L & J's wedding! (part two)

And then it was wedding day!!!!  YAY!!!  It was an absolutely beautiful winter day...sunny, (cold, yes), blue skies, and gorgeous snow everywhere.  The morning was spent getting everyone ready.  My fabulous, lovely, wonderful, talented, gorgeous, beautifully pregnant sister-in-law A agreed to help me do my hair, which I will be forever grateful!  She curled it all and then we pinned some of it back - turned out great.  Then brother M and I were off for pictures for the wedding party.  A also helped S get the kids ready and curled G's hair too (which G just loved).  

The kids in their wedding adorableness (ok this picture is not from wedding day, but no one got a good picture of the kids together so this is a picture of them trying on their wedding clothes at home)

hanging out at church between pictures and the wedding

L looking good!  ("do you really have to take a picture of me eating a sandwich?"  "yes, yes I do.")

The beautiful bride!!!! (wearing the shawl that Mom knit for her...she looked like a winter wonderland princess!)

My dad and his siblings

The wedding started at 4:30pm, and everything went so smoothly and was so beautiful.  They had a lot of music in the wedding, which fits both of them so well, including a number of pieces sung by a quartet from Brookings that J knows.  The fun thing was that S & I know this quartet too, but completely independently if J so it was neat to find out they were singing at the wedding.

* L seating Mom and Dad

* me walking in with J's brother, C

* L & J saying vows

Their Bible passage was Ecclesiastes 4:12 which says "Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves.  A cord of three strands is not quickly broken."  The pastor had a beautiful message about the role of the man, the woman, and God in marriage.  And after L & J lit the unity candle, they braded a cord with 3 strands, which fit so well in the ceremony.

* braiding the cord of 3 strands

* Mr. and Mrs. Lucas Roskamp!!!

L & J's wedding! (part one)

The much anticipated weekend finally arrived!  Wedding time for my brother L and his fiance J!!!  We had been looking forward to this for a long time, and I know they had too.  In the past couple months whenever I have gotten together with L, he has been happier than I have ever seen him before.  And the wedding weekend was no exception!  Both of them were so happy - not stressed and crabby and running around trying to get a million things done...oh wait, not that last one.  They did have a million things to do, but that is the nature of weddings and that is why we were all there a couple days before so that we could help!  We left after school on Wednesday so that we could be there all day Thursday and Friday to do whatever job was assigned.

(quick side note...thanks for sharing your pictures with me M&A!  their totally awesome ones in the next few blog posts are marked by *)

 

kids had to feed the pheasants in Boppa's yard first

big job for Thursday was getting the shed cleaned out and polished up for rehearsal dinner on Friday night

Dad worked hard to finish his office in the shed before the wedding.  Including refinishing this door which was from our old farmhouse.  Looks awesome here and I couldn't believe what memories rushed back when I saw it!

Part of the fun of weddings is getting to see all sorts of family.  All my mom and dad's siblings were able to come as well as some of my cousins.  So the few days before the wedding were not only spent getting ready, but spending time catching up with everyone too.

Friday's big job was decorating the reception hall.  Here are Aunt J and Uncle R helping out!

* L & J were so organized and had everything ready to go for us.  Here the kids had fun helping put tea lights in their holders.

The only off thing that happened for us over the weekend was that Carsten got sick.  He ran a fever pretty much all weekend and had bad cold symptoms too.  Nothing that kept us home from anything, but it meant a lot of holding and cuddling by momma and dadda, but also by others who braved the germs.

Aunt M got little C to sit and snuggle with her for quite a while

Friday night was the rehearsal!  Probably one of the smoothest rehearsals that we have been to as well.  As far as our jobs in the wedding, Mom and Dad got to be the proud parents, I was honored to be a bridesmaid for J and my brother M was a groomsman for L.  Very pregnant sister-in-law A took a lot of photos with their new camera, and S watched the kids, which was twice as hard since C wanted to be held all the time. 

* L & J rehearsing going down the isle!

After rehearsal, we all went back to the farm for the rehearsal dinner, which was in Dad's new shed.  It was a great place for this!  They had the meal catered by friends from Edgerton and everything was delicious.  Mom and Dad invited all of the family that was in town already to come too so it was great to be able to sit and talk with everyone. 

shed and tables nicely decorated for the dinner

Aunt J got some snuggle time with little C too!

testing...

valentine cards!

Valentine's Day is a huge day in kindergarten.  Their big unit in February is on the post office, so they all make shoebox mailboxes with the purpose of delivering Valentine cards for each kid in class.  G came home at the beginning of the month with "address labels" for each of her classmates, and was supposed to make a Valentine card for each and label each envelope.  This was a great project for G because #1, she loves crafts and making cards and things, #2, she got a lot of great writing practice writing everyone's names on the back, and #3, she was very excited about giving to others.  I stepped in to help her find a card that she could make 23 of them without getting bored and me ending up finishing them.  We decided to go with a simple version of print-making with a cookie sheet, paint, q-tips and card stock.

 

They turned out great and G was so proud of them!  And what were the boys doing while G was making cards?

 

It was baths for all after that...

a blessed January 2011...

We were all too sick in January for a family photo.  The puppets stood in for us nicely.

January...cold...snowy...sick...sick...sick.  It has been a tough winter for being sick all over the country, but it has hit our family particularly hard.  We have seemed to go from one cold to another to a stomach thing back to another cold virus.  That combined with extended family members spending time in hospitals and it being so cold and snowy outside did not lift the spirits very much.  But still we were blessed.  We were together, we have a warm house, we had good food (even when the momma didn't want to cook it!), we have loving friends and family, we had lots of laughs and cuddles, and all the time together this past month has been a bright spot through all the ick.  We worked at getting back into the routine of school after a lovely Christmas break, and were back into the swing of things by the end of the month.  We had a wedding to look forward to in February and it was fun to shop for clothes for almost all of us (and score incredible deals!!!) and travel to Edgerton to help throw a wedding shower for J.  We went to the library quite a few times and read a lot.  And we were reminded of God's goodness and faithfulness every day.

New books from the library didn't make it past the front steps!

G notes:

• She finally admitted she can read.  We have known this for a number of months, but whenever you would ask her to read part of a book she would reply "I can't read yet!" or stop after a couple of sentences because she wanted us to read the rest.  She still tells us that she can only read 'I can read' books, but we have seen her reading other books outloud to her brothers too...=)
• Learned to ice skate
• Is learning to like different foods including baby carrots, sloppy joes, some soups, and is starting to fuss less when we ask her to try something.
• Has been a big helper.  Not that she doesn't still fuss at us way more than we would like, but you know...

W notes:

• Got the brunt of the stomach bug.  Has never been that sick for that long before!  Made it through though and was a trooper through it all.  (helped that he figured out he got to watch PBS kids pretty much all day when he wasn't feeling good)
• Loves his magazine Ladybug, and also G's magazine Click
• Won the best grandson prize of the month...we happened to be in Trader Joe's on the day that Aahma B was coming later in the afternoon, and as we walk by all the flowers, he excitedly taps my leg and asks "Can I buy some flowers for my Aahma?" 
• is getting more interested in coloring and drawing

C notes:

• He gets the brunt of all the cold viruses we have had.  That combined with molars coming in have made for some crabby days.
• Learned how to jump!  His feet actually left the floor, and he was so proud of himself.  Now we can't get the boy to stop jumping!
• Had his 2 yr well check this month.  36" tall and 32 pounds - 97th percentile for both!  Dr. Tammy was impressed with his speech and vocab, and C also showed off his new jumping skill for her. =)
• Has really turned into a toddler.  There is not much baby left at all!  (sniff, sniff!)

ice skating...

 

I did not grow up ice skating.  I think I went once on a youth group outing?  And it was not pretty.  S grew up with an ice rink (lake) in his backyard and is fairly good at ice skating.  But since it is something that I never did and didn't care to do, we never have gone together in our 13.5 years of knowing each other.  

So we were both excited when we found out that Calvin does ice skating for their PE classes in January (S was excited she would start learning how to skate, I was excited that she would learn and I wouldn't have to try to teach her!).  All kids are required to have skates and participate...even the kindergarteners!  We got G a used pair of skates and sent her off with hopes for the best on that first day!

She came home in tears.  "I fell down...like a MILLION times, momma!  And I cried so hard even Mr. S (the principal) asked me what was wrong."  Turns out that about 90% of her class could skate pretty well (having older brothers and sisters), and the gym teacher didn't have time to give individual help to the few that couldn't skate being that she had to keep the rest going.  It would be up to us to help her.  S went out and bought skates and took G out to the free rink at our park to teach her how to skate.  It didn't come on the first time, obviously, so they visited that rink quite a few times in the next month.

G was mostly concerned with staying up on her feet and not falling so she didn't want to try to move her feet, so S brought out a lawn chair and had her hold on to that, which gave her enough steadiness to learn how to move her feet.  And that really helped.  Before she knew it, she could go around the rink without holding on to the chair!  It gave her a lot more confidence with skating at school too.  She never got up to the speed where she could play games with the other kids, but she could skate around the rink or back and forth and was excited to come home and tell us how few time she fell and how far she had skated.  S and I were able to go and watch her a few times as they asked for parent volunteers to come help put on and tie 21 kindergarteners skates each time they were out...talk about semi-organized chaos!

I think it was a good learning experience for G.  Not only just learning to do something new, but sticking with something that she wasn't very good at.  Up until now, if she hasn't been good at an activity, she just wouldn't play that at all.  I think she learned a lot both physically and mentally with ice skating.  Who knows, we may end up with a girl who plays hockey or figure-skates (although with my lack of coordination, the genes aren't in her favor for figure skating!)!

a wedding shower for J...

The happy and beautiful bride-to-be outshines the awful quality of this picture! (forgot my camera at home so this is from my cell phone)  

There were not a terrible lot of free weekends after the holidays before L & J's wedding, so s.i.l. A and I got together with J's dear friend, sister, and other bridesmaids to throw her one big shower rather than her having to go to 2 or 3 of them.  S had inventory the same weekend as the shower, so the kids and I headed off to the farm by ourselves.

Saturday was the shower and unfortunately there were some icky roads and also it was on a long weekend (Martin Luther King Jr day), so there weren't as many people that came as we had hoped.  But we had a blast nonetheless.  J's friend sent out the invites and brought all the food, L&J helped us take care of renting their church fellowship hall, and A and I came up with devotions and a shower game.  Dear A found the shower game and it went perfectly with the invites which asked everyone to bring a recipe for J.  We gave everyone sheets of paper, and then J came out and modeled the lovely apron and kitchen utensils as pictured above for just a minute or so.  Then she hid again and we gave everyone 3 minutes to write down as many of them as they could remember.  What A and I didn't think was that 5 people got 11 out of 12 right!  If we ever used it again we said we would add more things.

J got some very nice gifts (quite a few people dropped gifts off at the church ahead of time), and we had a good time getting to know the other bridesmaids, and J's friends and family.  G went along with me (thanks Dad and uncle M for watching the boys!) and had a lot of fun too.

The only thing that went wrong was after the shower and only affected me, really.  I slipped on a patch of ice and went down hard whacking my head harder than I have ever done before.  Wasn't knocked out, but definitely discombobulated.  G ran to get my brother L who helped get me on my feet and then drove us to Mom and Dad's.  I had a lump the size of a baked potato by the time we got there!  But no signs of a concussion, just really sore and a major headache for the rest of the weekend.  Felt much better by Monday when we drove home.

We had a great time over the weekend - so much fun to celebrate with the wedding shower, but also fun to get to spend time with family again.  We are so excited to have J as an official part of our family and are looking forward to the wedding!

a belated gift for my birthday boy...

 

In thinking about gifts for this past Christmas, I got the crazy idea in my head that I needed to make handmade gifts for everyone.  There are days that I just need to make something, or want to make something!  But the reality sets in and I realize that the timing is just not right with the ages of the kids right now.  It is better than it was a year ago, and will be better in another year, but I just can't do everything that I want to right now.  

But I held on to this project.  I found this idea for fabric nesting dolls on the blog, Made By Joel.  I adjusted the sized so I could make our whole family and drew the patterns on cardstock.  The pattern for the largest puppet I made 10.5 inches tall and 6.75 inches wide, and then I stepped down 1 inch in height and 3/4 inches in width for each consecutive puppet so they would nest. 

I used natural colored denim for the fronts of the puppets, and different colored fleece for the backs (so nice and soft to play with!).  I hemmed the bottom edge of the denim so it had a nice finished look, but didn't need to with the fleece.

After I had all the pieces cut out, I drew the people onto the denim with a black sharpie.  Now I don't draw free-handed very well, so I copied the people from this paper city (also Made By Joel) and sized them accordingly and printed them out.  I then taped them to one of our sunroom windows and was able to see through the denim to draw.  I wanted our family to look like us, so I used the paper city figures for their shapes only, and then added my own clothing design touches. =)

After that it was only a matter of sewing the fronts and backs together and then getting them wrapped up for my birthday boy (he didn't mind receiving the present a little late!).  I think all the kids (and maybe even the momma and dadda) are having fun with these.  And that they nest is not only neat for storage, but part of the fun for playing!

happy 2nd birthday little C!

Can my baby really be 2?  Our sweet one who entered the world so dramatically yet so peacefully on New Year's Day '09?  These past 2 years have flown by and like it or not he is growing up...and into a wonderful little boy.  Yes, he does share a birthday with a national holiday right after we see all sorts of family on Christmas...so there is not much chance for extended family birthday parties.  But on the bright side his dadda will always have the day off so we can definitely make it a special one with just our family!

happy birthday "pa-takes!!"

lego birthday cake built lovingly and presented with a flourish by his big sister and brother

fun tearing into presents

seriously, this shirt was on W like last week it seems

  (although being in the 97% for everything that isn't too much of a stretch for Little C!)

fun trip to underwater adventures to see...

"fishies!"

too much fun for one day, so his banana chocolate chip cake waited until the next day

I can blow them out myself

who needs a fork?

yum!

We love you "BIG" little C!  Happy Happy Birthday!!!