A special little person in our house turned five this week! Noah had a whole day of celebration that started with breakfast in bed…
Continued with a lunchtime surprise party with lots of good friends…
And ended with opening and assembling his new Lego Toy Story set… (Maybe now he’ll keep his hands off of his brothers’ Lego? Heh, heh.)
We’ve had a phenomenal April. Beautiful sunny days and cool mosquito-less evenings. It’s been lovely. I brought the camera along to the park the other night…
Elijah…10 and 1/2. Can you believe I have a 10 and 1/2 year old? He’s getting so grown up and distinguished looking.
Noah already has a tan and bleached hair. And a dirty face as this photo reveals. 
In a family of five kids a face or two may occasionally go unwashed.
Our Ellie Pearl loves to be outside. LOVES it. The sand, the grass, the invigorating breeze… Ah, I love how babies make these old things seem new again.
De plane, de plane! (Oh, how we’d love to be able to fly to the land of our birth on a plane soon.)
Zeke is at my favorite stage of tooth loss. I think this looks so cute, the gaps on either side of the two front teeth. He scored big with those two teeth, they fell out within minutes of each other. Zeke has now surpassed Elijah in tooth-loss, and therefore also in tooth-loss earnings. Elijah is so not impressed.
Behold Zeke’s favorite jeans. I think he’s worn them every other day for the last year and a half. Zeke has an aversion to zippers and buttons, so when he pulled these elastic-waistbanded-beauties out of a bag of hand-me-downs last year he claimed them right away and they’ve been his “comf-jeans” ever since. They’ve been in my path of destruction for quite some time but Zeke’s (somewhat unusual) attachment to them has stopped me… I mean, what’s a Mom to do?
We’ve recently, though, turned the “comf-jeans” into a sweet pair o’ “comf-shorts” after much diliberation on Zeke’s part. He finally decided that he’d like to be able to wear them every other day in the summer too.
P.S. I love how Zeke marches to the beat of his own drum…notice his Green Bay Packers t-shirt. He wears it proudly in Vikingsville.
“Well, would you look at the sit of him,” my mother would say. He sits, as Dave and I often discuss, like his Grampie…interesting how we inherit so much more than looks, I think.
It occurs to me as I look at this photo, and realize how grown-up Elijah is getting (and by the way, those are my shoes that he has on!) that we are standing at the precipice of a great, yawning chasm. At one end is boyhood and at the other is manhood. It’s a little unnerving, I must say… Okay, to be honest, it’s terrifying. I have no idea how to cross it.
On a side note, Elijah is off doing MCA testing today, a Minnesota standardized test. Go Eli-Guy, go!
Lego, lego here and there
Lego, lego everywhere
On the floor and in the sink
And even with the milk I drink
There’s just something so precious about a child gathering a handful of dandelions and presenting them with shining eyes and a shy grin, isn’t there? Of course, it’s the pure motives and sincere desire to please me that melt my heart every time…not the yellow weeds. And with the first gift of dandelions every spring I am reminded of a simple, yet profound truth: that pretty much everything that I can offer to my Creator is like a dandelion – a weed – and not really of any worth at all to Him unless it is given with a sincere and loving heart.
Isn’t it incredible the lessons children can teach us? I’d love to hear a lesson you’ve learned from a child/ren in your life lately.
All tuckered out. Being on holiday is fun, but also tiring, espesially when you’re a little person whose afternoon naptime has been trumped by a trip to the Science Museum. Thankfully third, fourth and fifth borns learn to roll with the punches.
We’re on the last day of a marvelous spring break. Such fun we had! We had spectacular weather, a birthday to celebrate (my 33rd!) an Easter picnic, on which we discovered a bunny trail that lead to Easter loot! We also got to see the Dead Sea Scrolls, had a free day at the amusment park at The Mall of America (courtesy of an oil spill from one of their roller coasters onto Dave’s head a few weeks ago) and just enjoyed being lazy.
Here are a few more photos that I’ll throw in…
April Fools! “Cupcakes.” Mini meatloaves topped with whipped potatoes. Elijah and Zeke weren’t fooled for a second. Noah was mildly amused. Phoebe was…ummm, well, was pretty ticked off that we weren’t really having cupcakes for supper.
The afore mentioned picnic. Note Noah’s rollerblades and helmet. We recently got some Noah-sized rollerblades handed down to us and since Elijah and Zeke had been wanting some, we bought a secondhand pair for each of them as well. All three boys had skating lessons this spring and they totally rock on rollerblades now!
Wife to Dave.Mom to 5. Learning how to homeschool and find time to breathe in Life.
