ballet dancer on stage, one song the kids had practiced a sitting dance routine, two of the songs the kids had been taught the words to sing along, and two of the songs they played their recorders, all from their seats. It was so cool and it sounded great - no ear plugs necessary and no ringing of the ears when you left!
This trip was progress in many ways.
-I knew by face all of the other chaperones - and I knew 2 of their names; one I even shared an 'inside joke sort of look' with that made me laugh inside (and yes I know she is reading this)
-I knew two of three teachers - my kids are still helping me with that one, I can't keep straight who is who and who is music and art and pe and who is married and who is not.....
-the music was amazing - especially the french horn player, but I'm probably a bit biased; one of my sadnesses of leaving MN was my fear of loss of good music to expose my kids to at a cheap price; there are so many free concerts to get a hold of there;  These tickets were $5, Maria got in free;  My aunt assures me that they have these in Grand Rapids as well, so I am hopeful we will experience more concerts in the future!

Today Maria is off to Meijer gardens with her class - we hope to go back with all the kids on Saturday.  I have been printing a few resumes and sending them off.  We'll see what happens!

The house

Many of you have asked how the house is coming.  Well, here it is.  There is still lots to do:  the whole basement, a cupboard in the kitchen, finishing the kitchen floor, a mantle over the fireplace, and I can't even begin the list on the outside!  But, this is what we have so far!

here it is

We plan on removing all the green bushes and starting over on the landscaping.  Its a mess.

entrance

living room

kitchen

formal dining room ie boxes aka pantry

kitchen table - door to garage and bathroom are to the right

family room

door to garage

main level bathroom

basement  - playroom

basement - the very back will be Anika's bedroom someday

laundry room is upstairs

upstairs hallway

Jessica and Maria's bedroom

kids' bathroom

Anika and Brandon's bedroom

Matt and Carla's bedroom

Matt and Carla's bathroom- I wasn't kidding when I said our new bathroom  is  bigger than our old bedroom

Matt and Carla's closet

We also found some time to decorate Easter cut out cookies. We missed this tradition at Christmas, so it was fun to do it now.

And we took our annual Robin Bird Egg Lipstick picture.

All four kids had soccer games on Saturday.  It was busy but fun to watch them in action again.  And Sunday night game night was Peanuts.  Oh yes, I have passed it on to the next generation!  Some of you know the game as Dutch Blitz.  Good times!

Have a good week!

Thoughts on a Wednesday morning

I’m tired again today, but my outlook is different.  

First, we have been searching for a piano teacher, and I kept hitting dead ends.  Yesterday, I felt led to check Craigslist and GUESS WHAT?  There was a Calvin College graduate in the area looking for piano students and she has already emailed me back trying to set up a time to meet.  Way big God thing, hope it works out.  So excited about the possibility!

I'm still looking for a job. Jessica asks me every day if I found one, sort of like hide and seek to her. Maria has informed me I am not allowed to get a job, because she wants to stay home with me. 

I got a letter ready to TCF bank to close the account - AGAIN.  I even got it notarized.

I love going to bed and reading, although I need to go to bed earlier.

I had a great run yesterday.  I only ran over 4 miles but I ran hard the whole way.  It felt so good.

I’ve been working really hard on labeling all the pictures on our computer. I want to get all my pictures onto the computer and get them labeled so I can upload the MN ones and give my kids their books about MN.  Actually, I really want a book to look at and remember, too.

We are still trying to decide whether to put Maria into Spanish Immersion or English Kindergarten. I'm so afraid we'll make the wrong choice and she will end up struggling, especially at recess.  She is the one that has no complaints about school, so I'd like to keep it that way.

Jessica is reading like a MANIAC.  She reads at bedtime on her own now, too.  It is so fun to see.

Maria is starting to read.  We get the easy readers from the library and she can put the sounds together. This point in life never ceases to amaze me.  How they go from making sounds to getting words to come out. So very cool!

There are two girls from Anika's basketball team on her soccer team.  We also bought her a new soccer ball after practice last night so we have one excited girl.  Getting on a soccer team has been its own little challenge, but it all worked out so yeah God.

Today my devotional was about the 12 spies that entered Canaan.  Joshua and Caleb focused on God, the other 10 focused on the giants that occupied the land.  It was just good for me to hear.

"He (Caleb) was focused on the magnitude of God, not the magnitude of any giant challenges ahead. Today you may see many giants that challenge your faith — giants of time and energy, finances and resources, fear and faithlessness.

God wants you to be confident that he’s pouring his strength into you so you can do whatever it takes to defeat these giants. God says you can take possession of an abundant life because he is with you.

By seeing his hand sweep away the personal giants in your life, you’ll be even more confident that you can do all things through him who strengthens you (Philippians 4:13)."  

by Jon Walker from purpose driven connection web site

Today I get to pay the IRS and make sure our soccer calendar is organized.  Looks like a wild and crazy kind of day!

Happy Easter

Two Weeks in Pictures

The swing set is up and being used almost daily!

The neighbor girl comes to play or Jessica and Maria go to her house often.

I got in a couple of runs. This is one of my running beaches.

Friends from MN came to visit and we ate pizza at Fricanno's with a view of Muskegon Lake.

We had mystery night at school.  It was a mystery dinner.  Each of the teachers was a suspect and we had to figure out who stole the cookies from the cookie jar.  Turns out it was Peter Pan and Goldilocks.  We guessed correctly but did not get the grand prize - a jar of cookies.

We dyed eggs.

We had Brandon's former MN teacher's parents over for supper.  We taught them how to play PIT - very fun.

We went to Chicago for 3 days.

science and industry museum

Adler Planetarium

Field Museum

snack at Ed Debevic's

We had a tea party with a neighbor.

MN neighbors came to visit. Great times of playing and laughing.  Here we are at a very yummy pancake breakfast at a local church.

We had two Easter Egg grabs (the eggs were just there for the taking) and one Easter Egg Hunt (we hide our eggs and make them work for it).

We had Gino's East Pizza.  We took it from Chicago frozen and baked it up at home - YUMMY!

We had a yummy Easter breakfast in church before the service.

We had friends and family for Easter lunch.

Jessica and Maria had their first soccer practices.  Brandon and Anika are supposed to have their's this week.

There have been lots of emotions through it all.  I'm fairly certain the next two weeks aren't going to be as eventful.  There won't be any trips out of town for sure!

Hope you all are well!