The tulips are up

Our tulips are up! You might have to click on the picture to see them very well. The previous pastor planted the row along the sidewalk, and the kids and I planted the clumps by the steps. We had a good Sunday, but it was hot! The bank sign said 95 this afternoon.

The kids and I like checking to see how the plants are doing each day. The peonies are growing especially quickly. Sarah did try to open up the tulips that hadn't bloomed yet, but we stopped her. David was going to flip the tulip petals inside out so they would stay open better, but we stopped him too. Now we just admire their pretty colors. Did you know that the purple ones have blue insides?

David has met a new friend, the bumblebee who followed us here from the house on Penrose. The bee likes the tulips and lives under our porch, we think. More wildlife pictures will follow....

Our Week

This is just a quick note to let you know that the Redhage children have been enjoying the beautiful weather outside this week. This wears them out pretty well, and certainly wears out Mommy and Daddy!
Today they scrubbed the cars, refilled the birdbath, dug in the garden, played in the sandbox, rode Tractor and Car, and built an elaborate fort out of cardboard boxes. The name of the fort is David's Hideaway, and it is "a safe and fun-filled place for people of all ages to play," in David's own words. Their other slogan, however, is, "No Babies Allowed!" Michael can come in with special permission only. He spends an awful lot of time in there for not being allowed!

Hello kitty

This is a picture of the kids greeting Hello, our cat, when they got home from our big trip Friday night. Hello is almost one year old and is quite a lot of fun for us. He spends most of his time either playing with the kids or running away from them.

Today was a good day. We went to Family Wellness for David's gym class, where he learned to skip! Sarah, Michael, and I went swimming while Dan did some shopping. We met Dan's parents for lunch at Valentino's, where it was Customer Appreciation Day--free meals for all! Dan very graciously offered to take care of the bill for the whole family. :)

After lunch, we went shopping at the natural foods co-op to find rice flour for our nephew who is allergic to wheat. Our next destination was Family Wellness again, this time for doubles racquetball. We are quite tired and sore, but it was a lot of fun.

The kids and I left racquetball early for David's OT appointment. Miss Stacy said that next week will be his last session, as he has reached all of his goals! We are so happy about that, but a little sad that we won't get to play with Miss Stacy anymore. Today David jumped over cylinders on the trampoline with both feet together, rode a scooter to the end of the mini-mall sidewalk, rode a bike without training wheels or much help, wrote the letters X, Y, and Z, and found beads hidden in yellow putty.

After OT, we all went to Sam's Club, where they have carts with two seats for children and plenty of room in the basket for another to ride. It was a lot of fun to see all the things they have there. Sarah really liked the car parked next to the snack bar.

To finish this very busy day, we went to Shoe Carnival to continue the endless search for shoes that fit Dan and look nice. We found two pairs in his size! Hooray!

On the way home, we even went through the car wash. All the kids were asleep by the time we got to the Lennox exit.

Sunny Day and Rainy Day

On Friday, after we finally arrived back home, David ran into the house and disappeared upstairs. Pretty soon, he came running outside wearing a new outfit and yelled, "It is SUMMER!" He and Sarah used the hose to clean the birdbath and make misty rainbows in the yard.

The other picture is of our Robot Helpers. It was cool and rainy today, so the kids stayed inside for the most part. We were getting ready for supper and needed some help setting the table, so called on our Robot Helpers. They are quite good at helping, but the little one has some trouble seeing out her eyehole if she raises her arms.

Easter Egg Hunt

We had a lovely Easter egg hunt after dinner. Dr. Gammeter and family brought eggs and cardboard creatures to hide. The men hid them outside while the women and children waited anxiously for the fun to begin. David and Sarah did a good job of sharing the eggs, and Michael even found his baseball eggs on the swings. He was very interested in the red stripes.
We'll add more recent photos soon--we just got back from a week of visiting Grandma and Grandpa in Iowa, going to a pastor's conference in Huron, South Dakota, and going back to Iowa to pick up the kids. It was tiring, but a good time.

Easter Morning

Here we are, ready to go to church at 6:30 a.m.! Yes, we made it to the sunrise service here at First English. The kids kept asking, "Why are we going to church at night? Why is it still dark?"
We had all their clothes carefully laid out for them, and Michael even slept in his dress pants with a white onesie just in case we were running behind. It worked pretty well, though.
Dan did have a surprise--it turns out that First English ALWAYS has communion on Easter Sunday. Dan, however, did not know this and wrote out a liturgy (printed in the bulletin instead of from the hymnal) that did not include communion. While the choir was singing at the beginning of the service, the altar guild ladies put everything back that they had taken down on Maundy Thursday, like the candles, banners, AND the communion ware. Dan asked about it, and found out that he would be improvising a communion service somewhere in the middle of the one he had planned! It worked out well, and he was only a little flustered. Everyone else knew what to do.
We enjoyed the breakfast of pancakes after church at First English, then headed up to Zion to try to catch their breakfast before the later service. At that one, a high school girl from the church and I played violin duets for the prelude and offering. It was a lot of fun! The kids crawled around under the pews in the balcony for most of the service (we were the only ones up there) because they had had enough behaving for one day. They all did pretty well, considering we had to wake them up 2 hours earlier than usual and they had already made it through one church service and breakfast.
All in all, it was a joyful celebration of Christ's resurrection!

Easter Preparations

We had a good time dyeing Easter eggs on Saturday morning. The kids didn't have swimming lessons, and they got up saying, "Hooray! It is almost Easter! We get to color eggs today! Hooray!" so we decided to go ahead and do it first thing in the morning.
We used a tie-dye kit, which was just concentrated liquid dye that you put on the eggs with little droppers while holding the egg in a plastic bag. They really liked getting to paint the eggs, it was fast, and they didn't get too messy, since all the dye was in the bag. Sarah really liked smearing the colors around through the plastic.
David and I also used last year's metallic stamping ink to paint a gold egg and a copper egg. That was a lot of fun, and really turned out well. We got very messy with that.
Thank you, Great-Grandma O. for the apron for Sarah. It saved her cute pink overalls. David is wearing one of Dan's classic auto mechanic nametag shirts backward, not a monk's robe. It works pretty well.

Good Friday

After being up late for Maundy Thursday services last night, the kids were pretty sleepy this morning. They found the laundry bags on the kitchen floor very comfortable as I was getting their breakfast ready. Hello the cat even joined them for a while.
Later on in the morning, we went over to the community library for a visit from Peter Rabbit. A lady from Barnes and Noble came along and read several of the Peter Rabbit books to the packed room. Sarah ran up to Peter right away when the stories were over; it was pretty cute. The picture is from later, when we got the boys to stand (and sit) with her. They thought it was very funny that a rabbit was in the library.

After lunch, we all went over to the local nursing home for a Good Friday service. Dan preached, I played my violin, and the kids provided cuteness. It went very well.

By the time we got home, all three kids were bouncing off the walls, so David, Sarah, and I walked to the post office, grocery store, and bake shop. It was sooooo cold! The bank sign said 0 celsius, and Dan said the wind chill was about 12 degrees Farenheit this afternoon. Everybody was ready for supper after that. I think Michael was actually glad to stay inside today!

Windy Wednesday

Today was our Vermillion day. In the morning, we had Musikgarten class for all the kids and story time at the library. Even Michael really likes the music class. He gets to shake jingle bells, hit drums, and clap his hands. Sarah likes to sing the songs around the house, and David likes singing alone and answering the teacher's questions in the class.
Story time is always fun for all of us, even though the class is really for David. While he is in the Story Time Room (reading, singing, making neat crafts), Sarah and Michael get to play with the neat library toys and all the other younger siblings who come along. The mommies all talk, too, which is fun. We usually end up spending at least an hour there, even though Story Time is less than 30 min.
Our other big adventure today was....Going To Nebraska!
As we drove down Main Street in Vermillion, we noticed the big hills just to the south of us and wondered if they might be in Nebraska, so we drove over to see! They were, indeed, just across the Missouri River, so we got to visit another state before lunch. We had to call Daddy and let him know that we were in Nebraska.
These pictures are of the adventures we have had around the house. David has been building hotels (with red triangle roofs) for his Hot Wheels cars. He is afraid that he doesn't have enough blocks for every car to have his own hotel, so they will have to share.
Sarah wanted to get in on the fun, so she built "ciwinder towers" and a blue block. She is getting better at balancing the blocks!
The kids also found a little drawer of miscellaneous stuff that I had left in our dresser when we moved it to Sarah's room. They thought it was fun to paint their faces with the little round brush that you dip into black stuff while Mommy was making supper. They thought it was less fun to wash off waterproof mascara after dinner! It did come off, though. You can't really see it in the picture, but they did have symmetrical designs on each cheek.

Sunday Fun

Today was a big day. We began by going to Sunday School, where the usual music teacher was sick with laryngitis, so I led the singing for the day. David and Sarah's teacher was getting the church basement ready for a big confirmation party, so I also taught their class so she could finish the food. The kids were nice to me and told me what they needed to do.... :)
Since it was Palm Sunday, the kids got to wave palm branches on their way up to the front of the church to sing "The King of Glory." They've been working hard on this one and knew it really well, so we could actually hear them! David was particularly easy to hear. His voice is getting better! Sarah even stood up with the big girls and waved a palm branch while looking very worried. Of course, she spent the whole afternoon running around the backyard singing "The King of Glory" with her own words. :)

Today was not just Palm Sunday; it was also Dan's first Confirmation! He said they were the best class he has ever confirmed. That got a chuckle from the congregation. They actually were a very good class, though. The church was packed with the many friends and relatives of the three confirmands, and I assume some more because of Palm Sunday. The church was so full, the kids and I even shared our back pews with three other people!

Thursday night was the confirmands' questioning after church at First English, where they spent about 15 minutes answering questions from the Small Catechism in front of everybody. They did a good job, and Dan was very proud of them. There was also cake after the questioning and after the service today. Cake makes for a happy time!

In the afternoon, after the confirmation parties, we relaxed for a while inside and watched "The Deadliest Season" about king crab fishing in Alaska. David really liked it. Tonight in the bathtub he said that the yellow duckies were worried about the oil leaking from their boat's engine, and then "The engine was done for good! Their boat wouldn't go anymore and then it sank. I'm glad they had their orange suits on that keep them warm and help them float." That didn't actually happen in the episode; they just talked about it in the boat crew's safety training session. He certainly remembers what he hears, especially when it has to do with safety!

We spent the rest of the afternoon playing outside, rescuing earthworms from mud puddles and watching their heartbeats speed up when they got out into the air. That was fun. I finished the major raking of dead leaves and sticks from the backyard and filled up three more garbage bags. David wrote "I LOVE YOU" on the swingset as a secret message for Sarah. Sarah set up croquet wickets and pulled Michael around on the little toy lawn mower. Michael tried to eat leaves and walked around the yard while holding onto the ladder that Dan was carrying. Dan took down the last of the Christmas lights that were up on the roof! Thank you, Dan!

We all played croquet together for a few minutes (the mallets got dangerous in the hands of the children) then switched to soccer for some wild running around. Did you know that if the ball goes into Bluebell Valley (between the tree and swingset) it is out of bounds? It is in bounds if it goes through Dandelion Downs, though. Anyone who gets tangled up with another person is Out of Bounds for one kick, too. They both have to lie down while the remaining players kick the ball. I think some of these rules may have been David's invention....

We had a lovely outdoor supper of grilled hamburgers with leftover Fudge Stripe cookie and mandarin orange salad from one of the parties. We had to rinse the bathtub between children. Now we are all sleepy!
Hope you all had as nice a Sunday as we did.