Happy Birthday Rooke!

Our boy turned seven this month!  

Ryan was out of town for Rooke's real birthday, so we had a family birthday night early.  We started the night started at Pizza Planet for some games.  A few rounds of skeet ball, Mom busting some moves on Dance Revolution, Dad helping Rooke play a hunting game (when in North Dakota . . .), and Air Hockey earned us enough tickets for Rooke to "buy" his sisters each a friendship bracelet and pocket himself a handful of tootsie rolls!

While the boys played, the girls danced with their own reflections!

After dinner at Qdoba (Rooke's favorite!), we treated our birthday boy and the family to Coldstone!

At age seven, one of Rooke's main love languages is still food!  So his actual birthday started with a full breakfast and a gift.  

After church, we invited our friends, Sam and Patricia, to join us for lunch in celebrating Rooke. 

We enjoyed Rooke's favorite: British meat pie and mash.  

Then he got to open a few more presents:

When I asked Rooke what kind of birthday cake he wanted this year, he thought for a second and then said, "A Bible cake!".  He came up with the design and color scheme for the cake all on his own.  He's a cool kid.

Seven candles!  

I love this series of photos because you can see how he had a hard time blowing out all the candles!

Rooke is our contemplative thinker and has a great memory.  He is observant, inquisitive, boisterous, physical, and smart.  He doesn't usually like being in the spotlight, and certainly doesn't want to be singled out for anything, but he has a quiet confidence about him and has strong opinions about what is right and what is wrong.  Rooke loves playing with legos and just in the last month has started to really enjoy reading pretty much anything he picks up.  He likes board games or card games and has taken a recent interest in football (proudly wearing his new Seahawks shirt!), which Ryan thinks is awesome!  Rooke loves Jesus.  And he loves his family, even though his sisters annoy him like crazy when they play "Baby and Mommy" together!  We are so proud of our seven-year-old son.  

Happy Birthday, Rooke!

Trying on the Wedding Dress

Ryan and I celebrated our twelfth anniversary on January 4th!  After a nice lunch date together, we came home and looked through our wedding photos with the kids, which was followed by a peek at my wedding dress.  Gretchen immediately wanted to try it on!   

While wearing the dress, she stood straight up and asked, "Did you have to be very proper when you were wearing your dress?" =) 

I took a turn trying on the dress, and then she asked to wear it again.  I hesitated, and she was quick to convince me by saying, "Mom - I just want to put it on and sit down and look at everything that is happening around me and people can just look at me."  Oh my!

Christmas Week 2014

We had a memorable Christmas week celebration this year with my parents in town visiting!  It's been a hard adjustment not living relatively close to them anymore and was special to share in the festivities of Christmas together.

The kids sang a couple songs in church.  I know I'm biased, but my mouth hurt from constant smiling  so much that morning!  They wanted their songs to be a surprise for Kaye K and Big Daddy.  Bridgette took her practicing at home seriously!

Big Daddy turned SIXTY!!  It was great to celebrate with him on his special day.  My dad is a profoundly wise, servant-hearted, loving, competitive, fun man.  He's aged well. =)

Between Big Daddy's birthday, Gretchen's birthday, Jesus' birthday, and Rooke's birthday coming up  . . . birthdays were on the brain for this little one who daily reminds us of her age.  Except she says "ager".  It's one of her cutest words!  And she will tell you her "ager" right now is "this many" (she's very good at being two!) but in March she will be "this many" (three fingers!).

We played a lot of games!

The kids were thrilled to open their traditional Christmas Eve pajamas from Grammy Deb and G Daddy!

Christmas morning opening stockings was a fun way to start the day!

After a big breakfast, Rooke helped us to read the Christmas story.

The amazingly fun after-math chaos!

We enjoyed a delicious ham dinner together in the evening.  I love the British tradition of poppers, so I brought some back from England for our Christmas dinner!

LEGOS!!

Working a puzzle my parents gave the kids that I used to play with when I was little.

There was a lot of snuggling and playing and chasing and reading and noise and fun all week long.

We sat down for breakfast together each morning.  The sunrise was particularly beautiful this day.

It was a very merry Christmas week!

December Phone Dump

Our tree this year was our favorite ever!  It was full and still perfectly green (even smelling nice!) on Christmas Day.

I always dread putting lights on the tree because inevitably, one of the strands of lights which worked last year doesn't work this year.  This year I only had 1 out of 5 working.  Ugh.  But when I stopped to think about it, three of those strands of lights were ones we'd purchased our first Christmas married.  So I guess getting eleven years from a $2 box of lights is okay.

Making peppermint pretzels is one of our favorite Christmas traditions.  It's our favorite treat to eat our weight in share with neighbors and friends.

Gingerbread house party with our community group.  We modeled our structure after St. Albans cathedral. =)

Modeling some new Christmas outfits from Grammy Deb!

Getting help cutting out his soap box car for the derby race coming up.

 The Canadian Pacific Holiday Train came through Minot!

White Christmas.  Christmas cards.  Warm drink.  Missing my sister.  Every year.

He was pretty excited about the candy cane grams his grandparents sent him at school!

One of our Christmas countdown activities was to make our own video of the Christmas story.  I had planned to have the kids act out the story, but they had the idea to use their nativity figurines.  We spent an entire Saturday morning working on it!  

The kids gave Ryan the game Clue for Christmas.

Temps during the week of Christmas were in the teens and even low twenties.  Then the normal winter weather came back and it got really cold really fast (look at the "feels like"!).  Apparently I should learn how to build an igloo.

Snack time!

The kids are having a great time with the microphone Grammy Deb and G Daddy gave Bridgette for Christmas!