Spring Break in Florida

Our reward for surviving the eternal winter was a spring break trip to Florida!  We drove down and stayed with my parents.  Karen and Juan were there too and we had lots of fun family time.  We swam in the pool, went to the beach, played board games, went for bike rides, ate ice cream, and went to Mote Aquarium in Sarasota.  It was a wonderful week and we're so thankful to my parents for having us!

Our first time eating at Chick-fil-A!
We stopped at one on the way home too.
Yum!!



My parents have been watching these sandhill crane
parents and their baby all winter.  They got to see the
baby grow up over the last few months!

Hooray for flowers and green things growing!



Peter had lots of fun with his rip stick

We spent a lot of time at the pool.
The weather was beautiful with only 1 day of rain!

Ice cream at Big Olaf's

Lunch at Myakka River Oyster Bar

Beach time!

We spent much of our beach time looking for shells and shark teeth...

and also some time digging and making sand castles!

Annual family picture!

We went to Mote Aquarium in Sarasota.
They had a lot of neat displays of a wide
variety of sea life.  This is a seahorse that
looks like a plant.

Waiting to watch the sharks get fed

Manatee

Sea turtle

We had fun watching this dolphin

SHARKS!!

Souvenirs from Grandpa and Grandma--stuffed shark and dolphins

One night my parents stayed with the kids so that we could go
out for dinner with Juan and Karen.  We went to Sharky's on the Pier.
It was a beautiful night so we walked on the pier and ate outside!

Peter lost a tooth while we were there!

These 9 square puzzles are so much harder than they look!

Grandma promised $5 to the first person to complete it.

Miriam won!

Triplets

Mexican dinner

More pool time!

Peter and Esther learned how to play Carcassonne.

The weather was perfect for bike riding.

Grandma's pancakes in the shape of the kids' initials.

Another day at the beach!

Dairy Queen on our last night before heading home.

Our awesome neighbors welcomed us home!

This happened a couple days after we got home.
Seriously?  On April 14?

February and March Update

The months keep slipping by so quickly!  February and March were pretty much just cold and snowy, with an eternal winter (yes, that's a reference to Frozen which was also a big part of our lives from February and March).

Here are a few things we did:

Played on the huge snow piles

Peter played another season of basketball at school

 

 

Miriam wrote One Hundred 100s for the 100th day of school

Peter and I had a fun mother-son night at Cadets at church

More huge snow piles at the bus stop

January...

January was snow, snow and more snow.  It was also COLD, COLD and more COLD!!  We had a snow day the day right before Christmas break, and 2 more right after break.  We have had 2 more since then.  Combined with a planned records day, the kids have only had 1 full week of school since mid-December!  It's been crazy, but also really fun and kind of nice to have some days off to relax and break out of our normal busy routine.  This week looks relatively calm, so we're hoping for a full week.

We have been playing outside, sledding, and doing our normal activities.  Both girls are currently taking gymnastics and loving it.  Peter is playing basketball on Saturdays through school.

Last week we needed something fun to do on Friday night, so we thought, "Hey, we should pull out Miriam's loose tooth with Peter's remote controlled helicopter!"  Ok, here's what really happened... at dinner Miriam was frustrated because her tooth was super loose, but wouldn't come out.  Casey joked about pulling it out with Peter's remote controlled ATV or helicopter, and Miriam jumped on the idea.  We kept asking if she really wanted to do it, and she said she did.  Here is the result:

On a side note, she has lost 6 teeth since the end of October!  She is now missing her top 2 and her bottom 4.  Peter has only lost 5 so far, so she has now surpassed him.  We can't believe how fast she is losing them--she lost 3 in the last 9 days.  Other than the helicopter one, they seem to fall out very easily.  The tooth fairy is keeping very busy at our house.

Here's what Miriam's mouth looks
like right now.  Don't mind the crazy
post-shower hair!



The end of Christmas

We finally feel like Christmas is really over now.  The kids finally went back to school on Wednesday, so the girls brought home the gifts that they had made for us at school before break. 

Miriam made an adorable book
about the Christmas story and everyone
who was searching for Baby Jesus.
She also made a beautiful clay
angel ornament (which sort of blends in
with her shirt in the picture and is hard to see!)

Esther made a perpetual calendar.
Many Dutch people put these in their
bathrooms or other places where they
will see them.  They list birthdays and
anniversaries so that they can keep using
it year after year to remember those
important dates.  She decorated each month's
page with beautiful pictures!

Today we finally got to have Miriam's class Christmas party.  I helped since I am the room parent for her class and we had a lot of fun.  They had some snacks and Mrs. Sytsma opened the gifts from the students.  Then we did a craft and the students did a little gift exchange with each other.

I think Christmas is now officially over for the 2013 season!

Snow ice cream!

On our second snow day after break, we decided to jump on the bandwagon after seeing multiple people post on Facebook about making snow ice cream with milk, sugar and vanilla.  It was actually quite good and a fun thing to try!

Welcome to 2014!

Here is what we've been up to since the new year started last week:

January 1:  Casey and his mom continued the New Year's Day tradition of making Ollie Bolen...

January 2:  Somebody got braces!  I also had to work because my school went back for Thursday and Friday.  The kids got to hang out with Grandpa and Grandma W.

January 3 was my 39th birthday.  It was probably the best birthday I've ever had!  It started with these 3 sweeties bringing me breakfast in bed (Grape Nuts and orange juice), along with cards and a special homemade gift that Esther made.  They did this on their own since Casey was already at work!

Later in the morning we went to Tim Horton's for donuts with my parents and Karen.

On the way back, my sister took her car through the car wash.  Peter and Miriam pretended to be scared.  These pictures cracked me up!

In the afternoon, Karen, Peter, Miriam and I hung out and played some games.  I thought Esther had gone with Casey to his office because they told me his boss had some filing for her to do to earn some extra money.  In reality, she was helping him prepare for my surprise party for later that night!

We had planned to go out for dinner with my parents and Karen, and that did go as expected.  We had a nice dinner Twisted Rooster and then I thought we were going to go back to my parents' house for cake.  When we left the restaurant, Casey pulled into a Meijer parking lot and made me get out of the car for a minute so he could fill Peter and Miriam in on what was happening.  Then he blindfolded me and drove me around for about 35 minutes (apparently dinner went too quickly and we were going to be too early!)  I got completely lost as to where we were, other than that I knew we were mostly on highways.  I didn't know which direction we were going or have any clue as to where we were.

We finally arrived and I still didn't know where we were until I heard the sound of a familiar door closing behind me.  Just as I said that I knew where we were (my parents' house), Casey pulled the blindfold off and everyone yelled, "Surprise!"  I was completely shocked and overwhelmed by all the people that were there.  Neighbors and friends who are all special people in our lives had come for the celebration.  It was so much fun to have all those people there, and I'm so thankful to Casey, my family, Casey's family and some good friends who did a lot of work to make it all happen.

There was plenty of delicious food!

Chocolate fountain and cake!

Casey's mom's cake--yum!

The kids got to hang out for a while, and then my parents took them home and put them to bed so that we could relax and visit with our guests.  I just think it's so funny that Casey did this for my 39th birthday--he totally caught me off guard by NOT doing it on a milestone year!

The next day we played "Trading Post" which is a game the girls made up where we bring our rainbow loom bracelets and trade them with each other.

We also went bowling with some friends and had them over for pizza afterwards.

On Sunday, we went to Casey's parents' house for lunch after church to celebrate my birthday (again!)  My niece Cassie picked out this awesome necklace for me which says, "Another year of fabulous" on the pendant. 

Sunday (yesterday) afternoon/evening a major winter storm moved in and we have had lots of snow, blowing, drifting and crazy cold temperatures and windchills.  All the schools were cancelled by last night, so it was nice to know ahead of time that Christmas break would be extended!  We decided to have a neighbor coffee time/play date at our house this morning.

The moms and some of the kids left by lunch time,
but a couple girls stayed into the afternoon
and they had fun building a fort under the kitchen table.

Peter was excited to have a couple boys to play with!
They built a fort with couch cushions.

School was already cancelled for tomorrow by this afternoon, so we get one more day to sleep in and relax before reality hits and we have to go back to school!  This is definitely the longest Christmas break we've ever had!