special camera smile

Kate is normally a delightful and quite cute little girl . . . except when she makes her funny face for the camera! In the picture below Kate is doing her "cheese" face; she only does this for the camera. This wonderful smile involves a curling of the lip and a closing of one eye and overall creates quite the fetching look. I can't wait to show her these pictures some day :) The birthday celebrations have wrapped up for Drew and here he is opening the last of his presents. We had a family day in Grand Rapids and celebrated with Jana's family and with mine. Kate had a good time as she got a present too from both families (she's holding a piece to her puzzle).

Kate also greatly admired Drew's presents!

I've got a series of photos here demonstrating Kate in action. She's capable now of climbing up on this stool to have a seat.

Once up on the stool she usually looks pretty pleased with herself.

To push it a little, she then tried to climb up on the counter, which elicited a firm "No!" Kate is our little limit tester and likes to know what she can and can't get away with!

Kate in her new princess skirt. You can see the bulldozer in the background. Those are the toys I'm used to playing with, so the whole skirt thing is taking some getting used to.

Drew and Kate climbed up on Jana's lap for some reading. They both continue to love to read. It's fun to walk into our living room and to find them each plopped down on the floor with a book!Drew hammed it up with his birthday cake. At both parties the grandparents knew what Drew likes: chocolate cake!

Drew's firefighter helmet with noises was a big hit with Kate. She had fun pressing the buttons and listening to it.

I was recently home with Kate . . . who was sick again. I don't think I've written much about it here, but we've had quite the run of illness in our home. In January Drew had pneumonia and Kate had croup. Drew had an ear infection. Kate had an ear infection. Drew had a fever for a few days. These are all separate events. We're very excited that everyone appears to be healthy for the moment.

Anyhow, while home with Kate I gave her the camera and let her record a video. This video has quickly become one of my favorites as you can tell there is minimal assistance from me. Enjoy!

cold

The other night at dinner both Drew and Kate started pretending to be "cold." We've had a bit of snow here, like in other parts of the country, and the topic of cold has been on the kids' minds. They were hamming it up and I finally had to make a video of it. Here is Kate's video, which has Drew in the background asking to see his video. Drew's video is the next one. Enjoy!

Drew and Kate have been enjoying themselves throwing superballs in the kitchen. We shut all the doors to the kitchen and the appliances and cabinets provide a perfect rectangle for bouncing balls all over the place. I had a great time playing with them and watching the superballs sailing from one end of the kitchen to another.

A fire station party

Yesterday the birthday celebrations for Drew continued with a small party for Drew and two of his friends. We gathered at our house, then made the trip to Battle Creek to visit the fire station. It ended up working out very well and everyone had a great time. At the end of our visit to the fire station, we took this picture, which I think gives you a taste for the excitement of the fire engine and the fire station. Before going to the fire station, we had kids running around our house wearing hats and blowing on noisemakers. The energy level stayed pretty high throughout the entire trip. The 3 to 4-year-old crowd is energetic!!

We also had birthday cupcakes (Drew chose them) at our house and sang to Drew. We had a total of four kids, so each cupcake had a candle in it and each kid got to blow one out. It worked out well!

Kate thoroughly enjoyed her cupcake!

Kate was big-eyed as we arrived at the fire station in Battle Creek. She loves the fire station and visiting Uncle Todd.

We got to try a little of everything at the fire station and that included Uncle Todd's fire helmet. That thing is heavy! Drew's favorite part of the fire station: seeing Uncle Todd's bed. Apparently it is fascinating that Uncle Todd sleeps at the fire station while on duty (although Todd didn't sleep much last night after we were there).

Drew thought it was funny when I wore Todd's helmet. He likes to tell me, "Dad, you're not a firefighter!"

I'm not a firefighter, but I can always pretend! Todd helped me get decked out in all the gear. I told Jana that I could pass for a firefighter, except for the beard. Firefighters can only have facial hair below their lips or above it (hence the high percentage of firefighter mustaches).

Kate made herself at home in the fire engine.

Todd got all geared up too and showed us that we don't need to be afraid of firefighters when they come to rescue us.

All the kids took turns approaching Todd and listened to his weird breathing through the mask.

Kate was fascinated by Uncle Todd in his mask and helmet.

Did everyone have fun at the fire station? Ummmm....yeah!

Todd demonstrated some of the equipment for the kids, including his marvelous bat catching technique. Probably didn't know that your local fire department can do that, did you?

The kids were quite interested in the tools inside the fire engine. The quote of the day came when we first walked into the fire station and upon seeing the fire engine, a child exclaimed, "Whoa! How did you built that??"

Todd took out some of the tools for the kids to hold. Parental blood pressure was probably the highest during this part of the visit, but everyone did a great job keeping their tools on the ground and just holding them.

At the end of our visit Todd opened up the doors to the fire station and we got some pictures of the kids on the front of the fire engine. I started with one of those pictures at the beginning of this post, and I'll finish up with a few more.

Here's a final video from the fire station that captures some of what we were doing. Todd put the lights on and run the siren a bit for the kids (which was very loud). It was wonderful because the room with the fire engine is entirely enclosed, so the kids could run around and on the fire engine and we didn't have to worry about them getting into anything.

Drew had a great time with his friends and was very proud of showing off the fire engine. Thanks to Todd and crew at station 5 for helping us with the visit. It was fun!!

Happy Fourth Birthday Drew!

This week we celebrated Drew's fourth birthday. Happy Birthday Drew!! We had fun telling Drew the story of how he was born. We talked about going to the hospital with Drew in mom's belly and having him come out and come home with us. Drew must not have put much thought into it before because he immediately starting asking how he got out of mom's belly. He even asked if we cut open mom's belly to get him out (that's not how it actually happened). We finally settled on him coming out of the "birth canal" and he seemed satisfied with that answer . . . for now. Anyhow, in honor of Drew's birthday I needed to post the first picture of me holding my son four years ago. He was tiny! Our boy was so little at first. Look at the size of Jana's hand next to his little head! Wow!

Now Drew is HUGE. This past week at school he was student-of-the-day again for his preschool class. In honor of his birthday, his teacher made this fabulous hat for him to wear. It's quite the hat! To give some idea of Drew's size, he's currently about 44 inches tall and weighs about 43 pounds. His shoes are size children's 12 and he wears boys small shirts. When he was born he was 20 inches long and weighed 6 pounds 13 ounces. He's been growing!

You can get an even better sense of Drew's incredible hat in this picture. Wow, it is something, isn't it? :) As part of being student-of-the-day Drew brought in a fire truck for show-and-share. He was beaming walking in carrying his fire truck and had fun telling his class about his uncle Todd, who is a real firefighter. Drew was also able to tell them about his dream of becoming an "uncle firefighter" some day.

On the actual day of his birthday Drew celebrated with his daycare friends and they ate cupcakes that Jana baked and sent along. After daycare, we allowed Drew to choose our restaurant for a birthday supper in his honor. Drew chose the Pizza House for Chicago-style deep dish pizza. Good choice! We ate wonderful pizza and enjoyed a free dessert that Drew garnered for his birthday (brownie, ice cream, hot fudge, and whipped topping). Afterward, we opened a few presents from Jana and me that included a S.W.A.T. uniform. You might guess who picked that out! Here Drew is below in his new vest and Kate is trying out the helmet.

Kate was wonderful througout the celebration of Drew's birthday and Drew has done a good job of sharing new toys with her.

Here's a final video of Drew and Kate during the present opening with us. They were both very excited!

Pony

Lately we've been doing some painting around our house. Not painting the walls, but Drew and Kate have gotten into some painting. Jana pulled out some of my old shirts, got the kids well covered, and let them have at it with the paints. Kate didn't get the real deal, but instead got to dabble a little with watercolors. Much easier to clean up!

For a while now we've been praying with Drew in his bed before he goes to sleep. Several months ago we started including Kate in this part of our nightly routine. We read a story and have a snack on the couch, then at the end of the story, Kate runs to Drew's room yelling, "Jesus!" As you can tell, they have tremendous fun sitting on Drew's bed and praying together with us.

Since I've last posted we've had some snow here in the Lansing area and the kids have helped me shovel several times. Here they are all bundled up for the weather and helping me shovel. Kate uses Drew's small spade and Drew uses his snow shovel. They're very helpful :)

This is probably the oddest looking snowman you'll see, so we had to take a picture of it. It has two crackers for "googly" eyes and a carrot nose. It was so cold out the day after we built this that I wet the carrot a little and it froze into the snowman. Drew was quite proud of this creation and commented on it every time we pulled into the driveway.

Jana and I have been enjoying some of the simple pleasures in life. One we try not to enjoy too often is Quality Dairy's "Death by Chocolate" ice cream. It is pure deliciousness. A pleasure we enjoy every single night is checking in on Drew and Kate sleeping. We never can get enough of that!!

A cold, snowy girl coming in from helping me shovel. You can't see her hood, but it was filled with snow. Drew gets a little crazy with his shoveling and doesn't always look to see where the snow is going!

A toy went under the stove and we had to rescue it.

Is Kate wearing her heels? Why yes, she is. Kate got these play shoes and wears them all around the house. How that can be comfortable, I have no idea.

Kate's hair is finally getting long enough to do things with it. At daycare, her favorite thing is to get her hair put up in a "pony," which is her shorthand for ponytails. She loves having her hair done and will walk around the house saying, "Pony. Pretty. Pony. Pretty."

Here's another attempt at a photo of Kate's hair. We tried FOREVER to get these two shots. Finally, we gave up and just enjoyed playing with her.

After giving up on photos, I tried taking this video. Kate's hair is highly amusing to us, so we are trying to show it off as best we can. Enjoy!