Fun Project

James and Heidi spent a big portion of their weekend on a history project. And, as always, they had fun doing it. :) They did a news broadcast from 1933. I thought it'd be fun to share. First a few photos of the prep. Dad wasn't home at the time and James needed to wear a tie....as all good news casters do. ;) No one at home knew how to tie a tie, so Heidi went to old faithful........YouTube.

We snagged a shirt from Dad's closet for James, so it's a bit on the big side. ;) It served its purpose!

Shooting the weather segment

Cuz I like it. ;)

Down to serious news business!

And, the finished product. They aren't being graded on the technical aspects of this. It's a history class. So, try to overlook all of that.......the dark faces, the watermark in the middle of the screen, the traffic in the background of the weather segment, etc. ;).

Also, make sure you go past the "credits" at the end for some fun bloopers! ;)

Click below

Oh, and you will probably want to pause the music at the bottom of the blog before viewing

Love, Wendy

Gracie Lynn is....

........EIGHT!!! Yes, yes indeed...time is marching on. She is at such a FUN age!!! She is so energetic about life in general and such a HAPPY girl! Lets see....Gracie loves to draw and do anything artsy! She loves all of my cooking. It seems no matter what is on the table for dinner she will say, "Oh yuuuuum, that's my favorite, Mama" :) And, she is such a natural healthy eater too. She will pick an orange over a cookie hands down! She has become quite the little reader. She just started reading the Little House series. She loves to twirl and spin and jump rope. She loves clothes.  She's playing soccer right now and is really enjoying that as well. She's a great student and enjoys school, although lately she has been saying that "we keep doing the same thing" hmmmm? Maybe it's time for summer vacation!

But, most of all...more than anything....Gracie loves to TALK! :) The girl will never tire of talking and talking and talking........and talking! lol! She's just a regular chatterbox. A few weeks ago we received her report card from school. It's a two page report card with all kinds of categories. You receive a "+" for "mastery of the skill" a "checkmark" for "progressing towards the skill" and a "-" for "needs improvement". So, I quickly glance through her report card and see all "+" signs on both pages except for one "checkmark"..the category? "Classroom behavior"...WHAT???? GRACIE??? Not behaving at school?? Huh?? She is an extremely compliant child!  Then in the side note the teacher wrote.. "Gracie likes to talk? LOL!! Really??? That is NOT news to her Dad and I. So, thus the reason for the "checkmark" Ya know what? It is what it is. She received a similar report from her first grade teacher. My mom told me then..."Wendy, just accept it as reality because she will never change. That's just Gracie!" Yes, it is indeed, our Gracie girl.......our beautiful, fun loving, happy,giggly, joyful, talkative girl!!!!!

So, chat away sweetie. I will never tire of that sweet voice........well, hmmmmm? maybe sometimes. LOL!!! Isaac and Gracie sit together in the way back of our minivan. We hear quite often from Isaac. "Mom, will you puuuuuuulease tell Gracie to be quiet" Ha Ha Ha! So, I guess at least some of us do tire of your voice some of the time. ;) But, I wouldn't have you any other way because then you wouldn't be YOU now would you?!!

I love you to the moon and back!!!

A few pictures from our birthday celebration last Thursday. Grandma and Grandpa Dick, Ethan and Stephanie were here for the celebration! Gracie requested this sweatshirt so that she could be "twins" with Daddy and Heidi. ;)

Opening a card from Granny.

Thank You Gramps and Neena!

New outfit and flip flops

Love, Wendy

Squim Squime

Isaac found "Squim Squime". I have no clue where he got that name, but he began calling him that immediately when he found him. He came running to the house "Mama, I found Squim Squime!!!!" The kids looked it up in our handy dandy nature book and this is a spotted salamander. We found one of these last year too. Up until last year I had never seen one of these. Perhaps I'm deprived?? As kids we found all kinds of critters, but never a salamander. So, we told Isaac that he could keep him for two days. Believe me, Squim Squime was loved to the max for those two days and then Isaac happily returned him to his natural habitat.

                                                                       

 Love, Wendy                                  

Spring Break Project

So, the girls...Heidi especially...have been wanting to revamp their bedroom for quite some time. And, I must say, it did need it! So we took spring break as the opportunity to tackle the job and get er done! We redid this room shortly after moving in here when Heidi was 3 or so. She was SOOO excited about her yellow bedroom with rainbows at the time. So, removing all of that was a bit sad, but not too awfully sad because the girls were so excited about their new room. :)

First....removing the wallpaper border. Heidi did this by herself. We have a wallpaper remover steamer, which makes the job so much easier!!!

Some drywall repair

A job for everyone! Try as he might, the boy could NEVER suck all the sweetness out of those cheeks. ;)

The fun part!

Heidi wanted the family handprints on her walls. Pretty cool...and fun! ;)

Finally everything back in! YAY!!! :)

One more thing. During this project, the girls took over the living room. Mr. Cooper is not allowed on the furniture. But, for some reason since the world was topsy turvy, he assumed that the rules were too. Oh MY!!! Everything is back to normal now Mister...including the rules! It was fun while it lasted! ;)

Love, Wendy

Splash Universe

On Easter Sunday, we attended worship service here at home as usual. Following services we traveled to Splash Universe for a splashin' good time. We were able to splash Sunday afternoon/evening. Stayed the night, which is always FUN!  Up the next morning to an awesome breakfast buffet, followed by more water fun. It was an indoor park right in the hotel......two water slides, pools, lots of water gadgets and switches and sprays, a hug hot tub, a river type pool where you floated with the current in tubes. It was just AWESOME!!! Loved it!!  Then right next door Cabellas. It was a nice mini vacation! Here's the proof....lots of smiles.

Easter finery

Yes, we did put Cooper in the van with us all in our Easter best...yikes! That was a hairy adventure. Ha! We dropped him off to stay the night with a friend while we hit Splash Universe.

Splash Fun!

This huge bucket would fill...

and then...dump...Isaac is in there somewhere. ha!

Our little dare-devil playing the driving game

Back at the room

Cabellas

Ducklings

Jacob has been itching to add some ducklings to our household. On Monday his wish finally came true. :-D As of today I think they are Joey, Faygo, Romeo and Milkshake. That is subject to change though. ;) Jacob says that he can tell them apart, but I'll have to say that I'm still having trouble. They are very CUTE and fun to watch!! They love to play in the water...obviously huh? They are ducks right?! ;) When we got them they were a week old, which means they are getting close to two weeks now. We can already see a huge difference in them. They will be fully grown at 6 weeks...wowzers! I can't remember the type of duck they are...the name?? ...but, they are like a domestic mallard. So, the males will get pretty colors. We don't know how to tell the males from the females, so we don't know yet how many we have of each. We shall see. We are all really enjoying them!!!
Love,
Wendy

A Moment

So, I told the kids I had to snap a photo to preserve the moment. I know you've heard a bit about James and seen a few photos of him. What's so special about tonight? Well, when Heidi came home 18 months ago and told us that she and James were "going out" we said, "going where?" HA! You won't be "going out" anywhere for a good long while. I think Tom said something like, "you can spend all the time you'd like on the backporch in my presence" ;-) And, they've pretty much done that over the past 18 months. James has spent a good amount of time with our family and we have all....especially a certain young lady ;)... grown quite fond of him! He's an awesome young man. Heidi and James both turned 16 in December. Heidi has been driving since December and James just recently got his driver's license. So, tonight was the night that he came and picked her up for the first time and off they went. Oh my! They went and saw the movie "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" Neither of them cared for the movie, but I know they had a good time anyway. One thing's for sure, whenever they are together they ALWAYS have fun!

Love,
Wendy

Isaac Funny

So, it's Spring break....I gaze into the refrigerator and realize the kids are eating me out of house and home! I accuse them of being pigs and tell them that I need to attach snouts to all their faces...lol! And Isaac says, "What do they call a mom of a pig?"  Hahahahahahaha!!!

A glimpse

Ok folks, I have good intentions about updating here. I know I'm behind. It's just.......it's just.....well.....life gets in the way! To stress my point I thought I'd share some email convo between Tom and I from yesterday. Tom being at work, me at home with the kids. Oh yeah...it's SPRING BREAK! Yay!!! :) :) Oh...and we have new ducklings, which I will share about here soon. You need that info for the email to make sense. And, we are in the process of painting the girls' bedroom.

Me:  Where is the wide scraper doomaflappy. The tool that I can get the wallpaper off with??

Tom:  Look in one of the buckets when you walk in the door

Me:  K....can NOT for the life of me figure out the stupid duck light. It must be more intelligent than I (note to readers...notice it is the duck light that is "stupid" and not me ;)

Tom:  ???

Me: was gonna leave the lovely ducklings in the shop for the day until Jacob decided to spray paint in the shop.....thus causing my concern for the ducklings being fumigated in there. What you ask was he painting?? A sign that reads something like "feed ducks for 25 cents" I was alerted to the scheme when Isaac came running in the house in search of cash. So, the lovely ducklings are in the process of being moved and I can't figure out the clamp dumaflapper on the heat light....sigh.... so much for a productive spring break.....and oh yeah ...ahhhhh chooooooooo! sigh...

ps. and that my dear gracie is called sarcasm! LOL!

Tom: Soccer Practice??

Me: Thursday, thank goodness!

Tom: Good!

Me: The steam thingamajiggy is not working. No steam is coming out! Hmmmmmmm? (for readers, this is what we use to remove the wallpaper)

So, there ya have just a glimpse into my world. And, believe me that is just a DROP IN THE BUCKET of what went on here yesterday. ;) I am NOT complaining!! LOVE my life! LOVE my kids and LOVE spending time with them. Oh and I am very excited about the lovely duckings too....they are so stinkin' cute!!!  I'm just sayin'. ;)

 I attempted to post last night, but blogger was not cooperating. I will try to do better with my blogging. I will try to make some posts today, but I'm not making any promises! Hey, at least I got this one here today eh?!

Love,
Wendy

PURE HAPPINESS