Happy Birthday to our first born!

Blogger is acting like a child and not cooperating with me today, but here are few pictures of Luke over the last 7 years.:) Today is his birthday and it is always fun to look back and see how much he's changed and yet remained the same. This past year he has really grown, not so much in size, but in knowledge and behavior. He has been learning a ton at school and has just recently taken a liking to reading without being asked. That's huge for me because I love to read! He still loves Star Wars, Legos and playing the Wii and computer. He's recently begun taking a big interest in science and math. He definitely gets the math from his daddy.:) We celebrated with some friends from school last night. We took them bowling and to the Pizza Ranch and had a great time. Tonight we get to celebrate Luke with our family. I was telling him about the day he was born this morning, although he didn't really want to sit and listen.:) What a blessed day it was for Ryan and I. We can't wait to celebrate many more birthdays with our oldest son.

Snow Day

Yesterday was a SNOW DAY due to the blizzard conditions outside. The kids were excited (and so was I!) and we had a fun-filled day.

We started the day with chocolate chip pancake for the kids...

and lots of coffee for mom!

It's always exciting when they get to watch cartoons in the morning, because that doesn't happen on school days around here.

We did a little dancing

and some bathing.:)

Reagan and Luke worked on their Valentine's.

We had a movie and picnic for lunch.

We played some games

and braved the cold weather.

We made a Valentine's heart craft out of yarn.

We gathered snow from outside and made snow ice cream

Sugar, milk, vanilla, and fresh snow=yum!

And what snow day isn't complete without hot chocolate?

It was early to bed for mommy and kids after our fun, snowy day.

Racers...start your engines

Luke had his first Pinewood Derby race for Cub Scouts this past Saturday. We had a great time watching his car "Big Blue" race. Grandpa and Grandma Van Mersbergen were able to come cheer him on as well. He ended up getting 3rd place in his Tiger Cub den out of 10 racers. Ryan and Luke did a great job working on his car and have a nice shiny trophy to show for it.:)

Some of the tiger cubs waiting for the race to begin.

Luke's car is the blue one on the far left.

Showing off his car and trophy at the end of the morning.

Frozen Noses

We headed down to Pella last weekend to take the kids sledding. We were going to go over Christmas break, but a case of the stomach flu kept us indoors. My parents have a great hill for sledding down. It's a beast to climb back up, but it's a riot going down. Lisa & Kurtis were out of town and their 3 oldest were staying at Grandpa & Grandma's, so we had a fun winter party.

This was actually after the last time down. Drew finally decided he could pull his own sled up. He made it most of the way, too. The other times he would ride on the sled and we would pull him up or he would catch a ride on someone's shoulders.:)

Grandpa Wayne, Lauren, Drew, Luke, Jaren, Bethany, & Reagan. Erica got too cold by this point so she went inside.

I got Lauren to go down twice with me, which is an improvement from her one time last year. She didn't scream all the way down either! She preferred to make snow angels instead.

Reagan ready to fly down on the tube.

This was Drew's typical ride up the hill.

He went down head first on his belly everytime. He loved it. We finally had to make him come inside, because we were all getting cold!

Weekend getaway

Mom and Dad Noteboom treated us to an overnight stay in Omaha last weekend. We surprised the kids and told them we were going to run errands on Saturday morning. It took 45 minutes of driving for them to finally ask where we were going. They were pleasantly surprised when we pulled into the Children's Museum parking lot. They were even more surprised when they saw Grandpa and Grandma in the lobby and Aunt Elise and Uncle Adam in the parking lot. We had a great time at the museum. There was a ton for the kids to do. The science room was a big hit with all kinds of balls and air features. We then headed to a fun hotel with an indoor water park area. The littles loved the climbing and it had a zero depth area, so we didn't have to worry so much. It also had a fun enclosed water slide that went outside. Luke probably went down the thing 30 times and tried to recruit everyone else to ride as well.:) We were able to order in pizza and relax that night. The kids all went to sleep right away after a busy day. We went to church together the next morning and hit the Old Market area for a couple of hours before heading home. It was fun to get away. Reagan was asking if we could go again this weekend! I'm pretty sure they'll be suspicious for awhile now every time I tell them we're going to run errands.