Birthdays!

Yes, we have recently celebrated two more birthdays at our house. Isaac turned 9 on March 23rd and Gracie turned 10 on April 15. That means that the kids are now 18, 14, 10 and 9!! Goodness! We had an awesome time celebrating! Isaac had three friends over for his birthday...for the night. ;) They all rode the bus home together on Friday when the fun began and believe me the fun did not stop until they went home Saturday afternoon. We had some SERIOUS energy in the house! Even more than normal....didn't know that was possible, but it IS! :) The unfortunate part was that after a long stretch of dry days it rained on March 23rd. We had planned an evening outside. Tom and I scrambled for a plan B during the day on Friday. We ended up renting a basketball court in town. I think it was a pretty big hit and allowed some energy to be burned off. Saturday morning we took them to a movie. We have a theatre here that does 2 months of free Saturday morning movies every Spring. They are not new release, but we enjoy going and seeing them on the big screen. This particular movie was a Chipmunks movie...I think it was called "Chipwrecked" It was cute and the kids had a good time!

Here is a picture of the crew...

Gracie's birthday fell on a Sunday this year....potluck Sunday. We have potluck dinner at church every third Sunday. Gracie's birthday celebration was a BIT quieter. I say bit because it is never quiet around here. lol! She had her birthday meal the night before. She chose jambalaya, which made her Daddy very happy as well! ;) On Sunday Gramps and Neena came from Indianapolis and Grandma and Grandpa Dick were here as well. As I said, we had potluck dinner after church and then back home for birthday festivities. The highlight of the afternoon occured when Gramps commented during the gift opening "There goes a dog chasing a rabbit" Didn't think much of it at the time...continued unwrapping gifts. But, as time went on we realized that the dog was Chance (James' dog that lives here now) and Gracie's rabbit. YIKES! Somehow the rabbit gate had gotten left open and both rabbits were out running freely. We had to pause the gift opening and go on a rabbit search. We did not find them right away. We finished the gift opening and then went back to the search. We found Mopsey, but no Flopsey. :( Finally later that evening Tom found him across the road. We live on a main Michigan highway! All is well and they are back where they belong. Gracie now has a female baby bunny that she got the day before Easter. We hope to have baby bunnies someday. ;)
Here's the birthday girl!

Here's Gracie's new female bunny, Suzy. James and Heidi got her for Gracie at an auction. James is big time into going to auctions and getting deals and re-selling for much more than he paid for them. Tom calls him Sanford. LOL! He's very good at it though! Anyway, Suzy is a little auction bunny. We just put her in the Easter basket for fun...thought it was appropriate though. :)

Love, Wendy

Pep Talk

Oh goodness. Once again I need to play catch up here big time. Yikes! I'm not giving up on keeping this up. Pep talk to myself! I think I can. I think I can. I think I can. :) I started this blog in 2005 in an attempt to preserve some of our family memories. I have some friends that spend lots of time scrapbooking BEAUTIFUL pages that will be treasured by their families for many years to come. In 2005 I weighed my options between scrapbooking and blogging.  What would be the best use of my limited time? I decided at that time to focus on blogging. My reasoning is that I KNOW I will be taking pictures along the way. So, we will always have those.  It is important for me to preserve our experiences that we have along the way and my thoughts on those experiences because if I don't preserve these somehow so much of it will be forgotten. I want to be able to keep these memories tucked away somewhere besides my head because my head can sometimes be not so reliable. lol! And the older I get the less reliable it will be. ;) My hope is that even after I am gone my children and grandchildren can continue to read the stories that I post here about our family and enjoy and remember. BUT, I have to write it down in order for that to happen! LOL! Recommitting myself to do better with this because it IS important. Just a few minutes a day will be better than I have been doing right?! If small snippets is what I can do during this season. Small snippets is what it shall be. See, I'm out of time for now. But, I did say SOMETHING! I'll be back SOON!

Love,
Wendy

PS...Tom's Mom had to have a hospital stay this week. She had a spot on her bladder that they were concerned about....and so was I. Please say a prayer of thanksgiving to God today because there is no cancer and all went well! Praise the Lord!