Father's Day - Pow Wow Sunday

Our Father's Day was spent in Mountain Lake enjoying the first day of Pow Wow. We started the day with a community wide church service in the park. After church, we ate a quick lunch then got everyone down for naps so they would be ready for the rest of a busy day.

In the afternoon, our family participated in the Pow Wow Road Race. 

Mike and Silas walked a mile in the fitness walk.

Lydia, my mom, and I did the two-mile fitness walk.

Jonah ran the 1/2 mile race like he did last year. 

Here he is ready to cross the finish line. He shaved about a minute and 15 seconds off of his time from last year!

These two cuties waited near the finish line to cheer on their big brother.

After the Road Race, we got ready for the kiddie parade. We pulled together a theme at Grandma's house - Indiana Jonah and the Raiders of the Lost Monkeys. Yes, it's a bit odd, but it seemed to work with what we had. And, Monkey, Cap Cap, Heezy, and Cheezy fit right into the theme and got to be a part of the parade too!

We enjoyed supper in the park that evening. Pow Wow Pups (Mt Lake corn dogs), Lao egg rolls, and Heritage Fair milk shakes were our menu. Lydia even got to try some ice cream. She thought it was pretty good as you can see below.

The boys finished their supper with a bag of popcorn.

We ended the evening by watching a concert in the park by the MN Teen Challenge Choir. Lydia and Grandpa had a good time hanging out together.

We had a GREAT Father's Day with Daddy and Grandpa!

Saturday in Mountain Lake

We spent all of last week in Minnesota. The first few days were spent in Mountain Lake with my parents. We arrived in Mountain Lake on Friday night (the 14th). Saturday, our first full day, was a mostly relaxing one. All of the boys (including Mike) got haircuts. My dad and I took the kids to a park. Mike and I got to go out on a date for lunch. I spent some time sifting through boxes of stuff that I saved from high school. I kept just about every note, letter, and program. It was crazy to think back on all of those memories! After supper, we roasted marshmallows over the fire pit. 

I love Silas' expressions in these two pictures. :)

Lydia has no idea of what roasted marshmallows are yet. If she did, she wouldn't have been so content on Daddy's lap.

It had probably been 2 years since the boys roasted marshmallows. From the looks of this picture, we didn't tell them that they were supposed to have marshmallows on the end of their sticks! Then, once we put a marshmallow on Silas' stick, he promptly removed it and ate it...oops, forgot to tell Silas how to roast the marshmallow first. 

Thankfully Grandma and Grandpa can show us how it's done! 

YUM!

9-Month Old Lydia

This precious girl turned 9-months old just over a week ago. I still can't believe it. Our Lydia Lucille is growing too quickly! She is such a joy and a wonderful blessing to our family - a blessing that we are so undeserving of but that God has so graciously given to us.

Lydia had her 9-month check up today. She is a healthy little girl! Lydia weighs 21 lbs, 9 oz which puts her in the 90% for weight. Her height is in the 78%ile. Although Lydia had dropped down on the growth curve from around the 95th %ile to the 90th, her doctor wasn't too concerned...in fact, he seemed to think it was a good thing! :)

Lydia is a super fun, crazy baby. She is very smiley. She loves to dance, clap, shake her head "no," laugh, play peek a boo, and be kissed on her tummy and neck. And, Lydia babbles almost non-stop sometimes. She thinks her brothers are the best! They can make her laugh and giggle like no one else can. Sometimes Silas just has to look at Lydia and she will start giggling and shrieking. 

Lydia loves to be with people but always prefers Mommy. I think she would be held by me or in my lap all day long if she could. Lydia was sick last week while we were on vacation in the Brainerd, MN, area. She ran high fevers, wasn't eating well, was super fussy, and slept a lot. During this time we were staying in a hotel room. Since I didn't want the boys to wake up to her fussing and crying at night, we would bring her into our bed when she woke up upset which was once every night. That girl made sure there was absolutely no extra space between us as she cuddled up next to me to sleep. Although I couldn't sleep well that way, those were such sweet times spent with my little girl.

Lydia experienced lots of "firsts" last week while we were on vacation in Mountain Lake and Brainerd. She rode in her stroller in a rode race and a kiddie parade, rode on a carousel, watched a parade, ate popcorn and a sucker, went swimming, mini-golfed with Mommy, and played in the sand.

Happy 9 Months to our little sweetie! We can hardly remember life in our family without you. I feel incredibly blessed to be your Mommy. May God give us wisdom to raise you and your brothers in His ways!

And We're Up to Date

 It's been a bit busy here the past few weeks. It has been a very good, but very full month of December. Today has been one of those rare stay at home all day kinds of days. So what have we been up to this month? Lots of Christmas activities - town events, church events, and family time. Last Saturday (the 8th) we hosted a Christmas gathering at our house for our church family. My parents came down that day for a quick visit, hung out with the kids, helped us prepare for our party, and spent a little time fellowshipping with our church family. Yesterday was our church's children's program during the morning service. In the evening we hosted a family movie night. It was a great day spent with the body of believers here in Wahoo! 

The boys have enjoyed watching some Christmas movies - Charlie Brown's Christmas, Christmas Eve on Sesame Street, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and Word World Christmas. And, they have enjoyed eating Christmas cookies, coloring Christmas pages, reading Christmas books, and playing with the Little People Nativity set. Silas has been making baby Jesus spend quite a bit of time sleeping on a pirate ship lately! Jonah is now done with preschool until the new year. And, last week was our final BSF until then as well. 

This sweet girl is 3 months old as of yesterday. She had her first cold over the past two weeks. I ended up taking her into the doctor last week because I wanted to make sure her lungs sounded ok since she was breathing a little funny at times. Thankfully, she was fine. It seems as if really thick mucus in her upper airway was the cause. Even though she did not eat well at all during her cold, she must be getting plenty to eat. She weighed 14 lbs, 14 oz at her appointment. Lydia wears mostly 3-6 and 6 month clothes as well as some 6-9 months! She is still waking up once at night. I usually put her down around 8:30 pm. Then, she wakes up around 2:30 or 3:00am. She gets up for the day anywhere from 6:00-8:00am. Both boys were consistently sleeping 10-11 hours at night at this age. I would love it if she would get to that point, too. However, I do cherish our middle of the night feedings. She often wakes up squealing and squeaking happily and will smile and talk like crazy at 3:00 am. Maybe she appreciates her one-on-one attention?! Just this week Lydia has been able to sit in the Bumbo seat. It has been a great thing for all of us. She has always liked to sit upright, which until now has meant that she wanted to be held most of the time. Now, she happily sits in the Bumbo for 15-20 minutes at a time. The boys love it as they can bring her lots of toys to play with. And, Lydia LOVES watching her brothers. She smiles away at them and her eyes will follow them in and out of rooms until she can't see them anymore. Lydia is such a sweet blessing to us!

Another exciting part of this month is that Jonah won the preschool age division coloring contest through the Chamber of Commerce. This is his coloring sheet. One of his prizes was a box of 64 crayons. He has liked having so many new colors! Also, the same day he found out about winning the coloring contest, the town newspaper called to say that he received the honorable mention in his age division for their drawing contest in which he had to draw his favorite Christmas scene. The newspaper will print it in the paper this week. Maybe we have a little artist on our hands?!?!

We are looking forward to celebrating Christmas here at home on Saturday before heading to Minnesota on Sunday after church to be with our family. Merry Christmas, everyone!

Decorating Cookies

This girl didn't decorate cookies, but she sure was cute watching us hard at work!

Pardon the bed hair - both boys napped that day! Yay!

Taking the first bite...and many more followed! :)

Two New Traditions

We started two new traditions at our home this year for Christmas. In a previous blog, I wrote about a new Thanksgiving tradition. It has been fun and meaningful over the past year or two to consider what we want to teach our children about holidays and how to carry out that teaching. The boys have loved these new Christmas activities.

This is a Noel Calendar. Noel Piper used to make these advent calendars which had an accompanying story that involved all of the parts of the nativity story. I had really wanted one a number of years ago, but then she stopped making them. Last fall, Noel posted a blog saying that she had some of the burlap screen-printed backgrounds left over and was giving them away. I got two of them. This fall, I collected all the animals, painted old-fashioned clothespins to look like people, and sewed lots of little velcro pieces onto the banner to create this advent calendar - one for us and one for my sister and her family.  Along with the story Noel provided, I added a short Bible reading to each day that takes us mostly through Luke 1 & 2. We have had a wonderful time using this calendar!

Our other new tradition has been to read a Christmas book every night. I collected Christmas books from ones we already had and ones I found at our library's annual book sale. I wrapped them up at the beginning of the month. Now, the boys take turns each night picking out a book that we can read together. I would love to be able to put all of the books under the tree, but I know that at this stage in life they would not stay wrapped. So, we have a box we pull out every night. Maybe one day I can trust them to stay under the tree...

Much of my desire to develop meaningful traditions for our family came from reading the book Treasuring God in Our Traditions by Noel Piper. It is a great, simple, encouraging read!

A Visit With Santa

At the end of November, we enjoyed an evening out to participate in Wahoo's Christmas tree lighting followed by visits with Santa. 

The boys well know that Santa is just pretend. So, when Santa asked them what they wanted for Christmas Jonah just started at him strangely. At other times that people have asked Jonah what he wants Santa to bring to him, he will say, "Santa doesn't bring presents. He is just pretend. Mommies and Daddies give presents to kids." Glad he knows the truth, hoping he doesn't hurt any feelings with his matter-of-factness!