Preschool Fun

Since Isaac's birthday is tomorrow, he got to bring treats to school today. For their birthdays we let the boys decide what type of cake they would like and how they want it decorated (with some veto power on my part since I can only do so much). He decided to go with cupcakes--ones that look like fish but with blue batter (I tinted a regular white cake blue to make this happen).

Paul and I decorated them last night while the boys were sleeping. I am glad they turned out fairly similar to the picture from which I modeled them, and Isaac and Caleb were excited about them this morning.

It is "Dress Like Dad or Mom" at preschool today so Paul and Isaac are wearing nearly matching shirts with khaki pants or shorts.

Morning at the Fire Station

The Moms' Group at our church has been such a blessing and gift to me since having the boys. When Isaac was born and I first started going, we were a group of women who met in each other's homes to grow spiritually and to pray for each other. As we added more children and became too large for some of our homes, we started meeting at church and became an official MOPS group. When our group outgrew the space and childcare help available at church, we went back to being our own organized and run Moms' Group that continues to meet at church. The women in this group have become special friends and support to me, and their kids are some of our boys' best friends.

Normally, we meet at church every other week, but this past week we went on a field trip to a fire station. The firemen were so nice and very good with the kids. They gave each kid a fire hat, let the kids look in the ambulance and fire truck, showed them all their gear, demonstrated all the clothes they have to wear to a fire and even posed with the kids in full uniform, and let them look into their new thermal camera.

Before going, I had warned Isaac that he would probably be asked to help since he would be the oldest one there. When nobody volunteered to be hooked up to the heart monitor in the ambulance, the fireman immediately picked out Isaac to be his assistant. Isaac would have NONE of it and refused to help. (The fireman hooked himself up to it then, and a little later one of Isaac's friends volunteered to try it.) I think Isaac got a little panicked thinking about having to help because within a few minutes he came to me complaining that he was dizzy. At first I was annoyed with his clingy-ness but then realized something was wrong when he started gagging and I saw that his face was completely devoid of color! He got so worked up, he almost fainted. What better place to faint, though, than at a fire station surrounded by firemen trained to save lives?!? One of the fireman gave us a pretty pink dishpan and a bottle of water when he saw that I was holding Isaac's baseball cap under his mouth to catch any possible vomit. We went into the cooler fire station for a minute or two and then came back out. When we came out, he was still pasty white and his lips were grayish, but he recovered quickly and got back into the tour with his friends.

(Bad mom moment confession--one of the first things that went through my mind as I held the dishpan for him was that I was bummed that we would not get to go to the park afterwards to have lunch with everyone. He was completely better by the end so we were able to join everyone at the park for lunch. :-)

Peter Fish Again

***I started writing this post on March 14 and am finally able to post it since we finally connected for dinner.***

Our Peter Fish has been returned to church with all the money the boys earned and contributed to it. We enjoyed reading the daily devotionals and getting ideas of how to add money to the bank (i.e. counting how many types of fruits and vegetables we have in the house and contributing a dime for each type--Wow! I was surprised at how many varieties we had!). One of the daily challenges was to invite a leader or two from the church who helps us think of others. We were then supposed to give them money to put in their bank.

We gave the boys some ideas of people they could invite for dinner. They decided to invite Aunt Nita and Aunt Pat for dinner. (Pat is an elder in our church, and Anita helped us out by watching the boys once a week so we could join a life group together last fall.) We proceeded to invite them to dinner on March 16. The day they were supposed to come, Caleb woke up with a fever so we postponed until the following week. We had to postpone again because we were with family for Paul's grandpa's funeral. We finally had them over for dinner last week--April 28. It was such a gift to have them over and watch the boys interact with them both before and during dinner. (They even came bearing treats and fun things for the boys.)

Proof that we had dinner together

The boys are still talking about it! This is just another reminder of what a blessing a wonderful church family is to us! Also, since he is turning six this week, I thought it would be fun to see a pix of Isaac during our World Hunger Campaign when he was about six months old.

Caleb Riding Bike

We (well, really me, Paul) finally got around to putting the training wheels back on the little bike Isaac used to ride so that Caleb could start. He started showing interest in peddling the tricycle around in the back yard so we thought it was time for him to start on the bike.

After much positive assurance that he could actually make it go forward (and a few choice under-the-breath words by his father), he set off. He had to get used to pushing the pedal forward to actually go forward and not just backwards and lock the tires.

Here is a video of the event! Wow they grow up fast...

Random

The boys each bought new Batman sunglasses on Saturday. They take them with them everywhere. Caleb is especially proud of his and finds every opportunity to wear them (even last night in the car while watching a video).

The boys still need haircuts. Below is one of them where they let Paul spike their hair after a bath. (Isaac changed his face right as I snapped the picture.)

Finally, we enjoyed spending Sunday afternoon celebrating Mackenzie's birthday. I mostly took pix with Jill's camera, but here is one of the kids eating the frosting off Mackenzie's little photoshoot cake. (Caleb did get in there eventually, too.)

Overheard

As we were driving past a dairy yesterday:

Isaac: How do cows jump over the fence?
Caleb (in his new know-it-all voice): Isaac, cows jump over the moon!

The Peter Fish's Visit

Our church just started its annual World Hunger Campaign. (For those of you in the CRC, this may sound a bit off since the official CRWRC campaign is usually in the fall. Because of our fall Life Group series and how it fit with planning, we decided to recognize World Hunger Day in the spring so it could have its own special focus. That was the worship director making her explanation for why we are doing what we are doing and when!) To kick it off today in worship, an adult invited all the children ages three years old to fifth grade to sit at the front of the church while he shared about the Peter Fish and CRWRC's (Christian Reformed World Relief Committee) work around the world. He encouraged each of us to read our daily devotional that goes with it and fill our Peter Fish which will be collected during worship in three weeks.

Today was the first time that Caleb willingly went up to the front with the other kids. He was not so sure at first but did follow Isaac up there. As we watched our kids look around and copy what the other kids were doing during the talk, we realized how little control we have over their actions when they are out of arms' reach. Fortunately, they both sat pretty well, raised their hands when they were supposed to (though they did not always put them down right away), did not hit the boy next to him (Isaac) who was lying on his shoulder but instead "gently" moved his shoulder out from under the other boy's head, and was one of the first ones to walk into the congregation to help hand out the fish to the adults whose hands were raised. (Caleb was a bit disappointed in this last part since he was not as quick and did not get to hand out any fish.) Impressively, they remembered a lot of what Mr. Steenstra said and were ready to fill their fish.

Speaking of, our boys are just slightly in love (and that is putting it mildly) with their Peter Fish! They fought over who got to hold it on the way home today. They fight over who gets to be the first one to put the money into the fish after reading the devotional for the day. And they are now fighting over doing chores so they can earn a little extra money to put into the bank (a penny per chore--reminds me of my childhood when Mom would pay us a penny for each pickle picked from the garden...). Now I just have to be creative in finding chores that they can actually do without too much of my help. (I mentioned they could help me wash the windows, and Isaac is gung-ho about getting that job done--even thought he should miss his rest time to get the windows done.)

This is day one of a three-week campaign. If we keep going at this rate of enthusiasm, our house will be gleaming! Ah, I love when the Peter Fish comes to visit our home!