Fishing

Uncle Jeff gave Daniel a book 1,400 things to be happy about and one of the pages asked what you would be happy about camping. The kids unanimously said, "FISHING!"

Eric and Ellie

Luke loves his fishing chair.

This must be a family trait. :-) https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvqZGRMKveUipmer5s0tWeTE0mVqqSXxd7Nl4jSFdsowgqoVgc82yI9caTlAVMW7-mpCXLOk7e01cSAqBZbav4KL1_o-7qBiogqUxUYsrRUstF9Z08rgdv6WxlXV12Nt1aPSVw0LCaeQ/s1600-h/Daniel.jpg

Daniel finds the secret of fishing....patience.

Easter

I know the month is almost over and Easter is long past, but I wanted to share our Easter celebration with you.

Daniel all dressed up.

Our church Easter egg hunt. Apparently Grandma has a picture of her on a hay bale about this age too. Hopefully I can get a copy someday.

I love when they do this!

Eric looking dashing hiding those eggs!

As they say, "Age before Beauty."

"Look what I have Grandma!"

Cool as a cucumber.

Pink...

...and blue.

Swinging good times.

For those of you who know my Dad, he knew where to sit. The sodium was calling his name.

Let us pray.....Ellie's recent prayer is "Thank you God, for our food. Thank you for butterflies, ketchup, marshmallows and hot chocolate." :-)

Apparently ear issues run in the family.

Life Happens

I have to say that for all the graceful duck that I try to be there's a whole lot of paddling that happens below the surface that only those who live with me get to see. (Or those who happen to spend the night!) :-) Ellie's party was one of those paddling times and I have to say that the party was great and pulled off without a hitch. Those all happened before! I can laugh now and I love having people in my life who can see the humor in things. Eric's mom stayed with us the night before the party and was a tremendous help and just keeping me on track was part of it.

I seemed to do everything in twos and threes and really didn't even have time to do it once! I had to make Ellie's cake twice, the cucumber sandwiches in a double batch because the first one was too salty and the amount of times we set the table to accomodate for my different China patterns was pretty funny. Life happens and it's not events that make up life but the road that leads up to those events and how we deal with them that make up our life. I've shared my life verse before and it comes into play here too...."For who is God besides the Lord, and who is our Rock except our God. It is God who arms me with strength and makes my way perfect." ~ 2 Samuel 22:32-33

Here I am less than 10 hours from people arriving and I don't have something that even looks like a cake! Ellie is wondering how this gets frosted....

This was a Rose bundt pan for Ellie Rose and the cake got stuck into every crevice. Needless to say we had a beautiful yogurt parfait with crumbled strawberry cake!

My Boys

Since I've posted so much about Ellie lately, I didn't want to leave out the boys. God definitely gave me opposites in them in most cases but I wanted to share some of the similarities of "My Boys." First and foremost (and all the uncles will be proud) they both equally HATE pink and pretty much anything associated with that color. Even Tink-r Bell gets an "Ewww" out of both of them even though she's associated with blue. They love it for their sister and other girls but NOT for them. Daniel can like red and green and Luke blue but they both despise pink!

They compliment each other and I don't just mean they can work well together although that can happen too. It's the verbal ones I'm talking about. The other day Luke told a friend of his that, "I do everything Daniel does." In context he was saying not that he can do it all, but that he wants to do it all simply because his big brother does it. Daniel is constantly saying how he loves something that Luke does. Just yesterday Luke was looking at a drawing he did about six months ago that had lines that were more than a little squiggly. Luke was saying that he didn't like it and Daniel was the first to jump right in and say he "loved" his work and how he "did a great job." Luke and Daniel, without either of them knowing the other was doing it, tried to get uniform numbers that were the age of the other. Daniel got number 4 and Luke was sad when he didn't get #6.

They both LOVE fun! Really who doesn't? But these two can join forces when tickling or tag or laughing is involved. As any youngster does, they love the slapstick comedy especially if it's cartoonish. They love to make up their fun from tents out of couch pillows (sound familiar anyone???) to goofy stories. I love hearing their deep belly laughs when they get tickled to their high squeals when they're chasing eachother. That has got to be the best sound!

Finally, they're both competitive. Whether it's a race or number of catches or how many M&M's they ate both of them love to compete and win. This may just be because they're siblings and they're so close, but it's one more similarity. They challenge each other (and sometimes me!), but when they work together they become an amazing team that I love to cheer on. Go Boys!

(And now a random picture I've been meaning to post. :-)

Happy St. Patty's Day

We're looking for Leprechauns here. Don't forget to wear green or you just might get a pinch. ;-)