A Difficult Week

I wrote last Saturday about our brother-in-law. It's been a very difficult week for Jon's sister and family. Becky has gotten tons of support from family and from Troy's many friends. The wake was Tuesday night and the service was Wednesday. Everything was done very nicely.

Jon's brother, Dave, flew in from Tokyo with his girlfriend, Yoko. We had a dinner here last night to spend more time with everyone. A couple of our friends made dinner for us. They went all out with mexican food. Suzanne's apple crisp was a huge hit (some of you know what I'm talking about). Here's a picture of Joey and Evan while Evan was getting his diaper changed.


It's difficult to tell how the older boys are doing. They have different levels of understanding and they react differently. They went back to school yesterday. It sounds like the school and the other kids are being very supportive.

They are going to continue to need a lot of support and prayer. After everyone goes home, it's Becky and the boys who have to learn to live a completely different life.

We have explained it to Katherine, but I'm not sure she completely understands. She said she recognized her Uncle Troy at the funeral, but I expected her to ask more questions than she did. She talks like she knows what happened, and she tells other people about it, but I don't know how deep the understanding really goes.

Animals

Although our family is going through a rough time right now, I had some fun with the kids today.

Katherine found a worm in her Grandma's garden, so Grandpa put it on a hook on her fishing pole. She caught a 5-6 inch bass (almost) all by herself. She was excited about it, but didn't want to touch it. I don't have a picture of her with the fish - Grandma got one, but I don't have it yet. I do have a picture of her fishing some more after she caught it.



After the kids' naps, we took them to a petting zoo that was being held at Dillons. It took Katherine a little while to warm up but then she loved it - especially the rabbits. Joey loves ducks - he spent most of his time with the baby chicks and some other baby birds.

Last Night

Last night at about 11:00, our brother-in-law, Troy, (husband of Jon's youngest sister, Becky) was killed when his truck rolled while going around a sharp curve. He was exiting K-96 onto east-bound Kellogg - an exit that he has taken hundreds of times before. Everyone is still in a little bit of shock. Becky and Troy have 3 boys - Conner, Owen, and Evan. Evan was just born in January.

Please be in prayer for Becky and the boys (as well as the rest of the family). I'll post updates later.

A Day Off

I took the day off today. I know it's sort of strange to take off a Tuesday, but it was a good time.

We started out by getting Joey's 18-months pictures taken. We met our friend Audra (of Audra's Photography) at Hong's Landscape (where Jon works). Joey didn't really cooperate, but she got some really good pictures. Audra does a really great job of getting pictures of small children, whether they cooperate or not. If you want to see them, they are on her website. Click here to go to it. He is such a cute little boy! I can say that, even though I'm the mom...

After pictures, we played with Audra's girls at McDonald's for a while. About noon, we went to New Market Square for shopping all afternoon as part of Shopportunity. It was rainy, but we were prepared and spent most of our time inside the stores anyway. The kids didn't get their daily naps and were completely spent by the end of the day. We finished off the shopping with ice cream at Cold Stone. As you can see in the picture below, the kids were ready to go home and go to bed. We even skipped Katherine's dance class because she was just too tired (and grumpy).

Elmo

Joey loves watching Elmo movies in his Elmo chair.

Sold

We received an offer on our house today. After a couple of counter offers, we came to an agreement. It's an older couple from Colorado who are moving here to be with family. We close on May 31. This gives us time to have a garage sale and get everything packed up. We may or may not build where we had been planning to - we're going to look at our options to make sure it's the right choice.

House

For those of you who don't know, we have our house on the market. We would like to build in a new development that would shorten our commutes but still be close to Grandma's house. It's been on the market since mid-March. We've had showings, but no offers. We had another showing today, but haven't heard anything yet.

Katherine had dance class tonight. She's in tap and ballet. They are getting ready for her recital in May. The class consists of 3 and 4-year-old girls, so the recital should be entertaining to say the least. I'm dreading what Jon is going to say when he sees he make-up they want her to wear. It's okay. Every little girl should get to wear a dance costume and make-up at least once in her life. I still remember my dance costume that I wore when we danced to "Me and My Teddy Bear."

Easter Sunday

Jon actually got a picture of them both looking at the camera - they are all dressed up for church.


Our church had another Easter performance for the Easter service. I kept Katherine in with me because I thought she should see it. She asked me questions through the whole thing. She knows the story by heart, and I think it really impacted her to see it in "real life". We'll be going tomorrow also, so she'll get to see it again.

After church, we went to Mom's for dinner and time with lots of family. Family here from out of town: my cousin Heather and her family from California, my aunt and uncle Jeni and Steve from Colorado, and my cousin Jeremy and his family from Minnesota. We had 8 kids there - all 5 and under.

Who knew it would be colder on Easter than it was on Thanksgiving? The kids didn't really mind the cold, they jumped in the moonwalk and had several Easter egg hunts (all outside).

Here's Katherine and (cousin) Kyler having their dessert outside.


I didn't get a picture of all of the kids hunting eggs together... Brea and Cody (Jeremy's kids) are missing. Joey found lots of eggs with his Aunt Evy's help. All of the kids got Easter buckets with their names on them (and full of goodies) from Grandma/Aunt Gayla.

Family Time

We have family in town for Easter, so we all went to Exploration Place today. It wore out the kids, so they are both in bed resting and giving me a chance to rest.

Jon was off today (he only gets 1 Saturday off a month), but he's at the church preparing for tonight's Easter performance. He is responsible for all of the lighting, so he has spent the last few weeks there setting up and programming.

He'll be 32 on Monday (the 9th)... He's funny about birthdays. He never really thinks much about them, but since he turned 30, he really doesn't like to think about them. I think we're in trouble when he turns 40!

Pictures

It's almost impossible to get a picture of Katherine without a funny look on her face...


Here's Joey with one of his favorite toys - golf clubs from Uncle Chad and Aunt Shawna.

Trying Something New

I've decided to jump on the "bandwagon" and create a blog for our family. With our crazy busy life, I thought this could be a way to reconnect with friends and family that we don't see much.

You can also post a comment to us - we would love to hear from you.

Most of the postings will probaby be about the kids - that's who you really want to hear about anyway, right....

Katherine is 4 and a half. She has just realized that she's not going to Kindergarten this fall because of her October birthday, and she's not happy about it. She loves her little brother, but she still struggles sometimes with sharing her mom's attention. She and I went on a date last Saturday - we needed some alone time together.

Joseph (Joey) is 18 months. He's starting to look like a big boy. He's not too interested in talking yet. If we ask yes or no questions, he'll nod or shake his head, so we can usually figure out what he's trying to say.

I'll post some pictures...as soon as I figure out how to do it.