Rotten Morning

It's been a real winner of a day so far. Claire was cranky and extremely slow getting ready for school. Jenna burst into tears when told she had to wear an extra coat (she left hers somewhere else yesterday). Katie was cranky and all uptight worrying about getting to school on time. Micah was mad because I wouldn't let him watch Little Einsteins first thing after they left.

15 min after they left, I got a call from Chad. He had picked up Devon and then headed down Grade Road. The Venture broke down right by the bank. Making a funny noise. Overheated. He looked under the hood, and it does not look good.

I put the milk away, pulled on some jeans with my pj top, and grabbed Micah. We got down there in the other vehicle in time to transfer them all (with backpacks, etc) and get to school on time. Lots of girl trouble on the way to school, tho, because all three of them were crammed together in the backseat. Had to tell them they weren't allowed to talk.

Dropped them off. Now Chad will call to get the Venture towed. (This is why we pay for AAA) He and all the kids will have to ride home with Tangene right after school. I stopped at the bank to make sure they don't tow our van for being in their lot.

So we are down to one vehicle again. And the one we have needs attention, too. This van has been great for us, but last week the blower for the heater got stuck on high. When the vehicle is on, we can adjust the temp, but not the blower speed.

Michelle

90 Years

Grandma Wingert turned 90 on Sun! Wow! We went to Menno Haven for a party for her in the afternoon. Here she is with Kara and Benjamin.

This is Chad's cousin Valerie playing the harp Jim made. Beautiful instrument and beautiful music!

Micah was fascinated with baby Emily.

Jenna playing with Kaitlyn.

Ruth Kitner was there-- in a good mood and with another signature hat. :)

Justin, Kristen, Morgan. Cutie!

Jex visit

We had a great weekend with the Jexes here! It was fun to catch up with them, to show them our PNG pics (of course, they knew better than us what everything was), and to watch our kids play (they had a great time together!). They were here from Fri noon through sometime after lunch on Sun-- not sure when they left because we had to leave before they did.

Kobe loved playing our Wii! It sure has been a big hit.

On Sat, we went to Grace. Stacy and I walked around the gym while the kids (and men :) played.

Aaron helped Chad clean up our computer and throw out a bunch of old unnecessaries. They got rid of Vista, which had gotten with our new computer last year-- and it had caused lots of problems. We are thankful for the help!

January Fun

Micah loves the tricycle Gma and Gpa gave him for Christmas! Actually, all the kids love it. We have it in the living room for the next few months (wouldn't have ever done that pre-addition!). It can be used as a rocker, like this, or that red thing can be flipped up into a handle to push the tricycle-- the kids push Micah back and forth, all the way from the front window to the door off the kitchen that goes out to the deck.

Katie, Jenna, and Claire went to Gma's for a sleepover with Madison a couple weeks ago, just before Madison headed back to CA. They had lots of fun dressing up, watching videos, going out to Denny's, sliding down the steps on their sleeping bags, finger painting.

Saying goodbye to Madison. The girls sure had fun with her!

Nosey

Micah's still got a sore on his nose-- started before Christmas. Wasn't sure why it started, but I think I figured out at least why it continues. While he sucks his thumb, his pointer finger is often up on his nose-- maybe scratching. Hope I can get it healed up... hope he doesn't give himself a permanent scar on his nose.

Delayed

School's delayed 2 hours this morning. Rightly so... sleet, freezing rain, yucky roads.

I'm scrambling. Jexes (college friends-- missionary friends in PNG-- home on furlough) are coming around noon. Staying all weekend. We're excited! I've got a lot to do! :)

Michelle

Girlzzz

Girls Night tonight! Good thing M's too young to care. Chad's coming home with 5 girls-- 3 of ours plus a friend of Katie's for overnight and a friend of Claire's for the evening. I'm going to call the neighbor today to see if Taylor can come over for Jenna to play with. Then maybe I'll go lock myself in the walk-in closet.

Michelle

Mice

Grace Academy has had a mouse problem for some time. This we have known. However, in the last few days, at least one mouse has taken up residence ABOVE THE CEILING of Jenna's 2nd grade classroom. She says it's rather distracting. (I should say so! I don't think I'd get a stitch of work done!) I haven't heard about today yet, but for the last 2 days, they have had to listen to mouse sounds while trying to do their work.

Yesterday was Claire's teacher's bday. I had volunteered to make cupcakes for a little surprise party they gave her. Knowing Claire doesn't like frosting, I thought I'd see if she'd eat a plain one... she did and she loved it! She likes muffins, as long as they aren't chocolate or have chocolate or nuts in them, so she liked this, to0-- so much that she asked for one of the extras when they came home. I just had to scrape all the frosting off. (Crazy kid-- I could eat all the frosting and forget the cake!)

Michelle

Letter Revelation!

The other day, one of the girls told me that Micah pointed out an "M"-- I kind of dismissed it. (Maybe I was too busy to give it much thought?) Today, he was on my lap as I was trying to type an email. He found the "D" key, pushed it and said, "D"! Hah!

This prompted me to do some checking. How many does he know? I got out our big floor letters (fit together like a puzzle) for him to play with. As I took each one off the stack to hook it to the others, I asked him what it was. He identified at least 7 correctly, and I think it might have been 9. His pronunciation is a little goofy, thus the confusion on G and J.

He very clearly said the other 7, tho-- I, U, M, T, Y, V, D. He's got to be a genius, right? :) He-he! He's 21 months old. When Katie was 18 months old, she could identify all 26 letters! She has always been so literary.

Michelle

Tunnel

In this pic, Claire is at one end of the tunnel and Jenna (red hat) is at the other end.

This was the day after the snow stopped. Sun had cleared off the driveway Chad had shoveled. Tunnel is at the end on the right.

Katie got buried! (Doesn't even look like fun to me!)

The Rest of the Story

OK, now that I've caught up on sending you pics from our big trips, I'll add a few things.

Oh, if you all have pics you can share of our PA and MI trips, please send them!

School started again today. Problem with pipes is not totally fixed, but there's heat and water, and really there was very little damage. One rug in the K3 room got soaked, but not much else. Good thing someone was there to notice it.

I'm very glad they all went back to school! I'm glad we had the past 2 days-- we used them-- but it's so much more peaceful with just Micah here! I thought he'd be upset-- missing the girls-- but he's doing very well this morning, playing a lot on his own. He's so funny-- he loves to use the word "where?" and uses it often.

I'm finally caught up on laundry! Yikes, what a job. Thought I was done, but Micah has had a stinky problem so had messed several things. Maybe today I can go a whole day without doing any laundry!

Yesterday Katie made chocolate cookies (she LOVES to bake!) and Claire made applesauce muffins-- these are her specialty. She loves making and eating them. Micah begs for them now, too-- "Fuffins!"

Yesterday morning, Chad took Jenna on a date to IHOP and then several errands together. They had a great time together, of course. Best part (for me)-- they went to Home Depot and got parts to fix our kitchen sink. Yippee! I now can wash dishes with the faucet instead of just the sprayer nozzle. Chad ended up having to replace the whole hose, since he couldn't find a nozzle that would just screw on. He told me afterward that now he's thinking of being a plumber. NOT!

Chad and Jenna picked up Lauralyn and Bekah Brown, and they played here all afternoon-- very nice for all except Claire. These girls love to play together, and they don't get to as much now that the Browns live in Greencastle, PA. Poor Claire was feeling very left out, tho. This is a relatively new thing for her-- for so long, she was just oblivious to what was going on, and was happy to do her own independent thing.

I've jumped back into piano lessons this week. Hope to start Bunny back up again soon. Have 3 new students starting soon, I hope. Maybe even 4. We're working toward recital end of March.

Much of our snow is still here! This is very amazing. Usually, when we get a snow, it's gone within a couple days. This has been here for more than 2 weeks. The cold temps help-- and the volume of snow we got in the first place. We are starting to see some grass in our side yard (toward the Humbertson's fence), but still have a large pile where the tunnel was. Oops-- did I post tunnel pics? I'll have to do that out of order.

Forgot to tell about our trip home from MI-- the first leg went well. It was very nice to not have to go the whole way that first day. I think it would be ideal to live about 7 hours from Zeeland. Swimming in the hotel pool was lots of fun. Very nice to eat out at Perkins for supper-- hardly anyone there on a snowy New Years Day, so we had the whole back of the restaurant to ourselves. After that, tho, things went downhill. It was VERY trying to be in a hotel room with Micah. All he wanted to do was push buttons on the tv or the remote or take the phone off the hook or open the bathroom door-- drove us nuts. We were all tired from driving and being up late the night before, but he didn't want to go to sleep in a room with all of us there-- practically fell out of his little crib. Chad took him down to the lobby for a while. During the night, Micah was up several times. Ended up in bed with each of us for a while. No hotels for us for a while!

Michelle

MI trip after Christmas

Oops. These pics are in backward chronological order, and I don't know how to fix it. :) These first 2 are at the hotel pool in North Lima, OH, on the way home. Micah was pretty scared of the water-- didn't cry, but held on very tightly.

Here's Heidi, Eric and Lea Anne's little one year old!

We visited my Gpa Steenwyk at his retirement center on New Year's Eve. They were having a party for the holiday-- even did a toast with sparkling white grape juice!

The girls sang Silent Night and I played piano for 45 ? minutes during their lunch.

This is my gpa with his girlfriend, Lila-- really sweet lady!

For our Christmas project this year, we bought groceries for the Holland Rescue Mission. This is us delivering them.

Here we are buying them.

Here's mom, trying to make sure no one beats her to the good stuff.

Pic of me with my sibs-- first one we've done like this in many years! Mike, Michelle, Eric, Elizabeth... in age order

All the grandkids-- on couch: Nathan, Micah, Claire, Boden, Jenna, Heidi; on floor: Jason, Katie, Caleb, Logan, Natalie.

This is the first year the adults are outnumbered. :)

PA trip before Christmas

Lily and Katie

Gpa plays in the snow with Caleb and Micah

Claire with her new fishy Webkinz

Aunt Wendy with Jenna and Madison