Layla's new favorite song...

Layla frequently sings this song throughout our apartment!  I think she must have learned it at Sunday School...I think it is soooo adorable to listen to her sing "I Shall Not Be Moved".  What a sweet girl!!

 

We are packed and ready for our Spring Break!  Indiana, here we come!

some recent adventures...

Most of you probably haven't noticed, but there has been an EXTREME lack of blogging here.  It seems like a lot has happened lately!  So, here are a few fun things we have done lately, in an effort to catch up on my blogging a little bit...

 

 

Our good friends Jae and Enoch invited Nathan and I to Ann Arbor to try out some authentic Korean food.  It was SO amazingly good!  We loved it! (and thank you, A and J for keeping all of our kids!)

 

Then...all of the married students here at NTBI went bowling one evening!  We rented out the whole place, and everyone brought snacks and we left our kiddos at home.  It was a really fun evening.

 

Here are Jill and I with Julia and Tina.  These sweet ladies are sisters-in-law from Germany, and they are in our class.  We have really loved getting to know them (and their families)...it will be so sad to say goodbye to them at the end of the semester!!

And here are our really cool hubbies!  Or maybe really dorky...in this pic at least :)

haha!  I love this picture--the look on Jill's face is priceless.  She looks so annoyed at Nathan!  so funny.

I love this man.  We didn't plan it, but I wore my "I love my husband" shirt and Nathan wore his "I love my wife" shirt!  Haha!  We are so cool. :)

So...earlier today, we went to a kind of "Easter Outreach-carnival-festival" type of thing at our friends' church here in Jackson.  There was a lot of games and activities for the kids, lunch, and a show (a ventriloquist that presented the Gospel to kids in a very cute way).  It was a great time, and a very neat outreach!

Lots of fun stuff.  We are looking forward to our Spring Break, coming up in a week!  And we are so ready for some spring weather, too.  Spending time outside sounds so nice right about now. :) 

crazy...

Is a good word to describe these 3 girls! 

 

Have a good weekend!!

Celebrating Halle...part 1

It was so fun to celebrate Halle's 5th birthday with her...she was so excited for it!  The reason this is "part 1" is because when we go to Bluffton on our spring break in a couple of weeks, we will be having a party with our family down there (and we will also celebrate Daisy's birthday along with Halle's).  But on her actual birthday last week, we did a small celebration up here in Michigan.  And it was lots of fun!

 

On the actual day (March 3), we let Halle choose where to go for supper.  No surprise that she picked McDonald's!  It is their favorite.

 

 

I think these pictures are funny...this first picture is me forcing my daughters to take a NICE picture with me...

But for some reason, "nice" pictures don't come naturally for our family.  I am always on their case to "do a NICE smile!"  Before that picture above, this is what we got for the first picture of the 3 of us...

And here are the men of the family.  I wonder where my kids get it?  Haha :)

And Daisy is at an age of extremely cheesy smiles!  They are such cute smiles, though :)

So the next evening, I baked a cake for Halle and we invited 2 families over for the evening.

These are Halle's 2 best friends here at the school.  On the left is Woo-ah (she is from Korea...her parents are students and they live next door to us.)  On the right is Emilie, and she is from Germany!  Her parents are also students in our class.  We love both of these families so much, and we thought it would be fun if we just invited the families over for Halle's birthday, instead of just the kiddos.

Kaine was very happy with this plan, because he is good friends with Woo-ah's older brother, Urim.  They get along so well!  They spent most of the evening at Kaine's lego table.

And Layla was happy as well!  Emilie has a little sister named Jemima, who is in Layla's class.  They are such good friends.  It is SO cute to see them play together...just adorable.  I LOVE hearing Jemima speak German--she is so cute :)

We planned a very last minute game...kind of like "pin the tail on the donkey" except we called it "Stick the cupcake in Halle's mouth".  We blindfolded the kids...

And they had to try to get the "cupcake" on Halle's mouth.  It was an okay game, for being planned 2 minutes before the party!

Time for the cake...the kids were so excited to eat it!  We all sang to Halle, which embarrassed her...

And then we thought it would be a great opportunity to have Eddi and Julia sing it in German...

And Jae and Enoch sing in Korean!  What a fun, multi-cultural birthday party :)

At the end of the evening, we went looking for Layla and Jemima, and found them in our bed, pretending to sleep :)  They are just adorable!

Such a fun evening!  I will have to show you "Halle's birthday part 2" in a few weeks :)

I am finally motivated...

 

...to attempt this:

I kept the girls home from childcare today because of Layla's lingering cough...so I decided I might as well start potty-training Daisy!  So far, it has been a partial success, but I foresee a LONG road ahead.

As you can see by this picture, Daisy was providing some great entertainment for my other girls!  They love to sit and encourage her :)

And just to prove how FAST they are growing up...this was less than a year ago that we were in the same boat with Layla!  Crazy.  Now I can hardly remember what it was like when Layla was in diapers.  Hopefully Daisy does as well as Layla did!

halle rae

Happy Birthday to my sweet Halle Rae! 

(her birthday breakfast of choice:  pink cream of wheat!!)

It is so hard to believe that my second child is FIVE years old today!!

She has been looking forward to this day for months :)

We are so very thankful that God has blessed us with such a sweet, fun, silly, passionate, and beautiful daughter.  It is so exciting to see her grow up--both physically, and also growing in her understanding of God and His Word!  She is full of questions about God, Heaven, hell, etc.  We are excited to see what God has in store for Halle!

We love you, Halle.  We are proud to be your parents!