Beautiful children on Easter Sunday

A few pictures from Easter Sunday -  without Chris.  He had an appointment after church and Jonas wasn't about to stay in his church clothes any longer.

(This is typical Jonas behavior - he is quite a silly boy.)

Things That Make Me Laugh

Conversations overheard in the past week:

• Quinn offered to read a story to Jonas. She chose a chapter book and Jonas asked if there were pictures. Her reply: "There's no pictures - it's a chapter book. You paint the picture with your imagination - like a TV show in your head."
  
• Lauren (referring to Jonas' pillow pet): "What's his name?" Jonas: "Wuggles" Lauren: "Wuggles - that's a cool name." Jonas: "It's MR. Wuggles to you."
• Mattie: "I would be so much farther along in life and school if other people weren't so stupid."
  
• Jonas: "Mrs. Chroninger (his teacher) has a rope and when we're bad she ties us up and when we're really good we get to swing on it for a whole hour."
• Jonas: "I want to be on the clouds with Jesus. I would run on them like a treadmill."
• Sam (on his way to learn swing dancing at mutual): "I'm a stud - I'm going to dance with all the ladies." Lauren: "Are you sure you're not a dud?" Sam: "No. I'm a stud."

And someday I'll laugh about this....

I play the piano for the choir at church. This is not by choice - the choir director is a force of nature. She gets what she wants and she wants me to play the piano. So I do. Because frankly I'm totally intimidated by her. Sunday the choir was scheduled to sing "Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing" which is a beautiful song. And it sounded beautiful on Sunday. Until we came to the second page and I realized that I did not have the second page. I had feelings of complete panic and helplessness. In a matter of seconds I had a hundred thoughts run through my head. Mostly I was thinking, 'It must be around here somewhere.' But it wasn't. The choir kept singing; the director didn't notice I had stopped. Until the choir finished the first verse which was supposed to be followed by a piano solo leading into a key change and the second verse. I have heard the phrase deafening silence before but never experienced it until then. There was a deafening silence and 100+ pairs of eyes all on me. The choir director looked at me and I lifted both hands and whispered, 'I'm missing a page.' I think that whisper could be heard on the back row - it was that silent. She handed me her book (with tears in her eyes) and I picked up with the piano solo and pretended nothing was wrong. Someday I'll laugh about it...hopefully.

We've taken over the blog-PART 2

Mom is still too busy and updating the blog ended up on our chore list...so here we are again. We left off in October I think so here is a look at our Halloween. So we started with some pumpkin carving.

Mattie,Quinn, and I made interesting cat (it didn't turn out too great)

Sam and Jonas' turned out a little more successful-Jonas tells me its a Mario,but I think it looks more like a Luigi.

Then we went trick-or-treating Quinn was the Queen of hearts and Jonas was Ninja. They went trick-or-treating with their friends and mom and dad.

Then Mattie and I went with some friends too. I was the Cat in the Hat and Mattie teamed up with another Maddie and the were Thing One and Thing Two.
I didn't see Sam all night I think he was watching movies with his friends

Then came November....
First was dad's birthday! But....he was to busy with work to celebrate( psh I think he just didn't want to turn 41) so he had to wait 3 weeks and celebrate with me and Mattie!
Next, we had a lovely Thanks giving with our family (no pictures).

Then, Mattie and I had a birthday!! We turned 13!
My wonderful mother rented us a hotel room and we had a sleep over!!


Then on our birthday we opened some gifts and hung with the family.


Jonas has been learning nursery rhymes in Kindergarten. In December they got to put on little plays for the parents. Here's Jonas as Humpty Dumpty with the king's horse and man trying to fix him.


Sadly we still don't have any snow, but we still had a great Christmas. The cousins came and we went swimming and ice skating. I don't think we ever took any pictures though.


We decided to make our own snow. After a long search for a helium tank and lots of paper cutting we made it snow!!! Then we had Christmas Eve dinner at our house.

Then Christmas day came.



Stay tuned for part 3 - New Year's Eve!! You're gonna want to see this....