Jakob turns 11!

Jakob celebrated his 11th birthday this past weekend. His birthday actually fell on Easter Sunday. On Friday night he had a few of his good friends from school, Alex, Connor, and Issac over and Nate took them to a hotel over night to have some "guy time". They had a really great time, including a few pranks on good ole' dad! I think we are in for a few more of those in the years to come!
On Saturday Jakob and dad went to a local store and custom made a REAL skateboard, (as Jakob describes it). I am not sure who it was more of a gift for, Jake or Nate! The only frustrating thing about it was that we had gotten a spring snow storm that left us with 10 inches of snow the night before, making it impossible for him to try it out!
It is hard for us to believe that eleven years have passed since our first child was born. Although the "pre-teen" years bring us new parenting experiences, it is fun to see Jakob begin to grow into a young man!

Easter 2008

Beauty and the Beast Play

Calvary Schools of Holland presented their version of the Beauty and the Beast musical. Jakob was fortunate enough to try and out and be a part of the play. He was in the ensemble. The kids put tons of hours into rehearsing, but it definately paid off because the play was awesome!
They will wrap up the production this week with the last two performances. Although it has been fun and a great experience, it has also been a lot of running with late nights, so it will be good to get him back on a normal schedule.

A good lesson.

God provided us with an amazing teaching experience on the way to the airport last week. We stopped at a gas station for what was a close to "crisis" potty break for Grant. When Nate stepped out on the sidewalk he glanced down and saw a wallet that had about six $20.00 bills sticking out of it. He picked it up and tossed it in the car and said "figure out what to do with this" and he preceded in to find the restroom. Well the older boys that were in the car saw this and began to freak out at the sight of "ALL" this money that we had. But the most amazing thing occurred. They almost all immediately began to brainstorm on how we would find the person who owned the wallet to return the money. Not one of them verbalized the idea of keeping it. After Nate returned to the car, it actually sparked about a 20 minute family discussion on why it is the right thing to do (primarily led by the boys) and how people could have been tempted by finding that. Long story short, we found the owners number in the wallet and called him and he was so thankful and overwhelmed that we had. The boys were actually excited to give him his wallet, just because it feels good to do the right thing! When he came to meet us, he reached in the wallet and insisted that we take $40.00, ten for each of the boys. I think for the first time in like 10 years we had a jaw dropping moment with all the children dead silent. Even though we were under the pressure of having a plane to catch, we were SO thankful that we had made that stop. There was never a lecture or teaching that we could have provided as parents that would have taught them more. An amazing example of how rewarding it can feel to do a random act of kindness.

Our Florida Vacation

Well we had a very successful first vacation as a family of 7. We flew to Florida last Saturday and stayed in Bonita Springs with my mom for 6 days. We had a great time and made tons of memories beginning from our crew trecking through the airport down to sea shells and alligators. The only negative about the trip was that we couldn't bring the sunshine (and my mom) back with us.
It was so fun to see the boys experience things for the first time. They were blown away by the weather change, the different vegetation and animals that we saw. We spent a few days at the ocean, one at the zoo and of course one shopping :0) The rest of the time they were pretty much in grandma's pool 24/7! The boys also got a great boat trip down the channel out to the ocean in search on Manatees. Although they did not see any we were very excited to see a family of dolphins at Fort Meyers Beach on Friday.
We had a fantastic time. It was really great to get away from the hustle and bustle of our busy life to spend a week as a family just having fun!