A Day with Friends

After 10 years of a continued friendship over many miles and states...God brought my dear friend Teri and I close together.  It's so hard to believe that we care just a short car ride away from each other! Our families enjoyed a Monday morning together catching up, playing, encouraging one another in life and ministry.  Aren't these kiddo's so cute?!  Can't believe we got them all smiling!  It was a great morning!  

More Thanksgiving

We continued Thanksgiving with dinners 2 and 3 over the weekend with Seth's family. I don't know what happened with my camera..I must have been on vacation mode...b/c I just didn't take a ton of pics.  We had dinner with Nana, Papa, and Aunt Sue, movie nights, craft store shopping trips with my sis in law, sewing lesson (and new curtains to show for it!), Ohio State having victory over Michigan  dinner and Aunt Di and Uncle Daves, and so much more fun all packed into one weekend.  It was fun to all be together for the first time at Seth's parents new home.  It was a great weekend!  

Thanksgiving

It was so fun to be able to host my family for Thanksgiving dinner this year.  It's the off year for my immediate family...so my married siblings were with their in-laws (we saw ours on Fri and Sat)...so we had my Mom, Dad, and Jeremy for dinner.  Everyone came for dessert and we had a great time wrapping up the day together.  I'm blessed with a wonderful family!!

Tim got right on the floor and played with little Ethan...what a fun uncle!  

 Isaac just adores his Abby.  He wanted to be right next to her...

He even shared Thomas with Abby...

 sweet, sweet, Abby

 Ethan and Nana

 Mom and Dad with their 2 little boys and 2 little girls 

so...very...blessed.

Operation Christmas Child 2012

These are two very excited children who are eager to turn in their shoe boxes.  As always, they had so much fun shopping and putting together boxes for a little boy and girl who don't know Jesus.  We can't wait to find out what country they traveled to!  

Ethan's Three!!

What a joy to celebrate this little guy!  He keeps us laughing all the time...and brings so much JOY to our lives!  Beth put together an adorable Mickey Mouse birthday party for him, the kids loved it!  

 His Grandma knit the great sweater...sandwich set from Hannah and Isaac

 Cutest Mickey Mouse cup cakes!  

We love you, Ethan!!

Kinderealm: Woodpeckers

I love the metro parks.  One of the things that we have really enjoyed since being here is the kinderealm program that they offer for Hannah.  In November, the kids learned all about woodpeckers.  

We headed over after a morning at BSF and a picnic lunch with Aunt Beth.  

She's all ready!  

 They learned about woodpeckers, made a craft, then headed out with binoculars to see if they could spy some.  

 Our naturalist did a great job.  She is great with the kids and full of expression.  Hannah LOVED her.  She was never farther then just a few steps behind her (so reminded me of myself as a little girl).  It's neat to see her so eager to learn.  

 Hannah and Ethan on a bird hunt  

 Looking through bird call cards.  

Just another beautiful fall day in God's creation.  So much to be thankful for...

Preschool 2012

Well...we were much later in starting preschool this year...didn't start until November, but better late than never right?  We are using the Five in a Row curriculum...we read a book a week and have a different subject area focus for each day.  Both of the kids are loving it and it fits their skill levels well.  

Here's Hannah's first day of kindergarten picture...she wants to be an author!  

Isaac always wants in on the fun too!

We started our first week with the book "The story about Ping".  This book is out of print, so none of the libraries in our system have it anymore...but I was able to find the scholastic video.  The kids loved listening to the book being read to them every day.  We learned all about China and the Yangtze River.  

Here are a few highlights from the week:

We had egg drop soup for lunch (thank you Aldi)

We did sink and float for science..they both loved this!  

Hannah made predictions, and got most of them right  

For art, she learned how to draw reflections on the water, puddles around an object int he water, and movement lines in the water.  I think she's quite the little artist.  

We got our map in the mail and found China, where Ping lived.  

We added our first character to the map  

made a passport of all of our adventures and added China  

She sequence the whole story of Ping...I couldn't believe how much she remembered!  She loved doing this!

To finish our week off, we went to Chinese dinner as a family.  

We are all super excited about FIAR and look forward to many more fun book adventures ahead!