June

Well we finished off the school year strong and are now in the heart of our summer vacation. I must say that I had a little anxiety as summer approached wondering how I was going to keep 5 kids with such a vast age range, happy and busy! But I have to say things are going really well. It took us a week or so to get on a good routine, but we acheived it and in some ways it is almost easier than running back and forth and packing lunches!
This month Nate and I celebrated our anniversary on June 7th. Grandma and Papa took the kids to their house over night and we had 27 hours....kid free! That doesn't happen very often. We went to a movie, had a nice dinner and then came home to our own empty house.



Jakob spent a week at Camp Geneva. He had a great time and met some really great friends. He always comes back looking and acting a little more mature! Logan will go to camp for the first time at the end of July. We are excited for him to have that experience.

Ella has become quite the busy girl! She is pulling herself up on everything and cruising along the furniture. She has also mastered going up the stairs...FAST! We are now deep into the world of baby proofing with gates at every corner and cabinet locks. She is also quite vocal and has her own little language. Most of which consists of high pitched noises.




We finished off the month celebrating Grant's 4th birthday! It is hard to believe that he is 4 already. We had a birthday at our house and were joined by some neighborhood freinds and family.




Now we head into a fun-filled July with many things on the calender. We will start off by heading to Irons to the cottage for the 4th of July, celebrate Logan's 9th birthday on July 8th, head to Traverse City to the Great Wolf Lodge and the Cherry Festival and then finish off the month with 2 weekends in a row of weddings! Stay tuned for pictures and details.....

Busy May!

Well I have not had a chance to update lately because we have had an insanely busy month so far! Here are a few highlights!

We started the month out with Tulip Time. Some people that live here in Holland will do anything to avoid going downtown during Tulip Time. We have even heard of some actually leaving town to avoid the crowds. We on the other hand, love it. We love the tulips, dressing the kids up in dutch costumes, the parades, and of course the vendor food!







Jakob and I had a great time traveling with his class to Chicago. We drove to Michigan City and then took the train in to Chicago from there. We spent the day at the Museum of Science and Industry. It was a really great day. After spending the day with 5th graders, it was amazing to me how grown up he is becoming. I cannot believe that in a few short weeks he will be officially be in middle school. Here are a few pictures from the trip. The first is of his entire class and then the other is one of Jakob with his good freinds Alex, Connor and Isaac.


Mother's Day was a very special day. Aside of being surrounded by my awesome husband and kids, Nate and I also had the privilege of standing before our church body and dedicating Ella to the Lord. We feel so blessed that she has joined our family and truly view her as a precious gift from God. We were so grateful for the family that joined us as well. We had Grandma and Papa Sandstedt, great grandma Ruth, Uncle Andy and Aunt Jen and the boys, Aunt Jessi and Reid and Lily. We had a nice brunch following church that was fully prepared by the men, and it was delicious!




And last, but certainly not least in the calender of May events we watched our little Brayden graduate from Kindergarten. He truly had a great year. He loves school so much. He actually spent some time a little weepy that afternoon because he did not want school to end, and he was going to miss his teacher. He even asked me if he could please go to summer school! Although now that a few days have passed that idea has since disappeared!

Soccer time!

Brayden started kindergarten soccer last week. He had his first game this past Saturday. He has been having a lot of fun meeting new friends and learning new skills. His team is the "Panthers". He has one of his good buddies, Tanner on his team, so that is makes it even more fun!
He was very excited to start out the first game as goalie. We were quite proud that he blocked two goals!

8 months old!

Ella Ruth is 8 months old today! What a busy month she has had!





New skills:
*Figured out how to use "pincher's" to pick up food. She is crazy about cheerios, and Gerber fruit flavored puffs. She is also getting quite adventurous with her taste buds too, as she has tried most fruits and veggies and now working through the meats. She likes to try our food as well. Some of her favorites are mashed potatoes and watermelon!

*Can now get from sitting position to belly,(just not too sure what to do when she gets there, so she cries....)

* Actually started playing with her toys versus trying to eat them all!

*Daddies personal favorite new skill is that she has learned to "dance"! Anytime there is music on or someone is humming or singing, she will bounce. I must say it is quite adorable!

*Mommy's personal favorite is that she now says "mama"! She actually says it about 1000 x's per day, and if it doesn't achieve her desired results she will switch to "dada".

* A couple skills that we must admit are not our favorite, but very normal for her age are that she does not like to see you walk out of a room and leave her. She also has discovered that going down to bed at night is not so fun either. So we have begun the journey of letting her cry a bit. Her brothers are not at all thrilled about that because they perceive it as being cruel and mean to their baby sister!

Some skills that we are still working on are:

* Crawling (she is currently rolling all over and scooting backwards. She also puts herself in a bizarre push up position, and again doesn't know where to go form there!

* Drinking out of a sippy cup. We have tried 3 different kinds of cups and she thinks they are great to chew on and toss over the side of her highchair. Not exactly the proper use! But we are working on it!

Plans for the upcoming month:

Ella will be introduced to Tulip Time and will even be forced to wear a dutch costume!
Ella will be dedicated at our church on Mother's Day.

Back to the land of the living!

Well it appears that our family has survived the dreaded flu. It was absolutely horrible! Spanning a 13 day period each child, including myself, took turns passing the stomach flu. Luckily, or should I say amazingly, Nate did not get it! He was a real tropper being on 24 hour nurse and laundry duty. People often ask us how we manage a large family. Our response is typically, "we know no other way, we just embrace each day." Well it is times like these that we tend to question it ourselves!

Cake hobby

I have kind of taken up a new hobby of baking cakes. It is sort of funny because as a rule cake isn't even my dessert of choice (which is probably good), but I love the idea of making something that is almost to pretty to eat! I don't have much time for TV as you can imagine, but when I get a chance I like to catch The Martha Stewart show. People often describe her an over the top domestic goddess, but I personally feel like she has very practical and user freindly techniques, and recipes. Here is a cake that I made from one of her recipes. It is a white cake with a lemon curd filling with 7 minute frosting. The frosting is very unique, you actually cook it and beat it when it is 160 degrees. It is almost like a meringue....YUM!