Some Spring Things

Tuffy first eats rice cereal on April 22nd.

Kids teach Mama to Heeley and go out for Black Bear yogurt as a treat from our nursery workers at ReEngage on April 30th.

Grandpa catches a fish on May1st so all the kids try to catch one too on May 3rd.

Holmes come over for tea and what turned into Puppet Poetry on May 4th.

Four year old Berg finishes his first Phonics reading books and chart and gets to take the whole family out for Mud Pie on May 8th!

We went to Mount Rainier with the Norquists for Julia's Snow Birthday and we found snow! We went for a snow hike, sledded and even built snowman on May 9th.

Peter surprised me with a trip to Gene Juarez (I love to be red head) and a fun B&B overnight in Tacoma for our 15th Anniversary. I thought we weren't doing anything because we had said that buying a new home would be our Easter, Christmas, birthday and anniversary presents this year!

Free bees came to us while we were getting ready for Berg's birthday party on May 17th. Peter and I both heard loud buzzing sounds, looked up and realized there were thousands of bees overhead, so Peter cracked open the hive (our bees had died this winter) and they all swarmed in. Within 5 minutes they were all in there and you'd never know the air was black with flying insects just minutes before.

Agape League Spring Pageant!

On April 19th the kids were finally able to perform the musical they had been working on every Sunday after church! Agape League! They were all Fruit of the Spirit super heroes and they loved it! And we all loved the songs even Pella and Berg knew them all and the dances by the time they were ready.

All four of our oldest kids decided to be in the musical and they all sang and danced in the opening and closing song.

Opal was a dancer and dances in both the big and little girl dances. She also had a duet and sang so beautifully!

Jasper was in the boy dance and a special "Jump It" freestyle dance. He also had a small speaking part!

Kivi was our little actress and played the part of Shadow, the general's right hand superhero.  On top of memorizing all those lines, she sang in a trio in the boy dance, too!

This was Eben's big year, his last year to be in the Promiseland musical. So he was able to do a lot! He had a main speaking role, although we didn't see him when he actually said his lines because he was the computer "Agape Interface". He really sounded like a computer, too! (The middle picture is him intently listening to see when his lines are coming up so he can go backstage and say his lines again.) He was also in the boy dance, the big kid dance, a dance duet with Raegan and sang a duet with Nathaniel!

We were kind of sad they were only able to perform it one time. It was a great show and they did amazing! 

Miss Niki, Marlee and I directing from the floor. Marlee helped me this year with choreography!

Hooray - they did it! Grandma and Grandpa and even Mr. Lonnie and Miss Meri came to see them!

Afterwards, we had giant waffle ice cream cones to celebrate!

Tuff's Dedication

 On April 18th we dedicated our Tuff Jobe Johnson! We wore our special new dresses and bow ties that we were going to wear to Dodie and Missa Teeve's wedding.

Tuff sucked on his finger for most of the time.

 Dada gave him a blessing: May the Lord bless you, Tuff, and claim you as His own. May you always seek God's will and to glorify Him with your life. May you enjoy God's favor and experience joy in this life that only a life serving the Lord and serving others can provide. May you always turn to God for strength, guidance and wisdom and may you be a conduit of His strength, guidance and wisdom for others.

Then Mama read the verse we picked out to be his life verse: Psalm 27:1 The Lord is my light and salvation - whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life - of whom shall I be afraid?

And Pastor Pritchard prayed for Tuff and our family.

Grandma and Grandpa were able to be there too! We love you, Tuff!

Mid April Memories

April 7 - We're doing Story of the World for our history since Tuffy's been born, it's kind of taking the place of our journeying to a different country and learning all there is to know. We had fun learning about the Maori people!

April 8 - Reading Berg. Berg is an amazing reader. We think it might be because he had so much practice with letter and sound games on the iPad.

April 15 - Tuff and Dada time. My two twins with their round, bald heads, cleft chins and dimples on their left cheeks. If only Dada had bigger eyes...oh wait, no that's just scary.

April 16 - Opal and Jasper are doing great in math. They finished their second grade math and went straight into 3rd grade math like little champs.

April 16 - Tuff sitting and having tummy time with the boys.

April 17 - Jasper and Pella found a "butterfly" (actually it was the hugest moth I've ever seen!) But they were very excited to hold it and "help" it fly.

April 18 - Dada finishes up painting the house to get it ready to sell! Why didn't we do this long ago? Now it looks great. No more peach poop.

  

And the kids have a movie and nail day while we wait to go to church and dedicate Baby Tuff 'n Stuff!

Holding the Flag for the Mariners Game

 On April 6th, the Lakewood Police and their spouses held the flag for the opening ceremonies at the Mariners game. Peter and I were able to participate and had a blast!

We actually had to come and practice on the 4th, the day before Easter, so we took some photos.

This is behind the scenes in holding the flag all bundled up before we went onto the field. 

We practiced running backwards fast and then scrambling back, scooping the flag as we come back together.

Right across from Peter and I was the then receptionist of the Birthing Inn, Susan, (she now runs the whole Inn and is a trained midwife) who helped Peter deliver Opal as our midwife was not there.  We both looked at each other and thought we knew her from somewhere and then she said. "Are you the couple with lots of kids who doesn't make it in time to have your babies at the Birthing Inn?" Ha! Yep, that's us!

Peter snapped a shot, right before we went onto the field of us waiting in the sod pen.

And a friend even found a news clip of the game, so the kids were able to see us carrying the flag too. They didn't get to go, they stayed with Grandma and Grandpa. 

Peter wasn't feeling too hot these days either but the bulk of his sickness hit on Easter so he was still able to carry the flag and we watched enough of the game from the very top bleacher for me to be able to dance and get on the Megatron. Sadly, I couldn't get any of the police officers to dance. Not even Peter. But he was sick, so he had an excuse.

Easter 2015

Our Easter was...different.  We had all of our Holy Week and Easter things packed up so no decorations this year or amazing Holy Week like we've done in the past. On Passover, Kivi made a seder lunch because she didn't want to miss it, and we read through the Haggadah as each person ate from their own seder plate. It was very informal and Dada was at work. On Resurrection Sunday, Dada was sick. He stayed in bed and we tried to be quiet for him and let him sleep. I made the kids a yummy quiche breakfast then they got on their Easter Sunday clothes, which we thought would double for my sis's wedding in June, but plans changed, so good thing we used them for Easter!

I let them all watch a Veggie Tales Easter movie and then we took some basket photos.

Last year we had no basket, it was lost. But we found it again up by the mother-in-law. It had been outside for a year. When we found it, it was completely covered in ivy. The poor handle broke off and it's pretty moldy looking, but hey, it's back!

Tuffy's first Easter picture and he's even smiling a little.

I had made the kids a photo scavenger hunt to find their basket (actually it was 2 baskets, one was from Mimi!). Here were the clues they had to find:

 They took turns going all around finding the clues. They do so well working as a team and going slow for the little ones. The clues led them to the shed where the baskets were hiding.

We took them inside to open them up where it would be warmer. It was nice and sunny, but still a bit chilly. The boys got Duplos and the girls got plaster figurines to paint and nail polishes.

While the kids were opening their baskets Uncle Kookie came for a quick visit as he was on his way to Seattle for a class.

We actually had to leave him there at our house so we could make it to Easter service, which Peter woke up just in time to make it to although, he didn't make it through the service. He ended up going to sleep in the van.

We did end up getting a family photo! Then we put Dada to bed and went to Auntie Tonya's house for an Easter lunch and egg hunt at the park with cousins. And we took a cousin caterpillar picture:

 Afterwards, we headed over to the Schock's house to play with our other "cousins" (Grace, Nathaniel and Megan) and have some dinner. It was fun, but I missed my baby. Everything's better with Peter.

Nonnie and Poppie Help Fix our House

Nonnie and Poppie really got busy on this visit. On March 20th Poppie and Peter took down the homeschool cupboards and started working on patching and putting back up the wall. It's time to turn the dining room back into a bedroom again. 

Peter started building back the wall that we knocked down to make the dining room 4 years ago. Good thing he thought ahead and sealed all the wooden panels into the wall in case we ever decided to put the wall back up.

Here's the view from the dining room. The bathroom is to my left. Where Peter is will soon be a closet for this master bedroom.

Poppie is a YouTube junkie. One by one the kids will sneak over to him (sometimes while they're supposed to be doing their school work) and watch whatever it is he's watching (usually a kiteboarder) on his laptop. I don't know what they're all watching, but it got everyone's attention, even Nonnie's.

By the 27th, the wall was back to normal! Thanks to Poppie's expert patching skills and Nonnie's painting, no one would ever know we had taken it out! The kids did their school work between the 2 couches in front of the fireplace.

We also did some outside homeschooling as we learned about Medieval Japan we made and flew carp kites. 

Right after this, I left for a Women's Adventure Weekend, which I thought was a Women's Retreat, but ended up being a very rugged, fun time doing some very adventurous activities at Black Lake Bible Camp with my great pal and bargain hunter, Shari Schock! We shot BB guns, played archery, perfected the tomahawk toss (It took a couple of hours but I finally threw 2 tomahawks into one log at the same time! It's actually way harder than it sounds.). We played kamikaze paintball, and I had the bruises to show it! And, not an adventurous thing, but better that dodgeball, which was what all the other women were doing, we puzzled! It was a great fun weekend and when I got back - Peter, Poppie and Nonnie had moved all the furniture around too! So now our house has a normal master bedroom, which we have never before slept in. When we first moved in we used it as the guest room, then it was the boys' room, we tore the wall down and used it as the dining room/homeschool room and now that the wall is reinstalled...it's finally a master!

It feels very strange now to have a door...and our own bathroom...and a closet in the bedroom!

Here's the wall from the living room side:

Thank you Poppie and Nonnie for all of your hard work!