Noah's 9th birthday

Noah turned nine years old on April 19th. We sure love that wacky, tender-hearted, sensitive, crazy boy. Every birthday for every child just seems unreal. And yet they get older every day. Prayers for them to become strong men and woman of God.

Terry got up early to go out and buy the necessary breakfast donuts. Noah even got a heart shaped one.

We got ready as fast as we could so we could go have some fun at Watiki while Ezra napped at my folks house. We had hoped getting there early (915am) would allow us to get a seat but we were wrong. It was crazy busy like always. Well, two hours later it emptied out a little and that helped. Samuel is not that big of a fan of the water, but he's doing a little better each time we go. I must have had my hair braided the day before...

If Noah's not going down a slide, he's doing these lily pad things. Guess they look more like wood...  And good Lord, look at how long that boy is!!

Pretty girl. She likes to swim. 

Work the core Evie!! 

Going around the lazy river. Samuel actually looks happy. Probably because daddy was playing with him and taking his picture. He cries most of the time I make him do this. He cries a lot. I hope learning to talk will cut down on the crying. Oh, and notice the giant blue and red bowl behind me? That's part of a slide...

Terry and Noah tried a whole bunch of times to get a shot of Noah underwater. Here's the winner. 

Every other visit to Watiki Evie said she would not under any circumstances go down the big slides. Until she was six. Well, now that she is six, she was all ready for it! She went down with daddy the first time and actually had a good time. I guess we felt so good about that success that we insisted Samuel go down with daddy too. It went decent. He was scared in the dark parts of the slide and when he came out and got water in the face or dunked under water, but otherwise he did well. Here they are in the toilet bowl part of this slide. It's fun.

After a pizza lunch Terry and the big kiddies went down more slides and I hung out with Samuel who hung out with his ball.  

After we retrieved Ezra from my folks house, I had a very hectic afternoon getting Noah's chosen meal of cheese soup and spiral sandwiches ready. In the end, I got it all done, though it was a little late. Yummy...

Since we were doing a family party / Easter meal the following night, we wanted to save the cake for then. We used a coupon for some free Eileene's Cookies in lieu of cake and let Noah open a couple small gifts.

He was super duper excited about this little Star Wars Lego set with General Greivous (FOUR ARMS AND FOUR LIGHT SABERS!!!). Phew, what a day! It was a good one though. Happy birthday to our biggest boy!

Evie's free lamp makeover

Perhaps this post should have been called The Evolution of a Lamp, but since it's supposed to be about how I just made her old lamp over, I'll leave it. There are probably way too many photos and words here to justify a lamp, but I had such fun writing this, reminiscing about all the different places this lamp has been.

 Here's Evie's lamp, that blue, kind of ugly one. Pretty sure we've had that blue lamp since shortly after we were married nearly ten years ago! For some reason my friend Kari gave it and a couch to us back in the day when we lived at the ranch from 2004-2007.

And when I started thinking about that couch I knew I had a photo of me and Noah on it back in my snapfish archive and I had to find it. And find it I did! That couch was so uncomfortable with a board under it to keep you from like sinking to the floor. That's why we bought the green couches we have now. Look at how cute Noah is!!

And once I had found the old couch photo, I wondered if I could find some old photos of the lamp. I spent way too much time browsing my thousands of snapfish photos... But nonetheless, I found a shot from where we actually kept that old blue lamp at the ranch (and the new green couch) - in the back corner with Terry's t-shirt desk! Again, look at how cute Noah was!

We moved to Gburg in 2007 and moved that lovely lamp to the nearly empty guest room in the parsonage we started out in. You can just barely see it on the left. Again...Noah!

Then in 2010 we bought our first house in Gburg and again put the lamp in with the guest room. Such was the love we had for the lamp... and our guests?

When we moved to Rapid, I put the lamp in Evie's room because she has the lamest light in her room. It's a 40 watt bulb on the wall and it's like a night light. Not even exaggerating here. It's ridiculous. So obviously she needed a lamp. I found this photo on pinterest of a DIY mercury pottery barn lamp and thought perhaps I could makeover her ugly lamp. So when I was at Hobby Lobby last week and they had spray paint 30% off I bought some.

I didn't buy the correct (Looking Glass) spray paint, but I think it still looks nice. A lot better for sure!

And bam! There it is! I got the lampshade for 50% off at Hobby Lobby as well.

I like it. 

calving

When we went out to the ranch for Evie's belated birthday a few weeks ago we were hoping to see a calf born but just missed it. We went out there again last weekend and one had been born in the night. This time it was near enough to the fence for us to get a good look.

Brand new baby!

Wary mamas. Perhaps we shouldn't have been so close... 

But we were! Noah touched the new baby calf and we backed off. So cute! Everything is so much cuter in miniature. 

blood moon

Terry and I got up at 2am on April 15th for the blood moon. I wasn't planning on it but just happened to wake up at 1:53am. When we went to bed the night before the full moon was so bright. When I got up I was struck by how dark it was. It was eerie! First I got up Terry and then Noah since he said he really wanted to see it. Terry insisted on taking a few photos, though I just wanted to go back to bed. What was the point in going back to bed anyway though? I couldn't fall asleep until after 4am! It sure was cool though.

Noah and Ezra playing

Noah sure loves Ezra. He always wants to kiss him goodnight before any and every nap and is sad if I won't let him (b/c I've nearly got Ezra in bed). Lately, because Ezra is growing up so fast, Noah has been saying, "I sure am going to miss his baby face." 

Two weekends ago while we were all watching America's Funniest Videos, Ezra came up to Noah to play. I'm gonna miss his baby face too!!

Then a week ago during breakfast Noah just had to "play with"/encumbrance/annoy Ezra with a blanket. 

There's the annoyance.

Evie's first bike ride

Evie received a big girl bike for her birthday. No training wheels were allowed on it since she's had a Strider for two years now. It's a 20 inch bike but with her height she was supposed to be able to handle it, though she really did want training wheels. 

Turns out we were right. She can do it! While Noah was taking his 2nd grade standardized test a week and a half ago, Terry took Evie (and Samuel) to the same park Noah learned to ride at while we were living in my grampa's old house. It's difficult for her to get herself started on the bike. She needs help getting going but once she's going she's good! Terry says she'll figure it out quickly. Yay Evie!

When they'd had enough they threw rocks into the new and improved little creek over there.

spring has sprung

Two Fridays ago, after Noah had finished his 2nd grade standardized test, the weather was gorgeous. I can remember last April when we had three snow storms and could hardly make it to Nathan and Ana's in Watertown for a visit due to the 40 inches of snow we received that month. However, this year we are two thirds of the way through April and I'm hopeful we've avoided any more snow until fall. 

So anyway, the beautiful weather just really struck me when I looked outside that afternoon to see everyone on the trampoline playing away.

It felt so good Terry turned on the grill and busted out the smores! 

Hi Ezra! :)

He crawls like a proper big boy now. None of that army crawling anymore.

Samuel took one bite and was done. Didn't like it! 

Nice face right? That's the correct way to eat a smore. 

I could eat three or four of those babies. The kids don't think they're as amazing as I do. 

See? Ezra is not so sure about the smores. 

Evie can do the monkey bars all by herself! Of course daddy has to be nearby... 

Cute baby! You can see his first little tooth! He's had that since he got sick and had the reaction to Amoxicillin, at the beginning of April. So he was just 10 months old. Nearly 11 months now! 

Blurry, but he's been sticking his tongue out like this a lot lately. Silly baby. 

2nd grade testing

On Terry's day off last week, he took Evie and Samuel to ride her birthday bike for the first time while Noah stayed home with me to complete his second grade standardized test. Ezra napped through all the fun.

Noah is actually somewhere between 2nd and 3rd grade since we held him back and I'm trying to get him caught up. We couldn't just skip the test of course. I prepared him as much as I could and we got to work as soon as Ezra was napping. I was so nervous! But Noah was all, "I'm excited! Are you excited mommy?" Uhhh, yeah sure Noah. But not really.

It was really hard for me to watch him make a mistake and not try to help him. One time, upon finding his own mistake he said, "No, no, no. I almost fell into that trap!" Ha! 

Halfway through the reading comprehension section, he checked how far he had to go and exclaimed, "I'm excited! I'm excited!" Silly boy. 

At the end of about an hour we had a break. 

We took another break for lunch and then finished the test. It took about two or two and a half hours total.

Afterwards I loaded up the two boys and headed to the district office to return the test and run some errands - Noah was treated to his favorite candy bar, a Kit Kat. And once we all returned home, he chose to play Angry Birds on Terry's phone for another reward. I hope it went alright!

Blazer replacement

Here is Terry's Blazer. He decided that he wanted to sell it since we needed something with a third row seat so all six of us could fit. And sell it this week he did. Yay!

And isn't it strange that I wrote a blog on April 5, 2010 about Terry replacing his original Blazer with the one above and on that exact same day five years later he replaced  it with a new four wheel drive vehicle! I thought it was. 

Anyway, here is our new 2005 GMC Envoy. We like it a lot. Our van has high miles on it and we considered getting a new one. In the end though, Terry decided to keep it until it won't go no more and once that happens this Envoy will replace it as the family vehicle (yay for me!). Plus he will be able to use it for the same purposes as the Blazer - hauling man stuff like firewood and drywall, etc.

We took our maiden voyage in it to church on Sunday as one big family. There was snow on the ground and so we thought maybe it'd be nice to have four wheel drive. However, the streets were dry. Ha! It was still definitely fun to drive.

We all fit!

post birthday ranch visit

We had planned to go to the ranch on Evie's birthday but since it ended up "blizzarding" we had to put it off until the weekend. By then the weather was pretty decent, though windy. We had hoped to see a baby calf born, but arrived not five minutes too late. We were able to see the new calf getting licked off and trying to stand up. So cute. Terry's dad had Terry take some photos of a 1949 or 1950 Studebaker that he was hoping to sell. I like it. I like the view too.

Before lunch Terry, Noah, Evie and I headed out four wheeling. That day was April 5th, only 14 days shy of our 12 year engagement anniversary. So, naturally, we had to make a stop at The Rock.

Notice the carving?

Terry proposed to me by carving it into this rock on the ranch. You can see the date to the far left: 4-19-03, which, incidentally, is the day Noah was born exactly two years later. Then it begins, "EVA WILL U..." 

"...MARRY ME?" The "YES" was not there originally, obviously. I carved it in afterwards. Actually, I only carved the "Y" and since I was having such a hard time, Terry filled in the rest. Hahaha.

From The Rock we drove to the fence line and looked at the houses, part of a neighborhood that never used to be there. Then we went to the east of Terry's grandparent's land, mostly the prairie dog town. Here's Evie and I parked on top of a mound.

Right before we headed back for lunch and birthday cupcakes, we stopped at this little pond to throw in old cow bones and then skip rocks. I nearly hit Terry twice and then decided I better stop. It was a fun day.