September 22, 2007 - I'm Taking a Trip on My Train

Another one of Nicholas' favorite books came true today.

With my striped cap I'm the engineer

and I'm taking a trip on my train ....

Nicholas was ready with his striped cap for a special day with just Grandpa and Papa. Grandpa knew of this place up near Cedar Springs where they open it up to the public during a few times of the year-for people to ride on the model trains. There are miles of track, and a ride takes over an hour to go through. The layout is incredible and very detailed, there are switches, bridges and tunnels to make the entire adventure as realistic as possible.

Here are a few pictures of their day.

(it was hard to get many pictures of Nicholas because once on the train, Paul couldn't see anything except Nicholas' back - there wasn't much room to move around).

September 15, 2007 - Leaf Hunt!

We're going on a leaf hunt
We're going right away
Let's find colorful leaves
it's a beautiful day.....


The kids love the book "We're Going on a Leaf Hunt". It resembles the familiar "Going on a Bear Hunt", except the children in the book are off to find different kinds and colors of leaves and encounter many adventures/obstacles along way. It's a cute book for fall.

We decided to head to the local park, where there is a walking trail back into the woods, to go on our own leaf hunt. Allison, in particular is raring to go- can you tell?

Sam enjoys his perch on Papa's back - he has spent quite a bit of time

in his backpack during our many adventures this summer.

The kids pose for a picture along the banks of Crockery Creek
Our leaf hunt quickly turned into "how quickly can we get through the trail and back to the playground".

Fun together on the tire swing. There were many playgrounds throughout the summer that the kids loved to climb on a tire swing together and spin.

September 13, 2007 -

Hey Mom, Look what I can do,

on this "new" toy you brought up from the basement!!!

September 10, 2007 - First Day of School for Gabrielle

The first day of school turned out to be an entirely different story than orientation day. No pouty puffer here. Gabrielle was so excited. She had - as she would say "a beautiful dress" picked out and was ready as ever for her new adventure.


Ready to go into school.






<-- Found her name on the table, now she gives identifying the letters a try with her teacher, Miss Monica.
Saying good morning to Miss Gaynell - Actually I think she's asking her if she likes her dress.

Allison was not nearly as happy about Gabrielle's first day - she was very said. I don't know if she was sad about leaving Gabrielle, or not getting to stay herself.


First Art Project.

September 8, 2007 - Hanging Out!

Sam continues to get more freedom and adventuresome. We have also found that Nicholas and Gabrielle are getting a little more brazen about picking Sam up - he must seem more resilient to them and less fragile. So, I have no idea if he climbed into Allison's chair by himself or had a little help. Either way, he thought he was pretty cool hanging out with the big kids.





Sam also loves his new bath seat. Our old one gave up the ghost, when the latch that held it closed broke. Seems weird to have to buy a new seat for child #4, but a necessity is a necessity. He is enjoying the freedom of being able to sit and play with toys in the bath.

September 6, 2007 - Preschool Orientation

After dropping Nicholas off at preschool for two years, and Gabrielle being able to carry on a conversation with the teacher like no tomorrow, I expected her to walk into orientation like she owned the place. However, I was very surprised to fine her pouty and clingy. As the morning progressed, I came to realize that the issue was that she didn't want her picture taken. When we arrived at preschool there was a list of things to do to help the kids explore the classroom. Things like: find the calendar, find your cubby, find the table toys, find your name on the bulletin board, and GET YOUR PICTURE TAKEN WITH YOUR TEACHER. The pictures were to be used in a project later in the week. Well, apparently the picture taking thing through Gabrielle into poutsville and it took a while to figure out what the deal was.















She finally started to open up, when she got to find a prize in the sandbox.














Starting to make friends in the kitchen area. (However, these were girls from the 3 year old class, not hers - at least she was getting comfortable in the classroom).

September 5, 2007 - First Day of Kindergarten

Well, the big day finally arrived. I am so used to getting pictures of so much of their big experiences that it seems to weird that the only photo ops I was given on this day were the getting on the bus and getting off the bus. Nothing of the school experience. It's not like preschool where I got to walk him inside and watch him put his backpack away.

Waiting for the bus

So, many big things. It was quite an eventful day as Nicholas needed to navigate his way even as far as where to go once he got OFF the bus.

Finally home...It was a good day!

September 4, 2007 - New Past-Time for Sam!

One of Sam's favorite new activities at 8 months old includes standing by anything and everything that he can. This activity table doesn't work as it should anymore - it's been around since Nicholas was his age. Nothing spins anymore, but he has figured out that when he hits the table on the yellow button it plays some really cool music.

September 4, 2007 - Kindergarten Orientation Day

Nicholas' first day of school was orientation. Nicholas got to see his classroom and meet his teacher (again). Then the children watched a video on bus safety and went for their first bus ride, while the parents had their own orientation. Posing in front of the sign at his new school.

Finding his coat cubby...

...and his mailbox.

Listening to a book about the first day of school.

August 31, 2007-September 3 , 2007
A camping trip at Brower Park.

As you can tell, if you look at my posting date - I am about a month behind on my blog. Everybody is back to school (watch for future posts on that), and settling into a routine has been....well, shall we say.....hectic. Needless to say, the fact that I work at home, means I am ONLY working at night, which leaves little computer time for personal projects like - what's this called again - a blog?

Anyway, Labor Day weekend we headed out to Brower Park with Mom & Dad, and Cory,Catherine & Joshua, with a visit from Shawn, Erin & Owen thrown in on Saturday.

As much fun as we had at the big family reunion at Myers Lake (and can't wait to go back), it was so much fun to watch the kids interact with Joshua "one-on-one" for more than a couple of hours here and there. They had so much fun together. There was a playground right across the street from our camper, that had a log cabin house. The kids were constantly pretending it was an ice-cream store. They would take our order through the window, and they would serve us pine-cone treats. What fun, to see them play together and PRETEND. It was so great, they even had other kids from the campground coming to ask for "ice-cream". Apparently, they got a reputation.

There was also a couple of walks to another playground on the other side of the campground, where there was a big wooden train. The kids had lots of fun crawling and climbing all over it, as well as enjoying the bouncy toys, etc.

To top off the weekend, we ran into some friends of Mom & Dad on Saturday night and they had a pontoon boat. They offered to take us for a ride, which ended up being much longer than we anticipated. The kids had lots of fun, and Joshua really like seeing some of the FAST boats up close.

We had a lot of fun together, and can't wait for more camping fun in the future.

August 29, 2007 - A New Look!

Gabrielle's hair has been starting to drive me crazy for quite some time. The longer parts of her hair were so thin and fine (baby hair) and she had a bunch of places that would just stick up all the time because of the incident a while back with Nicholas taking a scissors to it. http://vanwesepventures.blogspot.com/search?q=quiet. When I would pull it to a ponytail there were short pieces sticking up and some of them would always fall out. School was getting ready to start and Paul would be getting her ready at least one day week, and pony tails are not his thing. So.....I took her in to get a major makeover. She's looks so ready for school and so grown up. Hopefully, if we decide to let it grow out again now it will be thicker and more even. However, I like it so much we might just keep it short for a while. Gabrielle loves it too, and thinks she looks like mama.....which she does.

August 22, 2007 - Summer Portraits

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Will all of the camping we have done this summer, I was a little late in getting around to Allison and Sam's newest portraits (and of course, a few group shots thrown into the mix as well). They are doing some new things at the portrait studio...some I like, some I don't. One of them however, is when they let you preview the pictures prior to ordering they have all sorts of enhancements on the photos which are sometimes really cool. It is an obvious ploy to have you fall in love with the enhancement and just "have to have it". I fortunately go in there with my list of what I need and never get caught in their little scheme. However, I was pleasantly surprised to find that when I received my electronic versions of the pictures...it included all of the enhancements. Kind of cool.

August 14, 2007 - A New Vehicle....New to us that is!

Over the past months we have been feeling slighlty cramped in our mini van. Adding Sam to the family this past January put all four "car-seat" compatible locations of the van in use. We no longer had the ability to take one of the seats out when we needed to take extra gear with us, and the every time we went somewhere for any period of time, the gear was a lot. I could barely get the groceries in if I happened to have the double stroller along. Our numerous camping trips this summer have increased our desire for a bigger vehicle. We just didn't know if we would be able to do this. After some serious research, lots of looking on-line and a few days of driving to numerous car lots we found our perfect match. We found a 1997 Chevrolet Suburban. It is a little older, but for it's age only has 108,000 miles and these vehicle seem to last forever. So far, we love it and our recent camping trips have proven how much extra room we actually have. So, with an 8 passenger seating capacity, we can successfully seat all 4 car seats, but we have room for an additional car seat and one more additional passenger if needed (for taking friends along - not another baby if that's what you are thinking). We also have a "ton" of room behind the back seat for taking all of the many belongings that go along with 4 kids.

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August 25, 2007 - Sam is now 7 months old.

August has brought many changes in Sam. His activity level has skyrocketed. He is pulling himself up, scooting and getting into trouble. He is not quite sitting up on his own, but can "tripod" sit, and get there on his own from a crawling position. Sitting will not be far behind. He is also able to feed himself his fruit & veggie puffs, and can hold his own bottle. I can't believe how quickly time flies when life is so busy.

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August 18, 2007 Nicholas on Two Wheels

We have been doing a lot of camping this summer, and have been really busy the rest of the time, so we haven't had many chances to REALLY work with Nicholas on riding on two wheels. However, this weekend we were able to bring his bike camping and had plenty of time to practice. SUCCESS was achieved. Here's some footage of a few of his first successful attempts. He even managed to complete a turn/curve without stopping.

August 16-19, 2007 Another Camping Weekend at Pioneer Park

This weekend, the temperatures were cooler and so we never even went down to the lake. We filled our weekend with activities we had not yet done. We went out for breakfast at Mr. B's, then headed to downtown Muskegon (sans my camera). We went through an railroad depot, which is now the visitor's center. We also got to see a train come through by the harbor, the kids got to be pretty close to it. We went for a ride on the trolley, which took us out to lakeshore and back. We got off the trolley and tried to visit an old fire station, but it wasn't open so we could only look in the windows - maybe next time. On Saturday, we went mini golfing and go-karting. We also took the opportunity to try to fly our kites - the wind was too gusty though - we could get them up but we couldn't keep them up. The kids had fun trying though. On Saturday night we had a visit from Uncle Shawn, Aunt Erin and Owen. Unfortunately, it started to rain and was a fairly wet night. NO campfire that night. However, we loaded into our camper and, believe it or not, we got all the children to fall asleep while the adults played some games - I think this was the first time this year that we really did that. It was a little soggy and cooler, but a great weekend none-the-less.

July 28, 2007 - August 4, 2007 Family Camping Trip Well, as you can tell by my posting date, I have been running extremely behind on keeping the blog up to date. Given the fact that we were gone for whole week, there were many pictures to go through and it was difficult to find the time to work on the video. By the time I got caught up on laundry and got caught up at work, it has made me quite a bit behind.

Anyway, we had a great time camping with family at Myers Lake Campground. We hope to return there next year. It was such a great place for the kids. The lake was warm, and with a shallow beach area they were able to run around a lot. There were swings right on the beach which the girls loved. The kids had so much fun playing with all of the 2nd and 3rd cousins that are their age ( a privilege they do not often have). It was a great week, spent together, and having lots of fun.

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July 26, 2007 - Doctor's Appointment time!

I loaded up the kids and headed into town for another trip to the doctor's office. My kids are very healthy, but with 4 kids whose birthdays are pretty spread out throughout the year sometimes I feel like I am going there constantly just to keep up with well-child visits. Fortunately, most of Sam's appointments during this first year are able to be coordinated with a visit for one of the other kids.

This time around it was Allison's 2 year appointment and Sam's 6 month well-child. Here are their stats (as well as how they compared to the other kids).

2 year appointment

Allison 26 pounds (25%) 35 1/2 inches (90%) Head: 47.5cm

Gabrielle 25 pounds 34 inches Head: 47.5cm

Nicholas 25 pounds 34 1/2 inches Head: 48.2cm

6 month appointment

Sam 15 lbs 12 oz (15%) 27 inches (75%) Head: 43.8cm

Allison 14 lbs 15 oz 27 inches Head: 43cm

Gabrielle 17 lbs 2 1/2 oz 26 1/2 inches Head: 43cm

Nicholas 17 lbs 1 1/2 oz 27 1/2 inches Head: 44cm

We are thankful to have 4 healthy children, and surprisingly enough they are all actually fairly close in size from check-up to check-up. If Allison keeps this trend she is actually going to catch up to Gabrielle fairly quickly. When you see them side by side they don't appear to be that far apart in height. For having a slow start the beginning of his life, Sam seems to have caught up to the others fairly well and is right in the middle of the pack.

July 18, 2007 - What in the world is a Pandora Sphinx?

We were getting ready to leave the house to go to the grocery store the other day. On this particular day the van was backed into the garage so Nicholas was on the garage window side of the van. Right before we pulled out of the garage, Nicholas says "Mom, What's that?" and points to the window sill. I took a quick look, and at first glance I thought it was a very weird looking creature and it gave me the heeby-jeebies. I got out of the van and went to take a closer look and then thought it was a dried up leaf that had somehow managed to get caught on the sill. But, as I got even closer I realized it was a HUGE moth. The wing-span on this moth was between 3 and 3 1/2 inches and one of the ugliest things I've ever seen. Needless to say, this moth was not going to fit through the tip of the bug vacuum. So I grabbed a gladware container and managed to collect it for a time. That afternoon, we got on-line and struggled to find a website that would help us identify what we had caught. We finally came upon whatsthatbug.com There are some really awesome pictures of moths and other bugs and after going through many pages, we finally found our bug....it is a Pandora Sphinx Moth (sometimes called a camo moth). Several posts indicated that others have mistaken this moth for a dried up leaf as well. This was definately our bug find of the summer so far....we did let it go that evening, but have some cool pictures to preserve the memory.

July 16, 2007 - Astronaut or Astronomer?

Nicholas has continued to express interest in the stars and planets lately. We have gotten several books out of the library and he has memorized several facts about them. He knows that Pluto is the smallest and Jupiter is the largest, Mercury is the closest to the sun and Pluto is the farthest. He also knows which planets have rings and their order in size. One of the books we got from the library had a page where it explained how to make a mobile of the solar system. We found numerous shapes in the house to that we could make them in order from smallest to largest, and Nicholas studied every page and colored the planets as close as he could to what the pictures looked like. He did a very good job, I was actually surprised at how long he stuck with the project (through all 9 planets). We put little facts on the back so that we can review them periodically. So anyway, for the time being we now have a mobile of our solar system hanging from the ceiling fan above the kitchen table.
(by the way, we do know that they are no longer considering Pluto a planet, but that is a little too deep for a 5 year old who is reading older books from the library, so for now...Pluto is a planet again. )

July 12-15, 2007 Another Camping Weekend.

This was a fun filled weekend, with lots of fun. The kids got to spend a little more time in the lake this time, as the water wasn't quite so cold. They also spent a lot more time riding scooters, etc. There wasn't as much hiking, but Nicholas and Grandpa did head out to see how many kinds of leaves they could find. The weekend also included Allison's birthday celebration, the details of which are in the previous post. Nicholas has continued his interest in the stars and planets, so we got the binoculars out one night for him to check out the stars.

One special note for the weekend, was that Thursday evening a storm came thru very quickly. There wasn't much warning and all of the sudden the wind picked up and it got super, super dark. We just started to grab things and put them away and the wind picked our awning right up and "threw" the awning right up onto the roof of the trailer. The awning pole brackets ripped right out of the roof of the trailer, the awning poles actually flew over the top of the trailer and one of them landed on the windshield of the van. Thankfully, it hit right on the edge and there was only a scratch. We are very grateful that no one was in the way of our awning poles when they decided to take flight, it could have caused some serious injury. (Needless to say, we now stake them down right away). The storm passed as quickly as it came and we were able to repair the awning. Some friends of ours were also in the park that weekend and filmed some awesome waterspouts on the water. That was quite a night.

July 12-15, 2007 - Allison's 2nd Birthday

We were camping over Allison's Birthday, so we ended up spreading her birthday out over several days. We also had her birthday party with aunts, uncles and cousins out at the lake. We had a lot of fun. Then, when we returned home Allison got a few more presents that we didn't want to take out to the lake.

I can't believe how quickly time flies, Allison is 2 already, seems like just yesterday that we were camping and she couldn't even walk yet. She is such a "little lady", she carries on such conversations...talking up a storm all the time. She also, can be quite a pistol, with a temper that just won't quit when she decides to unleash it. We can't wait to see how much she grows in the years ahead.

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