Pinewood derby 2011

Our second annual Pinewood derby race was at church (they maybe have done it more, but our family has only done it two years ;)). Last year it was SOOOO long. It was fun, but got really long toward the end. This year, Jordan left and played at a friends house and Sydney and Micah (Sydney's friend) stayed and watched her car races and and then just ONE of Jordan's derby races. It went a bit faster this year. I'm not sure if it's because we left earlier or they did it differently. Sydney got second place with her car. We left before we found out who won for Jordan's age. Since we never heard anything, we're pretty sure his car didn't place. They had a ton of kids in his age group though.

Sydney's car is the last one on the right in the left picture and the second one on the left in the right picture and first place in the picture bellow.

For the prior month, they've been taking a bit of time during their Wednesday night church to work on their cars. For Sydney's age, they typically just paint and decorate them. Jordan's age, they can carve them and make them all very different. They're really fun to look at and see all the kids creativity. It will be fun to see how much they change the look next year based on who won this year :)

Jordan's car is the green one with red and yellow in the middle.

Let's go fly a kite....

Up to the highest heights

Let's go fly a kite

And set it sailing

Up to the atmosphere

Up where the air is clear

Oh...let's go fly a kite!

Easter

We were supposed to go up to Grand Rapids for Easter. Both Arlie and I had gotten pretty bad colds and were still getting over them, so we opted to stay home instead. We rested over the weekend and I think that helped! After a good church service, celebrating our Risen Christ, the real reason for Easter, we came home and the kids got to do their Easter basket hunt. This year I made them look up clues in the Bible. They would look up a verse and find the right word that was the clue.

Then they had to go and find the next clue based on that word. I'm not sure who had more fun, the kids or me watching the kids :) It took probably 45 minutes for them to get all 10 clues and finally find their basket.

This year I got them things that I wanted to do...like kites and water guns and flip flops :) Fortunately, they liked the baskets as well. After lunch, Arlie hide the Easter eggs out in the back yard. It was so funny watching them try to find the eggs. They'd be standing right next to them and not find them. We finally had to help a little.

I think we are still missing one. This year we decided not to do candy in the Easter eggs because I don't like them eating it and I don't let them have much. We gave them money instead and believe me it was a big hit!

There's nothing more that I love than a great family day together and Easter turned out to be just that. The kids got along really well. We had a nice relaxing time together. We missed seeing my parents, but loved our day regardless.

Pretty Colors

We got invited to go to an Easter Egg coloring party the day before Easter. I always want to die/color eggs, but we've only actually done it a couple of times. My kids were super excited. You should've seen all the stuff she had there to use to decorate. There were stickers, crayons, rubber bands, tissue paper, glue, glitter, die and much more. There was 4 families there...well, us moms and our kids. It was a group from church that I don't get to hang out with much, but really enjoy when I do. They are all very real and down to earth and fun to be around. The kids decorated a couple dozen eggs. There favorite was the tie die eggs. They loved that. We didn't get to stay too long, but it definitely inspired me to want to make it a tradition instead of once every 5 years :)

Grandma's visit

My grandma Mahle from Florida got to visit for several days. We had such a lovely time with her. My cousin Allison and I picked her up from the airport and got to have a nice quiet lunch with her minus my loud and busy children. I loved it because it gives us the chance to actually talk with her in a way we can't when we are being interrupted by children.

On Saturday we got to throw Grandma a 85th birthday party. There were 14 of us. Both of my mom's sisters got to be there. It was a special treat to have both Carla and Grandma there since we don't get to see either of them too often. We had a lovely soup super with some delicious dessert. But the best part was just getting to hang out with our family! It makes us wish that they lived closer and we could see them more often! The kids comments on how much laughter there is when everyone is together. Everything is funny including trying to take pictures :)

All four of the kids made posters to decorate the walls with. The one by Jordan is his "funny" one.

On Sunday, mom, dad, Carla and Grandma, met us for church at our church. After that they came over for lunch. I got to share what I love to do with them (cook) and got to see them again. We were so blessed by the amount of time we got to spend with them. With everything going on, we don't always get to see her so much, so we felt very fortunate and loved every minute!