For the love of books!

Samuel used the little tikes grocery cart to get all of these books from the living room to the sunroom.  I love how much my kids enjoy reading and looking at books!  And, even with all of these books piled high on the loveseat, our bookshelf still wasn't empty!!

Emails to Aunt Anna

With Aunt Anna being in Australia my kids have been missing her a lot and talking about her a lot.  I finally sat down with them so that they could write an email to her.  We wrote this right after we went to Shedd Aquarium in Chicago which I have not blogged about yet (but I will! I promise!) so don't be too confused.  Here's the email, it's pretty cute:

Hey Anna,

Your email was lovely.  We had a lovely weekend as well.  We spent Saturday at the Shedd Aquarium.  That was also lovely.  Okay, I'm already sick of that word.  I'm done.

Samuel says:

We saw a shark and a sawfish at the aquarium.  We saw jellyfish and Mommy said she got stung by one when she was swimming.  And we saw Nemo!  We saw crashing waves at the aquarium too.  I didn't like that.  I put my hands over my ears.  We could stand above the sting rays on glass and watch them swim around.  We saw a King Crab and it said that they live in Australia.  Have you seen one?  We saw eels eating squid with little fish inside.  That was fun.  The dolphin show was fun and one dolphin jumped really high.  I hope that you come back to Michigan soon because I want you to come back in one sleep.  (Please don't let this sway your decision as to when you come home - they all really miss you!!)  Is there anything to play with in Australia?  (I think he's worried you might be bored - haha!)  I have one more thing to say: That was so nice of Daddy to bring Mommy those flowers.

Aliyah says:

I don't want to say anything.  **5 minutes later after she got braver, she decided she had some things to say: We saw the dolphins jump all together.  We saw the sharks swim.  

Hope says:

I love my sister.  I don't have a fever (she has had one the past few days).  We went to the aquarium and we saw a sea otter and some dolphins.  We saw some sharks.  We saw some whales (beluga) and dolphins jumping.

**Now they are all distracted by arguing about if boogers stink**

So now I can't remember what I was going to tell you.  The kids also wanted you to know that we got an alphabet puzzle from Abigail and Isaac Mulder for Christmas and the "K" animal is a Kangaroo.  They are always very quick to point out now that it is not a Kangaroo, it is a "Roo" and it doesn't start with K.  Smarty pants.  

Alright, gotta go.  All the kids are pulling me away in different directions.  Open gym today at The Point so we are headed over there later.  A Broncos game tomorrow night with Samuel.  Savannah's birthday party on Thursday night.  Kevin and Karin and their 4 kids are coming to visit next weekend.  Daryl, Samuel, Kevin, Ephraim, Noel, Dad, and Caden are going to the Griffins game on Saturday night.  And now I'm pushing it . . . gotta go.  Love you!

Sara

And then the next day, Samuel decided he had more to tell his Aunt Anna:

Samuel has more to say to you:

At the aquarium, all the fishes like each other and the sting rays don't sting the fish.  Some of Mommy's flowers on the table are getting dead (2+ weeks is an impressive length of time for me to keep flowers alive!).  Last night WMU basketball lost by 4, 89-85.  I went to the game with Grandma and Grandpa and Daddy and me.  The Broncos were white and the other team was red.  Number 21 and I think number 32 on white are a pretty bit taller.  And that's all I want to say to her!!  Oh, I want to say, "I miss you Anna"

3 Years

How can it already be 3 years ago that God grew our family by blessing us with Hope?  3 years ago today, Daryl and I flew to Pennsylvania in the morning to pick her up and turned around and flew back home later that same day with a precious girl - our first daughter! - in our arms.  Our 18 month old son waited (unknowingly and clueless as to how his life was about to turn upside down) at home and our unborn baby (I was 4 1/2 months pregnant with Aliyah) moving and wiggling around inside of me, not knowing that when he/she would be born, he/she would have a 22 month old older brother and a 15 month old older sister!  

Hope Atlanta, we are so thankful that you are our daughter!  You are full of joy and you love life!  You are patient and kind with your siblings and you are always willing to share with them.  You love to dance and sing and make up stories.  Cinderella is your favorite princess and you often quote lines from the movie and/or book while you are dancing around in your Cinderella dress.  You usually only want your snap beads during your quiet time and you spend your whole quiet time making beautiful necklaces and bracelets for your brother and sister and mom and dad.  You thrive on our praise and our touch.  You are determined to please others but you can have quite the attitude at times!  Your favorite things to do with Aliyah is play in your kitchen and your favorite thing to do with Samuel is jump on the trampoline.  You also love to have books read to you.

You are a precious girl, loved deeply and unconditionally by your Daddy and myself and loved even more than that by your Heavenly Father.  You are a gift, your life is a gift.  You are a miracle and we know that God has awesome plans for you, sweet girl!!  

We had a little party tonight celebrating Hope!

Aliyah enjoyed her cake and ice cream!

I trusted Daryl to put the frosting in my mouth.  Apparently, I should not have trusted him!! The kids weren't sure what to think of their Mom with frosting all over her face!

Samuel has been excited about this day for a long time . . . but for a different reason! Today is his 1/2 birthday and he is thrilled to be 4 1/2!!!

Worn out!

Samuel and Aliyah were watching Curious George downstairs one afternoon when Samuel came up and said, "Mommy! I looked over at Aliyah and she was sleeping on the futon!"  Little stinker!  She hasn't been taking very many naps lately even though we still do a quiet time every afternoon.  She must have been extra worn out today!

A Trip to Chicago: Shedd Aquarium

A New (but actually old!) Toy

After having the trampoline down for more than 6 months, we decided to put it back up.  The kids had been asking for it and I thought it would be a fun thing for them to do while Daryl was gone in Haiti.  It's always fun getting an old "toy" out that they haven't seen in awhile because all of a sudden it is new again!  They are loving the trampoline and rediscovering all of the fun tricks that they can do on it.

My Little Engineer

Samuel has been into creating and building things lately.  I love to see his brain and imagination at work!  He comes up with some pretty unique things!

Samuel and his "train".  He cut out all of these pieces of paper and then taped them to the table to make a long train.  He was very proud of it and I am very proud of him!

Samuel came up with this marble track contraption on his own.  He sent the marbles down the jump and then put a bunch of the tube connector pieces on the end of it so the marbles would get to the end of the jump and then shoot through the tube and out the other end.  Not bad!!