Valentine's Parties

I am a day late, but here are pictures from Noah and Livie's class parties yesterday.  Again, Madie doesn't have them any more, because she's a grown-up middle schooler now.  Though, I thought I should mention that the boy she danced with at the last dance sent her a *like* lollipop at school yesterday.  They've been selling lollipops for the kids to send to other people in the school.  For example, Noah bought red ones for "love" for Madie and Livie.  Livie bought yellow ones for "friendship" for her friend Mimi.  And, Madie got a pink one from Bobby for "like".  She came running out of the school absolutely giddy.  It was adorable!  Anyway, on to the parties...

I spent the first part of the hour hosting Noah's party.  The head room parent in that classroom recently started homeschooling her son, so they didn't have any one to host, so I brought a big tray of fruit and yogurt pretzels and led them in a little game of BINGO.  Here's Noah showing off the Valentine's bag he made.  There's a monkey on it, of course. ;-)

He also got to pass out the lollipops to everyone in the class that got one.  He got one from Madie and one from Livie.  He was pretty happy about that.

After I was done upstairs, I headed down to spend a little time with Livie.  I missed her Christmas party totally, because I was working and Pete was in Noah's class.  So, she insisted I make it to her V-Day party. She was so crushed after missing her Christmas one, that I wouldn't have missed this one for the world!

I started to take a photo of her and her little friend AJ asked to get his picture taken with her.  Too cute!

She's showing off her bag too and her ring pop, of course.  She got lots of great V-Day treats and cards.  This girl loves her parties!!  Between Noah's birthday, their V-Day parties, and my students class last night it was a full day of fun!

A Decade of Birthdays

Since we're not actually celebrating Noah's birthday today (because I work tonight), I thought I'd give a retrospective of all his past birthdays.  Boy, does it makes me miss that sweet little guy that would cuddle with me.  They grow up too fast!!

This is Noah on his very first birthday back in 2004.  He has a farm birthday with a pig cake.  You'll see Papa Paul in the background.  This was his last trip to see us, because he got sick shortly after this and passed away just a few months later.  He was so proud of having his great-grandson named after him. :-)

This is Noah's 2nd birthday.  He had a Blues Clues birthday.  He absolutely LOVED Blue!

Noah's third birthday, just about 6 weeks after he got a new baby sister. :-)  He had a Buzz Lightyear birthday.  His shirt even matched the theme!

Up until his 4th birthday, he had always had his family come out and celebrate with him.  This was his first "friend" birthday and he had the best time!  Nothing like having a bunch of pirates to hang out with, right?

This is Noah's Superman birthday.  He turned 5 and just had us to celebrate with him.  Still looks like he had fun!

For Noah's 6th birthday, he got his very first bike.  He just got a bigger one last year.  He loved this bike and learned to ride without training wheels with this one.  He had a Mario Bros birthday.  This was his first year without a cake and we've been creating new "cake" idea ever since.  That year he decided on a crescent roll cake.

This was his 7th birthday back in 2010 and he had another friend party.  I try to have a friend party every other year, so it doesn't get too overwhelming for me.  He had it at the roller-skating rink and LOVED it!  You'll notice he has sock monkeys.  He had just fallen in love with them a couple months earlier and has loved them ever since.

This was his 8th birthday, just a few weeks after being diagnosed.  As you can see, he was doing great and super-excited about his sock monkey shoes. :-)  This was another sock monkey birthday.

Last year, in 2011, he still wanted another sock monkey birthday, but I steered him into a science party for his 9th.  Yet, another friend party and it was one of our favorites!  They all did science experiments and then played with swords and light sabers and had the best time.  Can you tell? ;-)

This year he was pretty insistent that he didn't want to celebrate his birthday - yeah, like that was going to happen.  He can around as the date got closer, but that meant he didn't pick out any special b-day theme this year.  So, we just did a primary colored birthday and will be celebrating with him tomorrow night.  But, not before he got this HUGE sock monkey from Nana and Papa T.  I think he likes it!  Happy 10th Birthday, you goofy, silly boy!

Valentine's Day Cards

You're going to notice Madie is absent from these photos and that's because she is considered a Jr. Higher now, so she doesn't get to have Valentine's Day parties anymore. :-(  But, Livie and Noah still do, so they were hard at work putting together their valentines in anticipation of the party on Thursday.

I picked them out for them this year, since I was out shopping while they were in school.  Thankfully, they liked what I picked!  Trust me, they would be quick to point out if they thought something sucked.  I got Livie these folded valentines.  I can't remember what they are called, but they've been around since I was a kid.

Noah got these spy valentines.  You can use the decoder to figure out what it says.  They're pretty fun!

Noah got hot making his valentines, so that's why he's shirtless in this one.  But they had fun putting them together and got them all ready and in baggies to take to school on Thursday.  Now, if I can only get my stuff ready for his birthday and all the school parties (both theirs and mine) in the next couple of days!

Church Life

Since I've been so busy with creating our new church directory, I thought I would share a bit of what our Sunday morning's look like.  They are a little busier these days, because of the added jobs of taking photos and getting people signed up for their photo sessions, but most Sundays are like this.

We start off with Sunday School (aka ZONE) at 9am.  I lead the kids in looking up their memory verses and  singing our "Books of the Bible" song.  We usually then have a storyteller come in and share with the kids their story.  The past 4 weeks we've been talking about John the Baptist.  Our memory verse was Mark 16:15-16a - "Go into all the world and preach the Good News to everyone.  Everyone that believes and is baptized will be saved."  We just finished up that lesson, so instead of having a storyteller and a craft/game to follow, we had a special project day.

We had the kids make cookies to share with everyone as they entered the sanctuary.  I bought and bagged up all the cookies for them.  They then added a verse card and a sticker to that verse card that said "The ZONE kids are sharing the GOOD NEWS about Christ's love."  We wanted them to live the truth of that verse and share the good news with everyone in our church.  They each signed their name to the cards.  They had to make 70 of them, so I was thankful for all the great adult helpers.  We seriously have the most dedicated and loyal helpers.  Sometimes I don't even have to ask and they will just come up and volunteer to help.  It's so awesome!

We had two full baskets of cookies, so they could be stationed at both entrances to the sanctuary.

Pete manned the back entrance and Brian manned the front, with lots of kids to help.  Those kids are on it too!  They will search out anyone that doesn't have a cookie and will make sure they have one!  It's so awesome to see!

After the service, the session (which is the name of our group of elders - yes, I am one!) met in our library and had Pete take a photo for the directory.  Tried talking Gayle into doing the splits on the floor in front of us to make it a really memorable photo, but she couldn't be convinced. ;-)

Had to take this excited photo of Livie pretending to get signed up for the directory.  I thought it was hilarious.  I manage our church's Facebook page, so I wanted a great shot to post on their to encourage those last remaining people to sign up.

We had a meeting right after church, so we were there from 8:45-12:30!  We were all tired, but we still had Bible Study to go to at 4:30.  So Pete and Noah decided to stay home.  And, honestly, if I wasn't in charge of taking a photo for the directory of our Bible Study, I probably would've stayed home too, but I'm glad I went.  It was a great lesson and really was wonderful to be there.  The photo above is missing three adults (Pete being one of them) and Noah, but it gives you a good idea of the great people we have in our group.  We've been a part of it now for 3-4 yrs and it's evolved and changed as people have moved and stuff, but it's still a blessing to be a part of after all this time.

I mean, we know how to have fun! :-)

A Quick Visit

Ricardo had another meet up in Palatine, so I got to go up and meet them and spend a little shopping time with one of my besties!  I'm so glad he gets to have meets up there.  It's so fun to have a quick afternoon with my friends.  We met at our go-to spot in Schaumburg - Wildberry - and had lunch together, because heading out to do a little Ikea shopping.  I got to meet Michelle's friend Kelly (she took this picture).  I've heard about her for so long, it was great to finally meet her.  We had a really fun few hours together.  Of course, every visit I spend with Michelle and/or Teresa, it just makes us long for the time we live closer together, but just makes those times together that much more fun. :-)

An Update

It's been more than a week since I blogged and I've been feeling it every day!  I would turn to Pete and say, "I haven't blogged in 4 days!", then 5 days, then 9!   We haven't had a whole lot going on, but that wasn't the reason I haven't posted.  It's because I've been deep into projects that seem to be taking up a lot of my time.  I find myself excited about starting a project, then find it's a lot more work than I envisioned.  Take now, for instance.  I decided back in October that it would be great to have another church directory made.  After all, it had been almost 5 years since our last one.  Everyone thought it was a great idea, so I pushed forward and decided to head up the thing as the director.  I've got a great team helping, but I didn't quite realize all of the busy work that would come with this.  I'm quickly finding out!  I'll blog about that another day though.  For now, I thought I'd just share a few pictures to show you what we've been up to around here.

Cheerleading ended in December and Madie, like me, loves to have things to do, so she decided to join the Scholastic Bowl team.  It's a group of 6th-8th graders that compete against other schools in a quiz show kind of way.  They have practices twice a week and now have begun to compete.  Last Thursday was her first at-home competition, so I was excited to go watch her be the smart girl she is!

It's started at 3:30, so I was able to stay for an hour, before I had to head home and get ready to leave for work (I teach one of my 2s class on Thursday nights).  Of course, wouldn't you know it, she didn't get to compete until I had to leave!!!  I was so upset.  But, it was still fun to see how the meet went.  They have buzzers and sometimes have to answer multiple questions as a team.  Very nerdy, but very fun. :-)  I'm looking forward to seeing her actually get up there and answer questions when I'm there, but that won't be for a couple weeks.

Gotta say, I was very worried about how I was going to watch her with 4 antsy kids in tow.  Everything has to be very quiet, so they can hear the questions and answer them.  If our cell phone goes off, they can lose a point, so it's very important to stay silent.  How was I going to do that with all those kids?!  Well, I loaded up a bag with every gaming system, electronic device I had and they did a FABULOUS job!  So fabulous, I couldn't tell them enough how proud I was of them.  Gave me hope that we can do this for her future meets. Yay!

Thought I would throw in a couple extra pictures of Noah and Tater.  Noah decided Tater's dog bed was a really comfortable space to play on his Ipod.  Tater didn't seem to mind sharing his space.

Noah was in there for a little while, before Madie found him and now she too is laying on Tater's bed while they play.  Goofballs.  So, that's just a little bit of what we've done for the past week.  Hopefully I'll be able to get caught up on directory stuff soon, so I can stay on track with my postings.  We'll see!