Happy Birthday, Mileah Grayce!

Today is our youngest daughters birthday.  She is 2 years old today and, as I say at all my kids birthdays, it does not seem possible for her to be 2!  She seems especially younger because she is so much smaller than all her sisters were at this age.  Leah is very entertaining as well as being very cute, most of the time. She is also trying to take Sarah's nickname, "The Fed" away from her by trying to get into even more stuff than she is not supposed to than Sarah does!  But I thank God everyday for the blessings of all my children and today especially for number 4! 

So Happy Birthday Mileah!

Imagination

Kids usually have a good imagination.  I tend to help our kids along by asking them strange questions to see what they will say.  But today we had a conversation with Sarah, our almost 4 yr old, that showed us that she does not need my help with her imagination.  Here is how it went:

Sarah came running into the room and told us, "I am almost finished packing!"

To that we asked, "Where are you going?"

Sarah replied, "To the beach! I going fishing!"

"Really," we said, "How are you going to get there?

To that she simply said, "I am going to drive my boat."  with a 'duh' kind of tone to her voice!

A while later, she was sitting in the middle of the living room telling us she was in her "silly boat" on the way to the beach!

Now I do not even need to help her to get funny conversations with her!  This should be interesting and fun!
Stay tuned!

Happy Birthday, Emma!

I say this at everyone of my kids birthday, but it is especially true with Emma our first born daughter, I does not seem possible that she can be this old!  Today, she is turning 10 (that is 3652 days if you are counting!) years old!  She has been anxiously waiting to be in the double digits since last year.  She is definitely a blessing from God, as all children are, and a joy to have around.

This last year her and I have been able to go do some special things together and I have been able to watch her do things that she did not think she was capable of doing.   I am looking forward to many many more adventures with my oldest daughter in the years to come and I thank God everyday for entrusting her to me to raise for Him.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY
EMMA NYCOLE!  

No, I did not fall off the face of the earth!

I just recently noticed that I have not posted to my blog for quite sometime.  So this post is to tell all my loyal followers (both of them) that I did not fall off the face of the earth and disappear.  I am still around and have lots of blog posts in "draft" form right now.  I just have not had the time to finish them.  I just seems that life has gotten in the way lately and we have been very busy for a season.  Although I am just not sure what we did!  So stay tuned, my kids and a few other things are still keeping me inspired with lots of ideas for new posts.  I just need to find the time to write them.

I need to find some time!!

Daddy Daughter Dates

We love to spend time doing things with our kids.  It sometimes gets a little crazy doing things with all 4 of them.  So a while back, I started trying to do what we call Daddy Daughter Dates.  These are times when I take just one of them and do something special with them.  It is nice to get out with just one daughter so we can actually talk about stuff and not be interrupted.  We usually do something that we do not do as a family or cannot do as a family.  It does not happen as often as we would like but we really enjoy the times we do. 
Just recently I took each of the older two girls on separate trips to Borders Bookstore in Corvallis.  They each got to search through the entire store and pick out something that they want to buy.  Then we went to the coffee shop and had some hot chocolate and a cookie.  They were both very excited to go there but it was interesting to see the differences in them in picking something out.  Emma went right to a specific section and had picked out a couple books she wanted in about 5 minutes.  We looked around for a while after that, but she still just wanted those same books. Riah, on the other hand, wandered all over the store looking at everything for about and hour and a half and could not decide between a lot of stuff.  Finally she decided on an umbrella and a journal.  We all enjoyed the time together, and we got to find a few geocaches while in Corvallis as well!
One of my favorite Daddy Daughter Dates was a month or so ago with Riah.  We were able to borrow some kayaks from a friend and went kayaking on Cheadle lake here in Lebanon.  Here are some pictures from our adventure.

Here is Riah in her kayak next to the dock.  She was excited to try this, but nervous at the same time.  I helped her get into the kayak and she looked worried.  Then she asked if we had to do this.  I told her we did not have to and asked if she wanted to get out.  Still looking worried she said she would try, but would it be okay if we only went a little ways.  No problem, I told her we could stop whenever she wanted to.  So I put mine in the water and climbed in and we were off.  She decided pretty quickly that it was not only not that bad, but actually kinda fun!

 By the end, she was really enjoying paddling around the lake.

 Daddy, look at me!

 Enjoying a peaceful moment on the lake.

 Our expert paddler.

Now she has done something that her older sister has not done!

 Here she is coming back into the dock.

Her is my GPS with the track of where we went.  Of course there was some geocaches to get from the kayaks as well!  We spent about 1.5 hours on the lake then got some lunch and ice cream.  We enjoyed it so much that we want to get some kayaks of our own and do this more often!  Just cannot wait to see what kind of adventure the next Daddy Daughter Dates will bring.  (Emma wants to go kayaking too now.)