Special Days

For the past couple of days, we've had some fun classes with our 2s.  Yesterday was our "Bring-a-Friend Day" - the first we've ever tried - in our night class.  We told our parents that they could bring another parent, a grandparent, a sibling, or a friend with their 2 and we had such an amazing response!  We had 31 people show up, and that's not including me or Katie (my co-teacher)!

You can kind of tell in this picture how full our classroom was last night.  Try reading a story to 16 little ones.  It's not easy and I'm not sure how much they actually listened, but I gave it my best shot! ;-)

We read "Glad Monster, Sad Monster" and let the kids try out 6 different centers, between 2 different rooms.  They got to paint the letter "M" for "Monster" and then make this monster pictures.  I was totally covered with paint and glue by the time the night ended and most of it I collected from this center above.

They could also make felt monster faces, play a monster matching game, and play in noodles in our Science Center.  Here they made monster stick puppets.

Today, we had one of the other classes join us.  The 4s class from downstairs came up and paired off with our 2s to hear the story and make their projects.  We did this last year and it was lots of fun!  It was a little more chaotic this year, but they all seemed to have a really fun time together.  We did the same story and the same projects as the night before.  You can see how crowded the class was today! :-)

I loved this center, because everyone made a totally unique monster.  Look at all the eyeballs one of our 2s ended up using on his monster.  Hilarious!

It's fun to see how much bigger the 4s are compared to the 2s.  Yet, they work so nicely together.  Our little ones are growing up and soon we'll be at the end of the school year and they will be preschool-ready!  What a joy and a blessing it is to teach them. :-)

Lord of the Rings Party

Back in January, I mentioned that Pete and I were invited to one of his co-workers' house to play games and that we played a board game of Dungeons and Dragons - yes, the Satan game of the '80s. ;-)   Well, I told a friend of ours one night when we were driving over to church together and he was so excited!  He wanted to know if we would ever be interested in playing a Lord of the Rings role-playing game.  Since we're huge fans of LOTR, both Pete and I agreed!  He was able to get a few other friends of ours from church to join - our Pastor, his son, and our friend Dave.  After nearly 2 months of planning, we got together last night for our first ever LOTR game.  

We started about 4pm and it lasted until some of them had to leave at 7:30.  The game wasn't over, but we all agreed to get back together again and play some more, so the story's just started!  The picture above shows us about half-way through our game last night.  It started off slowly, because none of us have ever played a role-playing game.  James, our narrator/"master", has, so he led us last night.  It took us probably an hour to really understand how to move our characters and move the story forward.  It probably took me 2.  I was a little slow going, though the first to venture out and roll my dice. :-)  It got really fun when we started battling some undead creature named Barowhite and went into the tomb of King Adufel, which is where we ended it.

Never one to shy away from a good theme party, I got to have lots of fun making LOTR food for the party!  I had the "Fires of Mordor", which was a spicy buffalo chicken dip - complete with Gollum, holding the ring and sinking into the lava. ;-)  We had Lembas Bread and bagel pizzas called the "Eye of Sauron".  The kids and Pete helped me make those look like his eye, with black olives going down the center like his pupil. ;-)

I had the fabulous cookies on top made by the same gal who made Noah's nerf cookies the week before.  The bottom cookies were Keebler Elf cookies called "Council of Elrond". :-)  I had lots of different rings, like onion rings, pineapple rings, funyuns, and pretzels.  Then "Po-Tay-Toe Chips", from the movie, of course.  I also put on the front door - Speak Friend and Enter - all in Hobbit font.  Can you tell I like theme parties?!!  It was lots of fun!

These are the sheets that James filled out for each of our characters.  It was our sheet to know how to roll the dice and use our skills to ask questions, sneak, battle, etc...  I was Tinnien, an elf.  Her name means "Spark", because she is quite impulsive at times.  I picked an elf, so I could be tall.  Likewise, Pete picked a dwarf, so he would be short. ;-)  He named his character Faracos.  Anyway, it was a lot of fun, I think (and hope) that everyone wants to do it again.  Because, I know Pete and I are ready for more battling!

The Nieces' Visit

Last week my nieces got to stay with us for 5 days and we had a great time!  My bro-in-law was on a mission trip to the Dominican and my sister had to work Fri-Mon, so she wasn't sure what to do with the girls.  She asked if we would watch them and we jumped at the chance. :-)

One of my favorite parts was having them come to my Thursday night class.  I've been wanting them to come since Kendalyn was 2.  Now Avery is 2 and Kendalyn is 4 and we finally worked it out so they could be there.  Avery, being the incredibly UN-shy girl that she is, jumped right in.  Here she is playing on the chalkboard with one of the other students.

Kendalyn liked playing with the toys quietly.  Of course, she picked out our My Little Ponies. :-)

...and the princesses to share with her mommy.

Since it was Valentine's Day week, we painted hearts.

Avery took her time and painted the entire thing!

We also made valentines.  They REALLY like using the glue. ;-)  It was so fun watching them in our class.  Neither one is in preschool yet, so I enjoyed watching them in that setting.  Em did too.

On Valentine's Day, Pete took a half day, so he could join Noah for his last class party, since it was also his birthday.  He brought me roses and gave one to each of the girls and Em too.  The girls loved them!

Most of the weekend, you'd find Avery on Noah like this.  Either laying on him, sitting on him, or wrestling him.  It was hilarious!  I definitely think Noah is her very favorite!

Kendalyn worked really hard, while the kids were in school, to make these really special pictures for Noah's birthday.  Noah loved them!

The next day was Noah's party and, I'm not going to lie, it wasn't easy getting ready for it with two toddlers in the house, but we made it!  Kendalyn helped me set the table up.  She did a really good job too!

Since the party was a nerf party, I had the girls stay in our bedroom with Uncle Pete, so they didn't get run over by all the boys or hit by all the flying darts.  When the party was over, we put a couple bull's eyes up on the front door and let the kids shoot at them.  Kendalyn really liked that part.  Here Pete is helping her use Madie's crossbow to shoot.  Tater had fun chasing all the darts, so he was ready for the action too.

Yet another picture of Avery sitting on Noah.  I swear, it was her favorite place to be!

The girls really loved playing with our "new" toys - aka new-to-them.  My house was a shambles the entire time they were here, but it was great seeing them have so much fun.  Since I had to work on Tuesday, along with Pete, my dad also came out, so he could see the kids and babysit the girls that Tuesday morning.  Em came back on Tuesday afternoon and we all went out to eat at Hanks that night.  We had a lot of visitors over those 5-6 days, but it was a whole lot of fun too!  So glad we got to have them and hope we can do it again soon!

Noah Is 11!

Yesterday was Noah's official birthday, but today we celebrated his party!  I figured this might be his last "theme" party, so we did something really fun for him and his buddies.  We had a SPY party.

Now, trying to convince him to open his presents a day late, so he could open them at his party was a lost cause.  So, we finally gave him and gave him his presents last night.  First thing he opened was this Nerf book.  He loved it!   He looked all through it last night, then organized his Nerf collection this morning, before shopping on Amazon for some new weapons - courtesy of his Amazon gift card from Aunt Jill and Uncle Adam. :-)

I couldn't gift wrap the next one, so we made him close his eyes.  He was so surprised when he opened them!  I love the expression on his face in this one.  We got him an electric scooter.

He can't try it outside yet, because of all the snow and ice, but he did try it in the basement.  He was able to get going pretty fast, but only for about 3 seconds, then he would reach the other side and would have to stop.  He can't wait for the snow to melt now!

This morning I spent the entire time running errands and getting ready for the party.  A friend told me about a gal in town that makes amazing cookies, so I called her and ordered some cookies for his party today.  I told her it was a spy party and that they were using bull's eyes and nerf guns and this is what she came up with.  Isn't she ah-mazing?!!!  She put nerf guns on cookies!  I thought they were the coolest things ever.  So did everyone else. :-)

Kendalyn helped me set up Noah's party table.  She loved helping and did a very good job.

I gave each of them a take-home bag.  I don't typically like to give "normal" take-home bags, where they just get candy and stuff.  I got them things that they would need to have and use during the party.

I labeled each bag with their name aka "Agent Noah", "Agent Nick", etc...  then I filled it with Nerf gun, a laser pointer, a Nerf cookie, a magnifying glass, sunglasses, and a notebook and pen set.  There were also some codes in there that they would have to use later and solve.

I made a table of snack with labels on it.  I found this idea on Pinterest.

They each had fun names like "dynamite" and "explosives".  It was cute, so I stole the idea and did it today. :-)

One of the boys wasn't able to make it today, because he had a wrestling tournament, so we only had 3 boys.  They loved our couch and wanted to buy it off of us. ;-)

Had to take a photo to start.  The red crepe paper was going to be a laser beam obstacle course, but a couple of the boys struggled with it, so we skipped it.  That was fine, because they kept busy with all of the other activities.

The first game was the bomb game.  I filled up 12 black balloons and they had to pop all of them and find the clues inside.

It was so funny, because they could NOT pop these balloons!  They tried and tried and just couldn't do it.  Eventually Noah grabbed his fork and started stabbing them until they popped. ;-)

Inside they had to find the 8 clues and put them in order to find the ammunition at each place.  They had to use their magnifying glasses to read the clues, because I put them in a number 2 font (another Pinterest idea).  It was hard to read even with the magnifying glasses!

Once they collected all the ammo from around the house (150 darts), we took them downstairs where they had a target shooting range.  I was so impressed at how well they hit the balloons with their guns!  I tried it last night after Pete and I hung them up and couldn't hit any of them!

Another picture of the coolness...

After they played downstairs for a while, we came back upstairs and had snacks and had Noah blow out the candles on his donut cake.  That's Nate giving him bunny ears.

We sat around for a while and snacked and chatted.  It was fun.  Nate and Noah ran off to play a little Minecraft while Nick and Jonathan and I chatted.

We told the boys not to bring presents, but Nick did anyway.  He gave Noah a sock monkey and $10.  Noah's already looking up other Nerf guns to buy.

After that we went downstairs and played laser tag.  Each of them got a little red laser pointer.  We blacked out the windows in the basement and it was so dark down there, you could barely see anything.  So, it worked out perfectly for the game.  They played that for a while and you could here them yelling and laughing all the way upstairs.  It was so fun!  Then I told them all to wait upstairs while I hid some dollars and quarters around the room.  They had to come down and try and find them all using their laser pointers.  Whatever they found, they got to keep.  A couple of the boys walked away with over $2.  It wasn't a lot, but to them, they thought they'd hit the jackpot!  When they were done with that, they decided to download a ghost finder app and played ghost hunters.  It was hilarious!  They must've played that for 45 min.  Nate and Noah ended up getting a little too freaked out and came upstairs to play the game, where it wasn't dark and scary.

The party ended with this awesome shot of these super-cool spies!  They had such a good time and two of them decided they wanted to live with us.  So funny!  So glad we were able to celebrate Noah's birthday which such a fun group of boys. :-)

Winter Record

I thought it would be important to make note of the weather this winter, so when we look back, we'll remember how totally awful and crappy it's been!  This has been the snowiest, yuckiest, nastiest, COLDEST winter I can remember having since we moved to IL back in 2000.  We've had 5 snow days this year.  Four of them because of the bitter, bitter cold we had - aka -40 to -50 wind chills.  Like I said, AWFUL!

We've also had tons of snow.  About 3 years ago we had one big "Blizzaster" where we had thunder snow and wind and we got like 12" of snow in one big storm.  Our neighbors, who have lived here for their entire lives, told us that was the kind of snow that comes once every 20 years.  Well...... it wasn't THAT long!  We've had snow falling all the time.  The wind has been out of control.  It's not been fun.  BUT - the weather forecast shows the amazing, beautiful, much-needed temps hitting 50 degrees by week's end.  So, I thought I'd better take a few pictures, so in the years to come, when I find myself complaining about our "awful winter", I can look back and say, "Well, it's not as bad as 2014 was!".

Pete placed this measuring stick - along with Noah's wind gauge from Christmas - in the front yard as the snow began to really pile up.  It's at 12" right there and that isn't even at the deepest parts.

You can see the piles that are around our driveway.  Piles and piles and piles and piles of snow.  I'm actually curious to see what the final snowfall amount is for this winter.  I've tried looking it up, but haven't found anything that says what it's been.  I have heard things like "It hasn't been this cold in 100 years" and that we've had more snow this year than we have in the previous 30 years, stuff like that.  But, I don't have any actual numbers.  But, we have quite a build-up of snow and it's supposed to snow again tomorrow.

This is a closer look at the piles around our driveway.  It comes up to my chest.  The kids haven't even been able to enjoy it, because the temps have been so terribly cold.  They can't play outside when it's -6 as a high!  So, this is a record of the winter of 2014.  Not fun.  Pretty at times, but so cold that it's been miserable.  I know I speak for this family, and probably every family in IL and IN combined, when I say "WE ARE READY FOR SPRING!". :-)

Being The Loving Community

On Sunday we had a special Valentine's Day event, where we pass out cookies to everyone in the congregation.  This is our third year doing that and the kids always love doing it.  It fit in perfectly with John's sermon series about our mission statement - "To be the loving community of Jesus Christ....".  There's actually more to it than that, but it starts out that way and that's what we wanted the kids to do - BE that loving community of Jesus Christ.  

So, we started by having them pack up bags of cookies and add a verse card.  The verse cards had John 3:16 written out, with the word VALENTINE spelled in red using the letters of the verse (thank you, pinterest!).

When they were done packing, they had to sort and count them and put them in baskets to take upstairs to the sanctuary.

Before they did that, however, we let them each take a bag for themselves to eat. :-)  It would've been mean and cruel to expect them to touch the cookies and pack the cookies and not get to eat any!

When they got upstairs they got to pass them out to everyone.  Noah frequently left the sanctuary to roam the halls looking for the cookie-less.  It was fun!

Such a great group of kids!  These guys were stationed at the back of the church and we had another crew at the front of the church.  It was a great morning!