Our summer at the cabin!

Well Another season at the cabin is over. We had a fabulous time again as expected and made many memories with family and friends. We had my grandparents come up several times and Matthew's mom and sister Rachel came. Joe and Chuck came for a work trip to help Matthew re-roof for insurance purposes. We truly appreciate friends that love us so much that they will come help with things like that!!! During Matthew's time between projects up there this year he did alot of fishing. Here is one that he and the older girls caught together :) We went on the Manistique board walk again and went to the lighthouse as we do each year to get a pic and remind the girls of how cool it is. Amazingly they still never remember it until we are right up next to it.As you can see they cooperated so well! LOL!

 Our visit with Jill and Rachel was alot of fun and one of the things we did is re-visited the waterfalls. We always enjoy seeing them and this time was no exception. It is a delight to share with others the beauty that God has created. We even did a picnic lunch (which I felt could have gone better since I stepped in a pile of dog doo that someone so pleasantly didn't clean up) on the grounds of the munising falls!

Jill took this pic of our whole family :) I believe it is our first pic as an entire group?...Kendra LOVED the backpack and we were delighted that we could tote her around and enjoy the afternoon stroller free.

Well that is all for now! Hope you enjoy the pics.

Computer SOS

So there is a great reason to blog in this world...my computer had a major virus and between this and facebook I now have many of my precious pictures that would have been lost forever because as a mom I just never quite get around to burning my photo discs...just saying that it is something that I am greatful for today.

All about Zachary

Well here is part of our celebration as a family with Z. He turned two on the 27th of April. He is such a carefree little guy and we just love how much joy he has added to our family.

So a quick update on his legs. We took him for his annual well child appointment and the doctor said he also has knock knees and that this part of the condition may be worse than the pigeon toe. Because knock knee can almost always be helped with physical therapy he reffered us to the one in Portage where I took him for his initial visit. The therapist took the full hour and watched him as he walked and played. Felt his joints and moved his legs. She ended our session by giving me suggestions on excercises but said that it would be pointless to have him come in and to wait until we speak to the Orthopedic Pediatric people. I am not sure what that meant but we will see in June. Keep us in your prayers!

the freedom of childhood!

Yesterday the sun was shining, where Thursday it was pouring rain. Yesterday the children swung as high as the chains allowed, picked every ripe dandelion, pretend games seemed so real to them and the carefree spirit filled the air and overflowed into my heart! Ofcourse, I had the same feeling Thursday when I heard them belly laughing as they danced in the rain. The simple joy of childhood. I am glad that I get to revisit it!http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_SbgXGBmaI

Winter update...

Yeah I had to make it a winter update because I don't remember the last time I updated everyone for real. Ok I am just going to run it down like a Christmas letter haha!

Matthew- Has started the accelerated nursing program and has one class (microbiology) under his belt. It is accelerated in the fact that it is self paced so for that class he read the course material through twice and schedule the test and took it. He is now on to anatomy and physiology(sp!) and that he says will take him a little longer because there is so much more content to learn. Anyways the hope is to have it accomplished in a year so that he can get his RN and move on to an ER setting. Don't know if we will like that much yet but we will see :)
He is also busy doing projects!!! YEAH! He just finished the new play center for the kids and they adore it! I will post a picture tomorrow because I am running on borrowed time here. He is going up in April to remodel the cabin bathroom so that we can have a nice new space in there when the kids and I get to go up. There was some moisture issues that needed to be dealt with.

Me- Well I am doing the same ole thing. I am schooling the kids in the mornings, then doing all the other mom and wife stuff in the afternoons. My projects are on hold but that is ok because I am trying to get down the routine thing good before I take on extras. I did start my exercising about six weeks ago but became very ill with an infection so I am really on week five of my goal sheet. Looks like we will be done with school the first week of May so I will get to start my extra projects then. I started back to work for a little bit at a time. I completed a whole shift this week and Matthew said that Kendra did great. So it looks like I am ok to pick up full shifts now sometimes.

Andrea and Kayla are still doing school and doing well. Math runs a little fast paced but we have been working hard to understand things well before moving on. We are having some neighborhood girl issues still so that has been hard to deal with...ah the joys of having girls :)

Alexis is well Alexis. :) She is enjoying playing dolls and dress up like normal. She is going to get the opportunity to be a flower girl in May so she is super excited about that though she has not figured out the difference between being IN a wedding and getting married HAHA brings many laughs when she says she has a pretty princess dress for when she marries Joe :)

Zachary, Ah my little prince...well he is doing great terrorizing everything and everyone in true little boy fashion. I had some concerns about his health a while ago and finally had Matthew take him in to the doctor. He was walking funny and had a lump on his neck. Apparently the lump is nothing to worry about though they did no scans or anything just felt it. I am getting a third opinion when he goes for a well child check the end of April but the first two docs say it is nothing to worry myself over. The walking thing is a problem though. Our son has pigeon toeing of the right foot. Well knee really. anyways it curves inward and causes him to fall alot and it is not quite right. There are only two options and if my Internet research is right then it means surgery. He has an appt with the Orthopedic Pediatric specialist on June 8th to determine a course of action. I am terrified!

Kendra, is doing great. Her tummy issues from birth are much better and she has been a super good baby other than the sleeping at night and in her own bed thing. She still gets up alot at night and is very clingy but she is doing better and better....either that or I am accustomed to the sleep deprivation a little better than when she was first born :)

New house, Sitting outside my front door is a large pile of items from Home Depot that our contractor had delivered. We are having a new entry put on this house and I am so excited! It is only an 8x8 addition but it will be warm and dry and a way to get in before having to choose whether you will be going up to the main living areas or down to the private ones. It will hopefully cut back on my dirt and water tracking issues and then we will be able to carpet the steps and hopefully eliminate some falls that all of us have been having.

Cabin, Cabin trips will officially resume in May though Matthew is going up earlier as I stated before. We have alot of work we are planning on doing this year. Bathroom, deck railing, roof, insulation, siding, garage....yeah alot of things so we will see what we get done. I am very excited to see the improvements on our little haven!

Ok well that is all for now. I am off to bed because the baby is out cold and I am done for the day! Post that picture of the play center tomorrow!

Alexis and Andrea's pics.

Alexis was the first to go out with dad. She is is "fishin buddy!" and recieved a beautiful pink pole from uncle Jim just for the ice fishing occasions. Had to try it out ya know

 Andrea had good success as well these are her fish!

Alexis is always at dad's side when fish are involved

Kayla's pics are not uploaded yet...will post those another time :)

Kendra's first month

Well it has been an interesting month to say the least. We have had little sleep, lots of screaming, sickness, and then there are the good days where life goes on like normal. Kendra has a few tummy issues still but over all we hope she is settling down and not going to be as irritable as I slowly figure out what foods are making her gassy. We do seem to be getting enough sleep now to have some projects get done. I have hung more curtains, gotten the kitchen painted, and am in the process of weeding through lots of clothing (mine!) I have finally felt good enough to start my excercising again so hopefully the scale won't tip too heavy at my six week appt.
Matthew has had a lot of fun taking the girls out fishing. They each have daddy time and so far each has come home with some sort of trophy. I will post pics of fish later because my batteries died in the camera and I have been to busy to plug in the charger.
Other than figuring out life with five kids we have had a successful start to the new year with our schooling. We started in our books a month after everyone due to my procrastination in ordering new materials...we are now only about two weeks behind due to some nice snowy cold days that the kids didn't wish to play outside on. My hope is to get us to where we should be so that I can end our school year on May 1st.

Other than that it is business as usual, cooking, cleaning, and doing gobs and gobs of laundry ;) LOL!