Kaine's first day of school!

Okay, so I know my last post was a "goodbye post"...at least for awhile...and I wasn't going to post again for the next 3 months or so...but the mommy in me couldn't resist:)

 

Today was Kaine's first day of school.  It is so hard to believe that he is old enough for this!  It seriously seems so recent that he was just a baby.  But anyway...today he went to school.

 

He loved it!  He was so excited to go, and when I dropped him off he took off without a backward glance!  :(  Kind of sad, but I anticipated that.  I knew he would be fine with it.  And actually, I was okay with it, too.  I am typically not a very emotional person, so I don't think it phased me that much that was off to school.  I know it helps that he is only in 1/2 day kindergerten this year, and he was already going to childcare in the mornings here at NTBI (along with our other kiddos)...so it doesn't really feel too much different.

 

So here is my "first day of school" picture of Kaine with his backpack on...I wouldn't be a good mom if I didn't take one of those:)

Halle came with us to drop Kaine off...

And here is Kaine with his teacher, Mrs. Fitch.  She is a very loving, friendly and Godly grandma-type of woman.  It is very evident that she LOVES her job and she LOVES each of her students!  I am very thankful for that!

Kaine, we love you and we are so proud of you! 

an update and a goodbye (for now)...

Update on our family:

 



 

Kaine and Halle are loving it back here at NTBI.  They are having a blast with their friends!  They have been getting along great with each other, too:)

Kaine is getting ready to start school this coming Monday!  Last fall we made the decision to hold him back from Kindergarten (mainly because of all the transitions in moving to Michigan, etc)...so he will just now be starting Kindergarten (at age 6 1/2!!).  But oh well, I think since we are planning to homeschool him most of his life it won't really matter.  So he is really excited to start school on Monday--he will be in his good friend Brendan's class.  We are also sooooo blessed by Brendan's parents (who are on staff here at NTBI) because they agreed to do all transportation so that I don't have to miss any class!  What good friends they are!

Halle has just started preschool here at NTBI.  She is adjusting very easily to that.  She continues to amaze us with her funny sense of humor and her great imagination!!

 Layla got her hair trimmed for the first time!  Actually, this was a few weeks ago.  Our good friend Lisa trimmed it:)
Layla is having a hard time adjusting to childcare this semester.  So far there have been tears every day...but we know the teachers well and we know that they are doing a great job with the kids.  It will just take some adjusting!

Daisy has also consistently cried each day of childcare...but only for the first few minutes and then she is fine.  So I think she will also just need to adjust.  With the start of childcare also comes the end of Daisy's morning naps!  Which leads to a very tired baby girl come lunch time.  Oh, and I just counted Daisy's teeth and she officially has all of her teeth (until the 2 year molars).  She just got her 16th tooth!  Go Daisy!  I'm glad that is over!

Nathan and I are so glad to be back in classes!  They started today, and we are pumped to be immersed in God's Word again this semester.  And I do mean immersed...which leads me to my next point...


Goodbye (for now):

The classes we are taking this semester are going to demand ALL of my free time.  One of them is Romans, and I really want to put as MUCH time into getting all that I can out of that class.  There is a LOT of homework and a lot of reading, and I know I will have zero free time.  Or, if I do have any extra free time, I will want to use it for more homework:)  Therefore...I am going to be DONE with blogging!  At least for a time...probably the next 2 or 3 months.  As much as I like to blog, it is just going to be hard this semester and I feel like that is something I can cut out of my life right now. 

So...goodbye (for now)!  I hope you all have a good and God-glorifying next couple of months!  Hopefully the next time you hear from me I will have a better grasp of the book of Romans!

summer camp

We feel very privileged to be a part of an awesome leadership training program here at NTBI.  We have had some really great sessions and talks on all things related to Biblical leadership--really great stuff.  A huge part of this program is the Dean's department takes all of us students who are involved to a camp in upstate Michigan.  We left Jackson on Saturday after lunch and we just got back right before supper today...it was so much fun!  We took all of our kids and they had a blast.  Although I think all of us are pretty tired now!  5 days camping with 4 kids ages 6 and under can be pretty tiring:)  But it was worth it, for sure.  We built some great relationships!

(I also just noticed that Jill just blogged about this, too!  Check out her blogpost, here).

So...4 days after we moved all of our stuff back up to MI from our summer in IN, we once again packed our van to the brim with stuff!  The camp was about 3 hours north of Jackson.

We stayed in a cabin with an adjoining room to Aaron and Jill's room.  In this picture, it is looking into our room and that open door back behind Layla is to Aaron and Jill's room.  The other two rooms in our cabin housed all the single girls, so that was so fun!  It was great to get to know the single girls better, and they are so great with our kids!

 They planned some "Olympic events" for our week...we were all separated into 6 teams and there were lots of events throughout the week.  The points all accumulated throughout the week and today (the last day of camp) we had results...my team won!  (not that I really helped much--I didn't participate in much because I was usually holding a kid or 2:) ).

There was an obstacle course, complete with leapfrog...

a "stick your face in a plate of whipped cream to find a piece of bubble gum and blow a bubble" event...

and a rock wall climbing contest...

They also had a fun zipline!  It was actually pretty long and high.  This is a terrible picture, but here is Kaine doing the zipline...

And I still cannot believe this, but Halle was brave enough to do the zipline!  If you know Halle, you will know why we were surprised:)  I was so proud of her.  The camp people said she set a record for being the youngest to ever do the zipline!

There was also a rope swing behind our cabin, which swung way out over a (dried up) creek...Kaine absolutely LOVED the rope swing!

And Nathan took our girls on it, and they loved it, too!

Well, I guess I'm not sure if Daisy loved it...she pretty much just had a stunned look on her face the whole time:)

What a great bonding weekend! 

On Sunday and Tuesday we took day trips an hour away to Higgins Lake Beach...it was an absolutely BEAUTIFUL lake.  It was awesome because it was just knee deep for so far out---almost as far out as you can see in this picture.  So it was perfect for kids!  And perfect for tackle football (which Nathan is still sore from!)

Daisy loved the sand, and she kept getting closer to the water...

and then it started washing up onto her!  It was pretty cold:)  She was surprised at first...

But then she ended up loving the water, too:)  Notice she is reaching into her snack container for goldfish crackers in this picture...and yes, her hands were covered in wet sand:)  Yum!

It was great to see our kids making new friends...

Some of the students brought some cool hammocks...

"bumper tubes"...

The Dean of Students (Dan) is so great with kids!  He built a fire for Kaine and his friends, and Kaine was seriously entertained by that fire for at least 2 hours!  He just kept putting leaves and sticks in it to "keep in going"...and Dan faithfully hung out with the kiddos the whole time.

Kaine and Savannah trying to trap a chipmunk:)

What a great time!  Thanks NTBI...we really appreciated our time away with some great brothers and sisters in Christ!

home sweet home...

...or I should say, "school sweet school"  :)

Well, we are back in Jackson after a very fun and busy summer.  As much as we LOVED being with all of our family and friends back home this summer, it feels good to be back in our own apartment.  We are very ready to start classes again!  We have some really good ones coming up (starting with Romans!)

We moved back up to Jackson on Tuesday.  I didn't take many pictures, but here is one of our van, which was totally jam-packed with stuff!  Nathan's parents and brother Kyle came with us too, which we were so thankful for!  We had their truck totally filled,too.

We decided to move our kids' bedrooms around.  Before, Daisy had her own room while Kaine, Halle and Layla all shared a room.  But when the girls all took naps, then Kaine had nowhere to play.  Because of that and just because we felt like it, we decided to try something new!  We moved all the beds in one room (it was kind of difficult to get a good picture of all the beds):

You might notice in this picture that we decided to give our kids our ONE air conditioner that we are allowed.  At first, it might seem like we are so selfless to let our kids have the ONE cool room in our whole apartment, but don't think that for long...we actually have selfish motives because we know our kids will sleep better in a cool room and then...WE will sleep better:)

So then we made the other bedroom into a sort of playroom.  I think it will work well...as soon as all the kiddos are sleeping well in a room all together!  We will see how it goes:)

Nathan made this great lego table for Kaine...he finally has a place for all of his legos!  Now we just need to train Daisy not to touch it...she is so tempted by all those little pieces!

It has been great to catch up with friends...we are so glad we made it back just in time for Kaine's good friend John Wiley's birthday.  His parents are our friends on staff here so they invited  our whole family to the party:)

Kaine and his friends...

It was an Olympic theme, which was such a good idea!  Because of the rain, they did it in the gym with different events.  Here is Kaine running "track and field" through the finish line.

Halle was even able to participate!  She was so cute:)

The medal ceremony...they all won golds!

So fun!  We are excited to do some great training courses coming up this next week, which also includes a 5 day trip to a camp a few hours away!  Hopefully it will go well, having our four kiddos in a small cabin:)

Hopefully I can get back to blogging now that we have internet access again!  Have a great day!