A Craigslist Find

Here's what we just picked up tonight:

The lady I bought it from said she was getting rid of it because her kids fought over it too much. Just wondering what I got myself into buying one tractor for three boys?

A Hairy Situation :-)

As you all know, Joel's hair is very eye catching.

Here's a picture of him au natural.

Here's a picture of him after Daddy got a hold of some hairspray. :-)
He looks pretty happy about his new look!

What's Cookin'

Who knows? :-)
I have some vague notions of what I will make for dinners this week, but nothing concrete. Its finally warm out so I think I will take a break from menu planning this week. And since I just made 3 recipes of Baked Ziti and 3 Cinnamon roll recipes, I'm kinda sick of thinking about food right now...

What's Cookin'

I am spoiled rotten this week in regards to meal planning! I'm only cooking once!

Mon~Boys and daddy have mac and cheese while mommy's working
Tues~Out for dinner with Uncle Donald and a visit to Aunt Nellie
Wed~Grad Open house
Thurs~Mexican stuffed chicken, baked potatoes, corn, salad
Fri~Pizza at church for B and G club campout (We're trying out our monster tent!)
Sat~Too exhausted to eat~probably sandwiches if we can rouse some energy!
Sun~Baked ziti, breadsticks all from the freezer

Difficult Decisions Made Easier

This was the title of our sermon this morning, given by Dr. Murray. His focus was on "How to choose friends?" Start with God's word. What does God's word have to say?
1. Be Jesus-centered~Make sure you have the best Friend of all.
2. Show yourself friendly, or you won't have friends.
3. Be careful in choosing friends~evil communications corrupt good manners.
4. Be varied in your friendships. Don't try to be best friends with everyone. For example, Jesus was friends with sinners, closer friends with the 12 disciples, had an inner 3 disciples he was even closer to, and there is evidence that he was even closer to the disciple John.
5. Choose friends that will help you become closer to the Lord and that you can mutually benefit from spiritually.
6. Be character centered~look for friends who are loyal, truthful, moral, and respect authority.
7. Make face to face friendships~Jesus called His disciples to be with Him (remember, we are living in the age of Facebook!)
8. Don't idolize friendships~make sure no friend takes the #1 spot.

The sermon will be available here soon.

Week in pictures

Joe Joe and his spiked hair.

Noah pulling Joel in the wagon.

Stopping for rocks. The child is obsessed with rocks. His seat in the van is full of rocks because he picks one up every time he gets in the car. (The brick wall behind them is the neighbor's retaining wall which is almost finished. It looks super nice on the side of our yard!)

Pic is blurry, but here's Noah trying to push Joel's head up so he doesn't lean down to pick up his rocks.

Noah in the sandbox. He played in here almost all day Saturday while Chris, his brother Nate, and my dad installed most of our chain link fence for the background. We have three sides finished, one more to go.

Andrew and Adrienne...and as I'm typing this, Andrew tells me Adrienne is his girlfriend...and Cady~2 girlfriends!

Simon guarding Joel.

Andrew and his garden in the sandbox~notice his army pants. He really wanted a pair of camo pants and I found a pair for him and Noah at Salvation Army. He's worn them twice already and has had them less than a week.



Joel in the wagon.

Brothers~Andrew requested this photo op.

Our massive tent~we set it up tonight to see how it works and next weekend we will sleep in it for one night while we are at the B and G club campout. The boys can hardly wait! They loved going in the tent. Quite the tent~even has self rolling windows!

Blow-up Slide

Last evening was PCS's 100th anniversary school picnic. Over 800 people were served hamburgers and hot dogs in less than 20 minutes! After dinner, blow-up activities were available for the kids. Here's Andrew on a blow-up slide:


He climbed to the top, bounced around a bit, and slid right down! He was going to go again, but then decided to go on the bounce house. We waited in a line for over 20 minutes and he bounced about three times and decided he'd had enough!

Cousin Cady

Cousin Adrienne~I think she bounced to close to the edge and slipped down before she was ready!

Pics taken by Aunt Cindy

Sidenote on today's dinner

I made cheese stuffed breadsticks and they were fabulous! Try them out. I don't think they're too good for you (although I did use whole wheat flour!), but they were great!

Come camping with us!

We just bought a new tent and hope to camp a few times this summer. We would love to have all our friends and family visit us. Don't think you'll be able to find us? Don't worry! Just look for the huge circus-like tent! Our's will be the largest tent in the campground. In fact, we may need two sites just to set the monstrosity up. Seriously, take a look at this tent.
The thing is 8 feet high in the middle and has a hinged door! You can fit 4 queen size airbeds in it or 12 people. Do ya think we'll have enough room? :-)

PS Chris just discovered the tent comes with a lantern to hang with a remote control! That's more high-tech than our house!

Multitasking Baby

The Invitation

Today our church had an outreach service at Allendale Christian School, led by Brian Najapfour, a seminary student from the Philippines. His message urged us to show our faith by inviting others to hear the gospel. He closed with this convicting illustration:
There was a man who was a great violinist. Although he earned a lot of money, he gave most of it away, so when he found a rare violin that he wanted, he had to save up his money before he could buy it. When he went back to the shop to get it, he found that it had been sold. After obtaining the name of the man who bought it, the violinist went to this man and asked if he could buy the violin from him. He was very disappointed when the man refused, saying the violin was for his collection. The violinist asked if he could play the violin one more time before it was consigned to silence. The man allowed him to do this and was so touched by the music, he gave the violin to the violinist saying, "I do not have the right to keep this music from others." In the same way, we do not have the right to keep the message of Christ from others.

"Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."
Matthew 11:28

Changes coming

Stay tuned. I'm fiddling with a new theme for my blog so right now we're under construction! :-)

What's Cookin'

Mon~Spaghetti, cheese stuffed breadsticks, salad
Tues~Brother Nate is bringing pizza, celebrating great-Grandma V's birthday with strawberry shortcake
Wed~ Mexican chicken
Thurs~Hoisin and Honey Pork, rice, veggies
Fri~Grilled chicken with Lime marinade, baked potatoes, grilled veggies and salad with my good friend Melisa
Sat~Leftovers
Sun~Good dutch soup, breadmaker bread

Now I have a little problem I need help with. I budget $220 for groceries, but last month I went over. Way over. So over I'm embarrassed to say how much. And I have no idea why. Well, partly because somehow I had to stretch it to 5 weeks instead of 4. So I'm really going to try hard this month to stick to $220 this month. This doesn't include diapers, but does include toiletries.

Gardening

Last year not much was done outside our house. I was pregnant with Joel and had no motivation or energy to work outside. But this year, I got an earlier start and have had a lot of fun putting together the flower bed and pots. Hopefully I will be able to keep it weeded and looking nice this summer.

I've always wanted two big pots, one on each side of the garage door and today I found them 50% off at Meijer's and since my generous husband told me I had a blank check to fix up the outdoors, I bought them! I think maybe next time he'll give me an actual amount to spend, but I tried not to take advantage of him! I put some purple and dark red flowers in them (can't remember the names), so we'll see how they do. I'm going to get some dangly green foilage that my mom has and stick that in too.

These green spiky plants get flowers on them, but I can't remember what color. I'm thinking maybe yellow but I'm not sure. I need something to put to the right of the plants next to the step but I'm not sure yet. Maybe a bird bath or garden statue.

Don't mind the black in the corner of the pictures. The shutter was partway open and I didn't notice. Oh, and the black in the middle is just Simon. I think he wanted to pose for some pictures. All the plants in this front flower bed are from my sister-in-law Alice's overflowing perennial garden. She helped us put it all together a few months after we moved in. The hostas and seedum are already getting huge. The tree on the right is a cherry tree. Last year there was only one cherry on it, but this year there will be lots more. My grandpa Roffel made the planter on the front step. I also have a white bench that I'm going to plant the rest of the annuals I have in (I bought way too many!). I also discovered today that my strawberry plants were not murdered by the bulldozer next door! They were covered with dirt but they poked through and I see they have little green strawberries on them! Does anyone know if you can replant strawberry plants (after they're done for the season)? We're planting a small vegetable patch on the west side of the house with tomatoes, cabbages, and beans. I don't think its going to get much sun though so we may have to rethink that next year.

Joel's First Sink Bath

When Andrew was a baby, we gave him baths in the sink all the time. Sometimes he was in one side of the sink while we washed dishes in the other side of the sink. For some reason, we hardly ever gave Noah a bath in the sink, so I didn't ever think to give Joel a bath in the sink. So today was his first time sitting in the sink during his bath and he loved it! He would have stayed in much longer, but he was soaking my cabinets and floor.

Happy boy!

Testing out the waters...

hmm...
I think its ok...

I like it!

Kid Pics from Auntie Andrea

The boys go to Aunt Andrea's to visit Kaimira and Jayden every other week while I go to school. They have a lot of fun!

Cousins playing together. They're not always this cooperative. :-)

Jayden and Joel~close cousins

Playing in Jayden's jumper.

Looks like someone's up to something!

Jayden is 2 and a half months older than Joel and he is crawling around and as you can see, has a few more teeth than Joel.

Andrea takes much better pics of Andrew than I can. He always has a real cheesy smile on his face when I try to take his pic.

Andrea said she had to take this picture of Noah because its so classically him~pants falling down.

Joel sitting up like such a big boy.

Playing horsie~I've never seen them do this at home.

Aww!

Classic Joel~tongue hanging out of his mouth while he smiles.

Love you!

Cousins

What's Cookin'

Hope everyone had a great Memorial Day! Here's the menu for the rest of the week:

Tues~Pizza pockets, corn
Wed~Crockpot Sourcream Salsa Chicken (didn't get to this last week)
Thurs~Out with friends
Fri~Grilled chicken, baked potatoes, grilled veggies
Sat~Frozen pizza
Sun~Beef and mushrooms with gravy over mashed potatoes, carrots, red cabbage

Real Dutch

Everytime we visit the Dutch store in Canada with Grandma, Chris tries on the Dutch wooden shoes. This time, they had foam-like ones in the shape of wooden shoes that Andrew tried on. We would love to buy him a pair but they cost over 50 bucks!

Father and Son, true Dutchmen.

Special Keepsakes from Great-Grandpa

The boys' great-grandpa Roffel made them each wooden piggy banks. They slide out the drawer, put the coin in the slot and when they slide it in, the coin disappears! Best of all, there's no slot for the money to come out. Only way to spend that money is to remove the bottom with a screw driver. I hope they treasure this special gift in the years to come.

Grandpa with his 3 oldest great grand children (he has 4, all boys!).
The boys were thrilled with their gift. Grandma has no spare change in the house now!

Brothers!

Far Away Grandpa and Grandma

This weekend we went to visit my grandparents in Canada. We wanted to squeeze in a visit before June 1 when we will need to have passports to go to Canada. Before we left, we attempted to take some pics of the kids with their great-grandparents. Note the word attempted.
Oops, looks like we have one trying to escape on the left.

Hmm, almost everyone's looking at the camera.

Uh-oh, another one's totally escaped the picture.
Probably the best one of the bunch! Joel's too interested in everyone to pay attention to the camera.

At least they cooperated!