the studliest hockey player ever...

Here he is!

About a month ago, the Senior class put on a hockey tournament here at the school to raise money for some missionaries.  Chris and Evie Jones are missionaries through New Tribes in Papua New Guinea, and they are getting ready to move into a tribe!  The Senior class project has been to raise money to help them build their jungle house. Pretty cool.

So anyway, it cost $5 per person to be in the hockey tournament, and there were supposed to be teams of 5.  So Kaine and his friends in his childcare class formed a team!  It was so cute.  Of course all the other teams were adults, so everyone was rooting for these little cuties:)

Here they are!  They did such a great job.  It was adorable to watch!

I think the best part is that Kaine wanted to give money toward Chris and Evie.  He mentioned the other day that he wants to give them more money!  Praise God for this little boy.  We pray that he will grow up to do great things for God!

Happy Birthday to our sweet little Daisy!

My baby turns 1 today!  This is so bittersweet...it is so fun to see her grow up but yet I wish she could always stay a baby...sigh.  Life goes on...

Daisy is such a wonderfully adorable, fun, joyful little girl.  Kaine, Halle, and Layla all adore her.  Her smile is amazing!  She brings us so much joy. 

Daisy, we are so thankful to God that He has allowed us to be your parents!  We love you so much and we are so glad you are our baby girl:)

By the way, these pictures represent the newest things that Daisy is doing now!  In the top picture, Daisy actually stood like this for almost 1 minute!  Folks, this is an amazing feat by Daisy.  For soooo long, she has been just content to sit and has NEVER been interested in standing!  I think it is changing, though...

And in the other picture, Daisy is learning to scoot around...backwards.  She is beginning the army crawl, but obviously she hasn't mastered it yet:)

Happy Birthday, Daisy!  We love you!!

Away with my hubby for 2 whole days!!

As much as I loooooove my kiddos, I also really love to be alone with Nathan!  We haven't really gone away without our kids for close to a year and a half (one of the joys of nursing babies:) ).  Now that Daisy is older I can leave her for much longer.  So Nathan and I went away last weekend to...

A Homeschool Convention!! 

It was funny, I was talking to a single girl here at the school and I told her Nathan and I were going to go away for the weekend...to a homeschool convention.  She looked at me kind of funny, and I realized that probably sounded weird to her!  But actually, we were really looking forward to it!  We are really excited to homeschool our kids, and it was great to learn lots of info this weekend.  We heard some great speakers, too, including Ted Tripp.  And it was fun because it was in downtown Cincinnati, and really, what isn't fun when it is located in the middle of a big city?

It was great to be able to walk around downtown...

And we really enjoyed the free continental breakfast (especially the coffee!)...

We walked to the convention on Friday.  It was about a .7 mile walk, and it was really nice that morning!  However, we were at the convention alllll day long and then went out to eat downtown...so by the time we were ready to go back to our hotel it was dark and COLD!!  But still fun:)  Good exercise, at least!!

There were soooo many people at the convention.  We saw some great friends there!  It was so great to see the Beyer's, Beer's, Drayer's, my cousin Erika, more good friends from Leo and Bluffton...so fun to catch up with all of them and get some great advice!!

If anyone is wondering...while we are in training for these next 2 1/2 years, we won't be homeschooling yet.  We will be sending Kaine to a Christian school here in town next year for kindergarten, and then when we go on to our next phase of training (in Canada), Kaine and Halle will attend an academy on our campus (just for the missionary kids).  Then we will start homeschooling after that.  So it is really nice right now to just learn info about all the curriculums, etc...without the stress of having to decide on one right away!

What a fun weekend.  Thanks, mom and dad, for watching our kids!  They had a blast (like they always do!).  We really appreciated the time away!!

my little swing dancers

Kaine and Halle have a new talent!  They just randomly started doing this one day, and I thought it was so cute!  Of course, I know I am very biased because I am their proud mom...I just love these two:)

my friend, israel

Hi everyone!  It's me, Daisy.  My mom told me I could do a guest post on her blog...she's been having trouble thinking of ideas.  

Here I am...aren't I cute?

I would like to introduce you to my good friend (and cousin)...Israel.  Isn't he cute, too??  My mom was so excited when he was born, because he is only 4 months younger than me!  She says we will be good friends someday.  (and since he lives right down the hall from me, we get to play together a LOT!!)

Ever since we were little, we have been hanging out together... 

Usually, we get along pretty well.  We are good friends!

But even though Israel is adorable...he has another side, too.  Do you see that ornery look in his eyes?   

See, even though Israel is 4 months younger than me, he is actually a lot stronger than me!!  (Check out his mom's blog here...he can actually do pushups!!  How many 7 month old babies can do pushups???) 

Sometimes he likes to pick on me...

And take my toys...

And bite me (I know, I deserved this for putting my finger in his mouth!)

Or give me intimidating looks...

So...

 I try to defend myself...

Or sometimes I just try to flee...

But I am an emotional little girl, and a lot of times I just break down and cry.

Hopefully I will be able to crawl soon, and then I will be able to defend myself a little better! 

Thanks for reading my post!  Hopefully my mom's ideas will start returning:)

Love,

Daisy 

Spring Break recap...

Well, we arrived back at our apartment here at NTBI late last night, and we have spent today unpacking, cleaning and trying to potty train Layla:

Let me just say, it has been interesting. 

Anyway, as I have already posted, our Spring break started out really good.  We spent the first few days at Nathan's parents' house and had a great time.  Then we had the birthday party for Halle and Daisy, which I also posted about and that was so fun!  The rest of the week was also great.  Nathan spent the week working with Aaron on Klint and Sarah's "new" house (click here and here to see their awesome work!)... He really loved doing carpentry work again.  So that really made his week:)

We also...

had playgroup at Amy's house:

 Let me just say, Amy is so awesome.  She is so hospitable and always makes us such good food when we come over for playgroup.  She is also very calm and laid back...between all of us, I think we counted 18 kids!!  (minus Daisy, so I guess it was 17).  But that is a lot of kids.  Thanks, Amy!  And Kaine also thanks you...he loves to be with his good friends Hudson and Carter:

We had fun coloring Easter eggs:

And it was so great to visit Gateway and hang out with Paul and Nichole.  Hopefully we can visit again this summer when the weather is a little warmer.  Thanks so much, guys--it was wonderful to catch up with you!!

Our kids enjoyed their cousins...

Daisy started giving us the cheesiest smiles this week...(and eating almost exclusively solid foods--good job, Daisy!)

Kaine and my dad went fishing, and Kaine caught this fish!

Our family always fills out a NCAA bracket each year, and my dad gives winner a gift card.  So this year, we decided Kaine would be old enough to join in.  He won!!  And he legitimately filled out his own bracket!  My parents gave him a Walmart gift card and they also had a little trophy engraved for him!  It was so cute--Kaine thinks trophies are so cool:)

Our kiddos had a blast on my parents' gator:

And we just had fun hanging out outside...

What a good break!  We are back and ready to start classes again.  It is crazy that we are almost done with our first year of training.  Our classes end on May 17!  These next couple of years before we head overseas are just going to fly.  For now, we are trying to enjoy family and friends as much as we can, and trying to soak it all in:)  Have a great week!!

a double birthday party

Since we are home on our Spring Break right now, we decided to combine 2 of our sweeties' birthdays and have a double celebration!  Halle's birthday was back on March 3, and Daisy's is coming up on April 25...so we celebrated them in the middle.

It was such a fun evening as both of our families gathered together at Nathan's parents' house.  Halle was looking forward to this for weeks, and Daisy loved her cake more than any of our other 1-year olds ever did!

And YES...I know I am camera-happy.  Especially when it comes to our kids.  And especially on their birthday parties.  So just take that as a warning. :)

Here is Halle, ready to start her party!  She is such a sweet and beautiful little girl.  She loooooves Hello Kitty, so I made her this cake:

Here is Daisy, the other birthday girl!  She won't be 1 until the 25th, but that's okay.  She is also such a sweet and beatiful little girl!

The 2 birthday girls...I love this picture!!

Some of you might remember a couple of months ago, at Kaine's birthday party, we had so much fun playing "Pin the Tail on the Lion."  So we were going to play that same game for Halle and Daisy's party, but then we were thinking that all of our guests just played it 2 months ago!  So we came up with a new game:

Kiss the Princess!!

I can't remember if this was Nathan's idea, or one of his parents'...but it was so fun!  The morning of her party, I took a picture of Halle like this:

Then Dave took it to get printed at the Print Shop, and it came out like this:

And then we had each person put red frosting on their lips, and in much the same way as "Pin the Tail", they had to "Kiss the Princess"...it was so funny!  Hopefully everyone doesn't mind me posting the pictures of this:)

It was so fun:)


Then, it was time for the customary pinata.  This is a tradition that is fun, but we aren't sure if we are glad we started it or not:)  Pinatas take time to make!  But our kids love it.

Daisy was extremely excited to get her hands on this cake!!  As we were singing to her, we could barely get the candle blown out in time before she started eating it.  She was ADORABLE!!!!

And Halle was anticipating her gifts all evening! 

Everyone went out on the patio to talk when all the activities were done.  It was a beautiful evening.

A blogpost wouldn't be complete without a crazy picture of Layla:)  She is so funny!

What a fun evening.  Thanks so much, mom and dad, for letting us have it at your house!  And thanks everyone else for coming and putting up with our crazy game:)  You are all good sports!!