Emily is Five!!

Emily is FIVE!!!

Emily is growing up way too fast!

Emily loves to be sarcastic, just like her Daddy. She loves to joke and make people laugh.

Emily also has a little attitude. She likes to boss her brother around, but also likes to make them cry at times. I'm really hoping the making them cry is a phase she's going through and will end soon!

Emily is loving "doing school" and learning. We've been working on reading and math mostly. She amazes me often with how much she already knows! She loves to write words...and stories... and is constantly trying to figure out what things say. She knows about 50 sight words and has lots more that she can figure out what she wants to. We've also been playing games on the computer and she's getting pretty good at figuring out how to use the computer and the mouse!!

Emily enjoys working on cars with mommy... and aimlessly wondering around Bumpa's barn and asking what everything is, what things are for, and how things work!

I think Emily is very excited that spring is almost here. She seems to really enjoy being outside. She likes to ride her bike and is excited to figure out her scooter that she got for Christmas. She also likes just being outside.

Emily's favorite toys are all of her little princess dolls. She loves to pretend with them and make them interact with each other and other toys. She also loves to color, draw, and write.

Most days, Emily does not take a nap, but she still does rest quietly for a few hours in the afternoon. She typically is a good sleeper at night and doesn't wake up when Peyton does. Most nights she goes to bed around 7:00pm and gets up when her "clock wakes up" at 8:00am.

Emily loves going to church and learning about the Bible. She asks lots of questions and we've had some pretty good conversations about salvation with her! She also loves to tell other people about the Bible and Jesus' love!

Church Update

Even though this blog is mostly about our kids, from time to time I share about other stuff going on in our lives... it's been a while and we recently had a "big" change, so I thought I would give a quick update!

Last Sunday, Brent was voted in by the congregation at our church to be moved to full time status! So, as of July 1st, Brent is a full time pastor! The full time roll comes with a few more added responsibilities at church, but we are very excited for the change!

We haven't really felt the difference of this change yet, but are excited for the new work schedule for Brent... and the fact that he will not have to drive to Lansing two days a week anymore!

Last week, we took our teens on a missions trip to Chicago. We worked with a ministry called Inner City Impact and helped facilitate a soccer camp and their day camp. I'm not going to lie and say it was a lot of fun... it was a very long and exhausting week... but I'm glad that we went and excited for the impact we were able to have.

For me, the best part of the trip was listening to Kyle talk to another little boy. They were talking about Jesus and the little boy asked what the big deal about Jesus was. Kyle responded "Jesus died on the cross and then came back to life so that we can go to Heaven. We just have to tell Him we are sorry for being bad!" While I'm not sure he really "gets it," words can't express how it makes my heart feel to hear my son sharing to Gospel with another child!

This week is Day Camp for our church... it's pretty much a VBS type program. Kyle and Emily didn't want to go on Monday, but decided today they wanted to go see what Daddy was doing and see the puppets. They are excited to go back again tomorrow.

Three Years Old!

Somehow the crazies are three! 

 Emily is a crazy little girlie! And she's a girly girl in the fact that she loves pink, purple, princesses, dress, tights, and pretties in her hair. She's also very athletic and can make baskets, throw and catch balls, and has lots of coordination and agility. She's very caring and normally wants to make sure her brothers are okay and is normally looking out for them. She's a whole lot less shy than she used to be, but is still hesitant towards strangers most of the time.

Kyle is crazy, loud, and sometimes obnoxious. Kyle likes brown, blue, green, cars, firetrucks, and being loud! Kyle is very good at doing puzzles and problem solving; if it didn't require him to sit semi still, he would most likely sit and do puzzles all day long. Kyle's favorite phrase is "maybe Saturday" when he doesn't want to do something (or doesn't want to do it right now). Kyle loves having a little brother to wrestle with, but sometimes forgets that sisters don't always like to wrestle as much as brother do!

It's amazing how much Kyle and Emily's vocabularies have expanded in the past few months. They are always learning new words and phrases. Sometimes we just have to stop and laugh at the crazy things they say. They both tend to talk non-stop and sometimes I'm pretty sure they are the only ones that understand what they are saying. (They apparently can understand everything Colby says too!)

Emily and Kyle love going to church. The past year they have been in the two year old class and have enjoyed having a little bit of structure, doing lessons and crafts, and having a teacher. They also love playing at church with grandparents and a few of our teens' parents on Sunday nights during youth group. Tomorrow they will move up to the three and four year old class during regular church!

Kyle and Emily love to watch and help in the kitchen. They love to dump ingredients into the bowl and watch the Kitchen Aid mix stuff up. For whatever reason, they also enjoy watching stuff bake in the oven if we turn the light on for them to see.

Kyle and Emily probably have more screen time than they should, but they love Disney Junior shows and the PBS that we let them watch. Their favorites are George, Chuggington, Sofia the First, Doc McStuffins, Handy Manny, and Henry Hugglemonster. They also love to play their games and puzzles on the iPad. They are also a fan of movies and love Cars and all three Toy Story movies.

Emily and Kyle recognize all of the upper case letter and are starting to understand that each letter has a lower case one too. They sometimes can say the ABC's by themselves, but most the time, if they aren't singing along with someone or something, they tend to skip a few letters.

They both can consistently count to ten by themselves, but sometimes can get as high as twenty. They are also starting to understand that numbers are for counting things and not just a sequence to rattle off. We've started to talk a little bit about addition and subtraction. Kyle seems like he sometimes understands.

Our schedule is pretty much the same. Their clock turns on in the morning at 8am, and they normally are awake waiting for it to turn on. Shortly after they wake up, we eat breakfast and then play or do adventures or whatever until lunch time. We normally eat lunch between 11:30 and 12:30, depending on the day. After lunch is rest time for Kyle and Emily. Some days they take naps and some days they just lay in bed and rest with a book. Normally between 3:00 and 3:30 they are done with rest time. Dinner is around 5:30. After dinner, we normally play for a little bit, pick up toys, do baths, read the Bible, and they are normally in bed around 7:00.

Potty training wise, we rarely have accidents any more! Emily and Kyle are both really good about going to the bathroom when they need to. They sometimes go by them selves and sometimes ask for help. We have recently transitioned to underwear at nap time and training pants (instead of diapers) at night time and have been waking up dry for the more part!

I'm going to do the questions again like I did at two and a half. Hopefully I'll get a chance to ask the kiddos them tomorrow!

Camping with Teenagers!

This weekend, the teens did a campground takeover at our church's campground. We (Emily, Kyle, Colby, and Mommy) tagged along for some of the fun. Aunt Alyssa, Uncle Shane, and Nora came to help out too!

We only spend one night. Emily and Kyle had a really hard time falling asleep in the tent, but slept well once they fell asleep... they just didn't sleep long enough. We came home for naps, went back out for dinner, and then came back home for bed while the teens spend their second night. Colby did great and was a trooper... his only complaint would be that he was held too much!

We're Moving!

We are taking a step of faith and moving to Ionia next week! We really feel the need to be closer to our church so that we can be more involved in the church and the teens lives without having to drive so far. We are signing our new lease for Nov 1st and trusting that God will provide a new tenant for our current apartment by Dec 1st so that we will only have one rent to pay.

We have been working with our landlord to get out of our lease... the only way to terminate our lease is to find someone else to re-rent our apartment. Because we living a low-income tax credit apartment complex, we can not sublet; a new tenant has to go through our landlord and be approved and sign their own lease. We asked about a month ago that our landlord start looking for someone to re-rent our apartment too, but it didn't really seem like anything was happening. So Brent posted an ad online himself last week and we've had several interested people. We have told them all to get into contact with our landlord and have passed all of their info on to our landlord as well. From what we hear on our end, there are two people that are pretty serious... one that wants to move ASAP and the other the middle of November. Hopefully our landlord will work with one of these two to get them approved so that they can sign a lease for our apartment.

Brent is going to keep working his job here in Holt for the time being. Driving the Focus back and forth three times a week is cheaper than driving the van back and forth, like we are doing now. But he has started to look for another part time job in the Ionia area. He is in the process of apply to be a substitute teacher in some of the area schools, and seeking whatever other opportunities might be available.

Please pray with us during this transition. There is a lot to pack up and do in a short period of time. Please pray that we will have the time and energy to get everything done that needs to be done to make this a sooth transition. Emily and Kyle are already concerned and confused as to why we are packing up boxes again. Please pray that God will provide a new tenant for our apartment in Mason as we are trusting Him too. Also, please pray for the financial aspect of the situation as we will have two rents to pay for the month of November, along with moving expenses and all that other fun stuff. Pray with us that Brent will be able to find another job in Ionia so that we can pay our bills. We are trusting that God will provide us with everything that we need; just as He has been doing the past two years since we left our old church in Delaware (and WAY before that too!). 

If you need our new address for whatever reason, send me an email and I'll give it to you.

A Sick Little Girlie

On Wednesday night Emily threw up right after I put the babies to bed. Then she seemed fine. Friday at dinner time she threw up again, but then seemed fine. After she went to sleep, she was crying in her sleep for a little while and eventually woke her self up. She cuddled and went back to sleep, but was acting like she didn't feel good. She sounded congested, but most of it was in her chest. She slept on and off through out the night; she just wanted to be held. She had a low grade fever, so I gave her some tylenol; which she just threw right up. All day yesterday (Saturday) she just wanted to held.  She took some long naps and wasn't too interested in eating or playing. In the afternoon, her congestion moved from her chest to her nose, which seemed to make her feel a little bit better. We had another rough night last night, but today she seemed like she was starting to feel better. She hasn't had a fever all day and was eating and playing. She still is very congested, so we keep using the blue bulb to suck buggies from her nose. Hopefully she'll have a better night tonight and will be all better tomorrow!

Please pray for us! Pray for Emily to get healthy and for Kyle, Mommy, and Daddy to stay healthy. It seems like whenever one of the babies get sick, we all end up getting it. I really hope that doesn't happen this time!

Because of Emily being sick, we did not go to church this morning. We were planning on visiting the church I talked about a couple days ago, but didn't want to put Emily in the nursery with all her germs. We thought about still going and just keeping Kyle and Emily in the service with us, but they are at a stage where that is close to impossible to do. Brent e-mailed the pastor to let him know what was going on. He understood and we are now planning on visiting on December 4th.

Church Nursery

Over the past six weeks or so, the babies and I have been spending more and more time in the church nursery during the service. Kyle and Emily don't like to just sit and be held very often any more and they like to use their voices! This is all fine and dandy.... but it doesn't go well with having the babies in church. Our doctors recommended not putting the babies in the nursery at church until they were six months old.... and I really haven't been ready for it either. But because they were getting harder and harder to keep in the service at church, Kyle, Emily, and I have been hanging out together in the nursery during the service. It's been good for me to get to see the way things are done and get to know some of the people working in the nursery.
We were going to leave them in there last week, but there was no church due to Hurricane Irene, so we planned on it this week.
We took Emily and Kyle into the service with us to start. Church starts at 10:30am and they needed to eat about 11:00am. I'm not really a fan of letting other people feed them, and they really don't like to eat for other people most of the time. So, we planned on keeping them with us in the service until they ate their bottles. Brent and I both fed a baby during the singing and such. Once they were done and started to want to play, I took them into the nursery. I hung out for a little bit, as Emily wasn't too happy a first. Once the babies were content and playing (Kyle on the floor and Emily sitting with one of the workers), I went back to the service! I really didn't pay too much attention during the rest of the service as I was worried about Emily and Kyle. When we picked them up after the service, we were told they did fine! Yay babies! Emily was still being held when we got back, which kind of bothered me (because we all know how much Brent and I are against Kyle and Emily being held a lot), but they were both happy and content without us for a little while!