Noah's 7th birthday party

The last SD birthday Noah had was when he turned two. Five years later we're back and he's turned seven. It's definitely surreal that he's that old.

Noah turned seven on Thursday April 19th but since we were all busy we planned the party for the following Sunday. Both sets of grandparents and Shari, Jesse and Grace came over after church. After grilled hamburgers and hot dogs for lunch, we gathered on the big couch and started the party. Noah requested a rainbow cake like Evie's but with chocolate frosting. You can't tell here but it turned out lopsided because of the 60 year old oven. Thankfully it still tasted good.

Noah is an Angry Birds pro and has coveted Terry's Angry Birds shirt ever since Christmas so, naturally, he needed one of his own.

He requested Star Wars Lego's for his gifts so that's what he got - three sets. He put them together and now they're sitting on his self. He also got the second part to his Hot Wheels Wall Track, some bubbles, gummy worms and a coloring book.

Evie got a late bday present from Shari and Jesse - a girl bean bag.

birthday babysitting and cookies

Noah turned seven years old when we had not even been in Rapid for a week, on April 19th. One of the enticing things about moving back home was family, of course - grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousin (i hope "cousin" will be in the plural someday. ahem...). But, unfortunately, on Noah's actual birthday we weren't able to do a party b/c we were all busy - Terry and I had youth group that night and all the family had previous plans.

I had agreed to help out Shari by watching the singular cousin, Grace, for the afternoon but that was no problem. The girl is so easy. I wonder if we ever did have a fourth child what the chances would be that we'd have a laid-back child like her? Because adding her to our brood was easy peasy. The chances are probably not good since none of my children are even remotely close to her temperament...

Noah lost his other front tooth on his birthday. He is now Toothless. You know, How to Train Your Dragon?

I felt bad that we weren't doing anything special for his special day so I thought I'd attempt to make cookies in the strange "new" kitchen. The recipe is famous in Gburg (several students mentioned them in our appreciation video) and it takes one pound of butter and six cups of flour. Nom nom nom.

I didn't think any of my cookie sheets would fit until I tried, thus proving myself wrong.

However, the 60 year old oven runs very hot and burned my first two batches at 350 degrees. This oven takes a learning curve. So do the range burners since my mom burned a pot to it's melting point. At least the birthday boy got half a batch of good cookies!

Easter 2012

I'm a few weeks late, but you know, we've moved. I'm behind.

For Easter Sunday Terry preached at church. It was our last Sunday there and he did a great job, like he always does when he's up there. Afterwards we came home to change before going to our friend's place for lunch. But we had to attempt to take some family photos with the camera self-timer. Pretty good except for the wind hair. I miss our NE house!

Once we got to our good friends house in the country, the Wardyns, we found ways to entertain ourselves after a delicious lunch.

And the hand holding shot. Our thanks to Becki!

Going on eight years of marriage - pretty good for 33 and 30.

Then we had an Easter egg hunt that the Wardyns graciously let us participate in - their hunts are quite involved and require a lot of planning. There were a lot more than eggs to be found.

They had a great time except when Evie got in a sticker patch and had tiny pokers stuck in her little stretch pants.

While the big kids and adults played baseball, my kids did a lot of playing on the large trampoline. Daniel gave Samuel this duck out of his collection.

We had so much fun. I miss the Wardyns!

Love this.

grampa's house

Okay, so this post has a lot of photos. I'm putting them up to document my Grampa's house where we are renting and possibly buying. Also, in case we don't end up staying here, I'll have photos to remember this house where I spent a lot of time as a young little punk - hence the dated-ness of the house. Circa 1954.

Here's the back porch. All the stuff under it is headed to a second hand store this week.

The yard used to have a lot more trees but they're gone now, unfortunately.

I started a backwards from the end of the house. But here is our bedroom - it was originally my Grandma's. I omitted the charming ceiling mirrors... There is a small bathroom attached and large walk in closet. Floor length pink curtails too.

Here's our/Grandpa's bathroom.

This is the hall pink bathroom that was for Gramma. She had polio and was confined to a wheelchair.

This had been my Grampa's bedroom but now it's Noah and Evie's.

This was always a guest room and now Samuel's in there. What's neat about his two closets is that a light turns on when you open the door - an electrician built the house.

Here is the living room/den. My Gramma used to have her recliner and TV in here and my dad's side of the family had Christmases in here. Our big couch is a tight fit but it works.

TV and internet are set up here. The stove insert works I think.

The front door is across from the living room. The formal dining room is here but we've made it a little sitting room because our table is too big.

Continuing down the hallways is the kitchen and front room.

1954 kitchen. I didn't think my cookie sheets would fit in the oven, but I discovered they do! However, the oven is extremely hot and burned my cookies at 350 degrees. Also, the range burners are really hot too. My mom melted a pot and it dripped on the floor and scorched the linoleum!

Here's our dining room looking in to the kitchen. It had been Grampa's TV room but Gramma had another recliner out here as well. There's a sliding door to the left that opens to a cool covered deck.

You can see our van out front.

Turning around from where I took the last photo is the laundry room/pantry. A door to the right leads downstairs to a full basement.

I cleaned this basement up big time and it looks pretty good right now. I even vacuumed the old pool table.

This is the view from the other side of the big room.

The other half of the room. That door leads to my Grampa's office.

Behind where I took the last photo is a hall leading to the other two bedrooms. The left door is the utility room and across from it is another bathroom.

Cold bathroom.

Small bedroom filled with our stuff.

Large fifth bedroom filled with more of our stuff. We used to always play in here as kids. There's all sorts of built-in stuff.

It's a very large house!

outdoor west outing

Having been back in Rapid for just over a week with poor weather, the first really warm day made me want to get out of the house. So I packed up the kids and went just ten minutes away to this new Outdoor Campus that my mom told me about. It's kinda like a museum, but it's purpose is to give outdoor educational experiences. So it had information about western South Dakota's wildlife, etc.. It was pretty cool.

There was a good sized aquarium filled with local fish that we spent a lot of time at.

Samuel especially enjoyed the fish.

Mostly the kids climbed the Needles-ish rocks.

Another favorite was the television screens. You go to a wildlife center and the kids are excited about the giant tv's. Go figure. At least it was educational stuff.

I told Noah we were going on a field trip and he was like, What's that?

There were little hollow trees and toys to play with. Noah, however, is petting a stuffed animal of some kind though. I just noticed that though - oops! There were lots of animals in there - all kinds from western SD.

They begged to go outside after a while and since there's 32 acres of trails, we went on a short hike.

It was so hot out we stayed in the wooded area by the little creek.

The start of our short hike. Evie climbed over this log on her hands and knees.

Then they begged to go back inside since it was so hot. So that's what we did. Colored and watched more nature videos. It was a good outing. And free!