April 28, 2010
St. Jude's Children's Hospital Trike-A-Thon

Allison's Preschool did a fundraiser for St Jude's Children's Hospital. The program combines bike safety rules such a wearing your helmet, watching for cars, etc with a culmination of a Trike-A-Thon. The kids got pledges to raise money for the Children's Hospital and then they rode there bike around the circle track at school for 30 minutes.

About 15-20 minutes into the ride, I asked Allison if she wanted to rest (she is usually the whiny one who is "sooooooo tired"), her teacher said it was OK for them to rest~ the didn't have to ride the entire time. But Allison, just smiled at me and said "Nope, I'm OK, I want to keep pedalling", and so she did for 30 minutes without stopping. I'm so proud of her.

Listening to Ms. Dobbs after the trike-a-thon was completed.

What a big girl, she raised enough money for a t-shirt. We just hope they arrive before school gets out for the summer - otherwise she will have to wait until fall.

April 24, 2010
Birthday Party Time
Double Trouble

We had the opportunity to celebrate 2 wonderful boys at one time. Matthew and Joshua's birthdays are so close together that a big double party was planned.
We had a great time celebrating their birthdays with them.

I couldn't resist sharing this great picture of caught of Aiden.

The traditional group picture attempt. It was a little bit easier without the littlest two boys -
but regardless of their absence getting multiple children to all look at the camera at the same time proves quite difficult.

Gabrielle and Allison loved some cuddle time with Grandma while the boys opened their gifts.

Sam, not being afraid of anyone, decided that Joshua's Uncle Phil had a very comfortable lap.
Thanks for being great with the kids "Uncle Phil".

Joshua got a new sleeping bag from Grandma and Grandpa and of course, he needed to try it out right away. He was a very happy guy checking out his new digs for the upcoming camping season in their new trailer.

Joshua opens our gift - a personalized messenger bag filled with goodies to help him stay busy en-route to their camping adventures.

Apparently, Sam decided to play musical laps today. From Uncle Phil to Grandpa.
Don't they look striking in their orange outfits today?

Matthew got a new car from Grandma and Grandpa.
Hope he has as much fun in it as Sam had in his.

Matthew checks out the gift from us.
Hearing that Matthew didn't really need any more toys for this age, we headed to the book store and picked out some books that our kids enjoyed to ad to his own library collection.

This is one little boy, who was loving his cake.

April 22, 2010
Father/Daughter Dance

Allison was so excited to be able to go to the father/daughter dance this year.
It was a beautiful evening and we were able to take pictures outside.
The girls got all dressed up in the Easter dresses and they got to wear make-up and lip gloss for the special occasion.

Papa and his girls

To make things extra special for her first ever father/daughter dance - Allison won the first door prize of the evening. Of course, she didn't know it right away. Part way through the evening I got a call from the school secretary telling me that Allison won a prize, did we want to come get it tonight or tomorrow? I said "just send it home with Paul" - and she replied that they weren't there anymore. I was quite surprised that they had left already. But they didn't come home after 10 minutes. Then the phone rang again, and it was the secretary letting me know that she found them, they had been getting cake in the cafeteria and apparently didn't hear her name called.
Allison won this wonderful balloon bouquet.

April 21, 2010

Grandparents Day at Preschool

Allison couldn't wait for Grandparents Day.
She was so excited for them to come see her school
and her friends and meet her teacher.

Sam had to get in on the picture taking too.

April 16-18, 2010
Yankee Springs Recreation Area

If you haven't figured it out by now - we love spring camping. We were actually headed to Ionia State Park with our friends, but they arrived first and found that there was no water to fill our storage tanks. The dump stations weren't turned on yet - and the bathrooms were still closed, etc. We may love to camp, but we have our limits and water is one of them. After pulling the phone number from the camping notebook I keep in the truck at all times, I made a quick call to Yankee Springs and confirmed that they indeed did have water available at the pump house. So after another phone call back to Kevin and Lyn - they turned their trailer around and headed to Yankee Springs instead. We hadn't yet gotten as far as US 131 so we didn't have to detour, just change our route. We were able to fill up with water and got a couple of great sites right on the channel.

Sam shows everyone how he learned how to ride a two wheeler this week.

We did several hikes this weekend. When we arrived we found out that if the kids completed 3 hiking trails in their entirety that they would earn a dragonfly medallion. This was enough motivation for them to complete 3 of the trails without much complaining.

One of the things that kept the kids occupied was a new game they made up with Paul. They would lay down in the middle of the trail and he would ride the bike trailer over top of them.
In this picture, Jillian is the one getting dirty~much to her mother's chagrine ;-)

The other game they made up was pulling the trail markers back and letting them fly to smack each other on the butt. Jillian lines up her shot at Allison.

In addition, to several great hikes, we got some good fishing in too.
I think most of the kids caught a fish.

Once again there were many light saber duels.
Nicholas is having so much fun with his "new cousins"
who enjoy so many of the same things as he does.

These two girls were perfectly content to just cast their
practice weights into the water over and over again.
As long as they are together, they are usually happy.

Sam wore his helmet quite a bit this weekend.
Seems like he just forgets it's on after a while.

Helmets are mandatory equipment for fishing, right?

Like Sleepy Hollow, there was tree climbing as well.

One of the benefits of camping with other people, is the bonus of a family picture which we rarely get - as I am usually the one behind the camera.

Group picture to remember another wonderful weekend together.
Sam HAD to be by Romeo~ his new best bud.
(Sam is the only one who doesn't have a cousin here that is his age, so I think he feels that Romeo is his special friend)

April 8-11, 2010
Spring Break Camping Trip
Sleepy Hollow State Park

A couple of months ago - we started thinking about doing something fun over spring break. I spoke for Friday as a vacation day and we just hoped for a good weekend - that maybe we could do some camping. We figured if we couldn't camp, we would find something else to do as a family. As the time got closer, we arranged to camp with our friends (my 2nd cousin and his family) that we had connected with last November. Their kids and our kids are the same ages and got along really well last fall. As we got closer to the date the weather forecast looked cold at the beginning of the weekend but was supposed to improve as the weekend went on. We've camped in worse - so we agreed to head out to Sleepy Hollow State Park just north of Lansing.

Sam found a section of the road that was basically falling apart. He and Paul decided to do a little excavating of the area. They had all of Sam's big rigs and diggers involved in the project.

Allison and Jillian are 6 days apart - and are quickly becoming the best of friends.

The rest of the kids get involved in the street excavation project that Sam and Paul started.

After hearing stories about his cousin Owen's new drum set - Sam decided that our toy box and a pair of bats made for an excellent drum set of his own. The activity was actually repeated several times throughout the weekend.

Allison enjoys drawing with her sidewalk chalk.

The two girls take a time out from cheerleading
for a heart to heart conversation behind the trailers.

1, 2, 3,...... 20 Ready or not, hear we come.
The area behind our trailers turned out to be an
excellent place for several games of hide and seek.

Sam is learning from his cousin Tyler that tree climbing is a lot of fun.

This particular tree proved to be a great tree for several of the kids to climb.

The afternoon turned out to be quite windy - but we had promised the kids we would play some frisbee golf. So, although, the wind proved to be very frustrating for 7 kids who can barely throw a frisbee at all - we gave it a good try. It is actually a very nice, professional frisbee golf course that should prove to be a lot of fun as the kids get older.

Exploring the Island Trail

In addition, to many games of hide and seek, this tree located directly behind our trailers was quite a source of entertainment throughout the weekend.

All 7 kids in one place at one time. Posing for a picture to remember our weekend together.
Tyler - 6, Micah - 8, Nicholas - almost 8
Jillian - 4, Sam - 3, Allison - 4, Gabrielle - 6

Note: Micah is 3 months older than Nicholas
Gabrielle is 3 months older than Tyler
Jillian is 6 days older than Allison
Can't get much better than that - as far as playmates.
But what about Sam you say? He is totally enamored with Romeo the dog, so I think he is good to go.