September 2016

First day of preschool

Lexi loves baby dolls

Camping with the Petersons

Normal family pictures do not exist

Picnic lunch in the rain at a soccer game

Star Wars cake

Apple picking with Grandma

Celebrating Nate

For Labor Day weekend we went camping with the Petersons.  We camped at the CRC campground. The campground is very nice.  However, we will probably not camp there again.  Just too concentrated of Dutch CRC culture.  We have a lot of fun with the Peterson family and hope to camp together every summer.  Jim, Rebecca and Nate want the 4 of us to go backpacking sometime.  Backpacking does not appeal to me.  We'll see if they wear me down.

September was a busy month.  Stephen was a little nervous about preschool, but quickly loved it.  Lexi and I began attending a Mandarin story hour.  The teacher is a Chinese woman and there about 5 kids in the class.  One of the boys is 3 years old and recently adopted from China.  It was fun to watch Oliver and Lexi play together and also good for Oliver's Mom and myself to connect. We received a CD of children's songs in Mandarin.  Lexi and Stephen love listening to it in the car and singing along.  Julia is learning Korean again with her tutor, Hyeji.

I took beginner Korean classes for about 4 Saturdays this fall.  I am also now qualified to teach Trauma Informed Parenting (TIP) classes for foster/adoptive parents and had two trainings this month.

Caleb celebrated his 12th birthday!  He requested a Star Wars rebel alliance symbol cake.  One of his gifts was Pokemon cards.  Do you sense a theme?  Caleb had some friends over on the weekend- they played video games and ate junk food.  My little boy is growing up.  We are thankful for Caleb and love him very much!

Nate celebrated his 37th birthday.  I did not make a cake for his birthday because we are usually caked out by that point.  However, I do not remember what I made.  Honestly, Nate's birthday was a blur.  Just a couple days prior he had been told that he might have leukemia and he needed a bone marrow biopsy done. And so began a new chapter in our family's story.  I am not going to include much of that story in this space as we have a separate blog set up for that.  This blog reminds us that life is still happening and life is still good in the midst of seeming chaos.  We love Nate very much and look forward to celebrating many more birthdays together!

August 2016

Nate wakeboarding

Stacy waterskiing

Lexi's first boat ride

Cousins at the beach

Having fun with Aunt Steph

Moments of cuteness

His Little Feet friends

His Little Feet choir and host families

Julia travelled to FL by herself!

Cousin love

Cousins at the park

First day of school

Krape Park waterfall 

Fishing at Krape Park

Carousel

Fire truck

Campground lake

The old church bell on the new sign

Grandma singing in the choir

Playing in the cemetery by the old church sign

Julia and Elsa 

Summer and I- we used to play here as kids

Where the old church used to be

The old house in Freeport

Tri-County reunion

The month of August began with the older 3 kids attending a week long day camp called Kids Rock.  They attended with the Gabrielse kids.  The kids had fun, but it wasn't anything special so I do not think they will be going there again.  Aunt Steph came out for a week.  She spent some time with us and kept the kids overnight so Nate and I could celebrate our 15th anniversary!  We went to a bed and breakfast in Grand Haven.  It was very nice to have some time away.

The His Little Feet choir was in town for 3 nights.  We hosted two girls from Ethiopia- Dereshaye and Sintehyo along with Auntie Gerda from South Africa.  Gerda has stayed with us in the past so we enjoyed catching up with her.  The choir performed at our church and they always love spending time in Holland.

Julia flew by herself to Florida and spent about 5 days with Grandpa.  She was a little nervous on the flight down, but she did great!  They spent their time going to the beach, swimming in the pool, going to a movie and eating ice cream.  Grandpa made Julia a nice photo book of her visit.

Some local friends invited our family to their Lake MI cottage for an evening.  They took us out on their boat which was our first time on Lake MI. We have lived along Lake MI for 10 years now so we were excited!  The best part was we could do some skiing and wake boarding.  Waterskiing is Stacy's happy place.  Isaac tried to get up on waterskiis and he was close to getting it.

Isaac celebrated his 9th birthday!  He requested an underwater theme cake- it was blue frosting with gummy fish on it and other decorations.  One of his birthday gifts was Pokemon cards.  And here is where I share disappointing news.  I accidentally deleted months worth of pictures- which included Isaac,  Caleb and Nate's birthdays.  Argh.  At least I have a little video montage of Isaac's birthday saved on the computer.  We are thankful for Isaac and we love him so much!

The kids began a new school year.  We have a 6th grader, 3rd grader, 2nd grader and a 3 year old preschooler.  Craziness!  Caleb and Isaac are in the same building this year and can ride their bikes to school together.  Stacy rides bikes with Julia and Stephen to school.  Stephen attends preschool on Monday and Wednesday mornings.  Lexi was a little confused at first about being the only one at home, but we fill up our time easily.

The soccer season began. This was Caleb's last year in Holland Rec soccer.  Nate was an assistant coach for Isaac's team.  We had a beautiful fall and not too many miserable soccer games.  Each of the boys had a fun soccer season.

We went to Freeport, IL for the last weekend in August.  We camped at Lake Louise in Byron, IL.  It was a nice little campground.  We spent Saturday morning at urgent care inside Shopko because Stephen broke out in hives.  They prescribed steroids, which got rid of the hives.  Stephen gets a little spun up on steroids though.  We went to Krape Park where I used to play.  We also drove past my old house.  On Saturday afternoon we swam at the campground lake with Natalie Haas and her kids.  Saturday evening was a Tri-County reunion. I enjoyed talking with friends I have not seen in years.  Sunday morning was the 150th anniversary of my childhood church- German Valley CRC. Now it is called Grace Valley CRC.  It was a trip down memory lane to re-connect with old church friends.  The church has been torn down and there is a new building so it wasn't the same but, still a great morning.

July

Kai and Stephen- so cute

Nate did some backyard camping

We caught a bunny!

Zipline fun

Watching the fish

Bath Time

Cuddling with Uncle Mike

Movie time

Fun at the beach

Watch out for the 3 year old with a sparkler

Uncle Nate's breakfast crew

Captain Sundae

Celebrating Adoption Day at Culvers

Older brothers are so mean fun

Canoe ride- a Mom and 5 kids, what could go wrong?

Backyard campfire with Grandpa

She's using chopsticks!

Running down the Tunnel Park sand dune

Ferris Wheel at Dutch Village- Lexi did not enjoy the ride

Blueberry picking- Lexi picked them and stepped on them

Top of Mt. Pisgah

Grandpa love

Camping at Ionia Recreation Area

Hey look, a picture of me on the blog

Our flotilla

Grandpa found some granddaughters in the water

Water balloon on Isaac's head

Who doesn't love pigtails?

Wow, that is alot of pictures for July!  Maybe I should just leave it as a month of pictures and no words? We began July with a visit from Mike and Colleen's family.  We had a fun weekend with them! Jack slept with the older boys and Abby, Ashley and Kate slept with Julia.  We moved Lexi to our room and Stephen had his room to himself. He wanted to share his room with a cousin, but it didn't work out this time. The kids enjoyed being together and playing outside.  We spent an afternoon at Tunnel Park and had some pizza for supper.  We also did sparklers, bottle rockets and poppers to celebrate the 4th of July.  Our neighbors put on an impressive (and noisy) fireworks display too.  Nate, Caleb, Isaac, Mike and Colleen went to watch the fireworks on Lake Macatawa.  I stayed home with the 7 children who were in bed.  I was praying that the noisy fireworks in our neighborhood wouldn't wake any of the kids up- the ratio of children to adults was not in my favor! Thankfully no one woke up.  Nate made breakfast one morning and ended up at the table by himself with all the kids.  It's funny now, I don't think he found it funny at the time. Colleen's family went to Dutch Village to look at the shops. Our kids have experienced a lot of Dutch culture, so we went for a bike ride.  We ended the visit by walking to Captain Sundae of course.

The older 3 kids and Nate and I went thru a Compassion Experience at a local church.  You get to walk thru replicas of homes/Compassion centers in other countries and learn what life is like for a child in the Compassion program.  We have Compassion children for our older 3 kids and we found a new child for Stephen! His name is Cesar and he lives in El Salvador.  He and Stephen are 1 month apart in age.  Stephen is so excited that he has a friend Cesar and he prays for him every night.

Nate was gone the 9th-17th for the youth group's trip to Colorado.  They drove out, spent a couple days backpacking in the mountains and then some days in Denver with homeless youth.  They went with an organization called Dry Bones that serves homeless youth in Denver.  Nate learned and experienced many things.  And of course he loved backpacking.  His low point? When a bear walked past their camp and everyone saw the bear, except Nate.

While Nate was gone the kids and I kept busy.  I took the kids to Windmill Island for a water conservation event.  We went for a ride in a large canoe and learned about the French fur traders who used to live in this area.  There was a fishing area set up, but we didn't catch anything.

Then Grandpa DeMaster arrived! We spent the week taking kids to swimming lessons, picking blueberries, eating donuts, playing at the park, taking bike rides, eating ice cream, going to Dutch Village, climbing Mt. Pisgah and going to the beach. Anything I forgot? Oh right, and he painted more of our kitchen.  It was so nice to have him here while Nate was gone.

We finished out swimming lessons.  Apparently Caleb is too old for swimming lessons now, he was not happy about doing them again.  All three of the older kids are good swimmers.  The older 3 had playdates with the Gabrielse kids almost every week this summer.  Karin and I took turns hosting and it worked out well.

We went camping for the first time as a family of 7.  We went to Ionia Recreation Area, near Grand Rapids.  It was very hot, but we had a shady campsite.  We no longer all fit in the camper, so the older boys slept in a tent- which they thought was great.  We hiked one morning and spent the afternoon at the lake.  On Saturday morning we rented kayaks/canoes and paddled around the lake with Grandpa Jongsma.  We spent the afternoon back at the lake.  Around 9 pm that night I heard a fellow camper mention packing up because it was supposed to rain on Sunday. I mentioned it to Nate, but he thought it was too late to pack up.  It poured on Sunday.  As soon as the storm broke a little, we threw the younger kids in the car and had Caleb help us pack up in the rain.  Nate said, "you should have advocated more for packing up Saturday night." Ha!

We finished out July with a church picnic that had water activities.  Nate then worked 4 night shifts, which we hadn't experienced in a long time.  July was a fun and busy month for our family!