Reading

Geneva is trying to teach Brookie how to read these days. Brookie has actually been sitting still long enough to look at books recently, so that's fun.

I think Geneva's going to love school next fall, she's so eager to learn and loves to look and listen to books, stories, and songs. She loves to colour and wants to learn how to write her name.

Some of the letters are the right idea. She's getting good at Gs. She says the middle thing is a moon. "I know how draw moons now!" I think it started off as an e. :)

Then she added a sun too. She said "Grandma (will) say 'WOW! Look at that sun and moon!"

Some pics... all clumped together in one entry.

I think I'm going to cave in and get the girls professionally photographed. WAY too hard for this momma to get a cute shot of both of them. Here's what I came up with in this photo shoot.

MOMMY!!! Brookie's biting me!


Opa and Nana came up a few weeks ago for a visit. We went to Hanes' Corn Maze. We were in that sucker for almost 2 hours. But we were persistent and got every single clue! Very fun. The girls didn't get a ton out of it, but they were rather patient with the whole thing.

Nice face G

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Hope Homecoming weekend! I left the girls at my Mom's on Saturday and drove up to Grand Rapids to see Kirra Ann, my friend Megs and Al's new arrival! What a dolly. It was sooooo nice to see Megs and Al, Sar and Matt and hang out and act weird and have things feel pretty much just the way they were 5 years ago! It was totally and completely worth the total 9 hours of driving. I actually enjoyed the drive. Spent some quality time with God and got to crank my new Caedmans' Call and Shane and Shane cds. I think I over-listened to the same music a bit though... I'll retire them for a while.

Missing you Cheli!

Kirra sweetie-Ann

Yes, I do know how to hold a baby. I had just been staring at her intentely and had to turn her around for a quick pic. I didn't really want to hand her back to her momma. She's rather full of cuteness.


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Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving parade yesterday.

Checking out Nana's pretty display.

MMMMM. Fake gourds. Tasty.

Let's see now, I'll put this one here, and this one there....

I guess you can have one too, Brookie

I love my spoon!

Brooke's latest obsession is spoons. Take it away, and watch out world. Ok, we really do realize that it really isn't the safest thing to let a baby crawl around with a spoon. But when it keeps her occupied for hours? Such a debate. It's good for banging on things, it's good for chewing on, good for making noise while crawling, and most importantly, it's good for putting FOOD into one's mouth!

Doing a fine job of feeding herself some yogurt.

mmmmm

See this? Yup, that's my spoon. I like it.

Labour Day Weekend

Well, it already seems like it was a looooong time ago. But on Labour Day weekend we had our annual swordswomen retreat! We went to Megs and Al's new house in GR. Sar and Matt couldn't come :0( We missed you guys! More extensive pics are up on Cheli's site, since we had some camera issues. But here are couple from when our batteries were cooperating. :) Chel brought her man, Greg with. What a cool guy. So glad we got to meet him!

At a really neat "sprayground" at Millenium park in Grand Rapids.
This was a few runs before Geneva ran smack into into a little boy.... So hard not to walk...

I think they're laughing because they thought they might look like an 'alternative couple.'

Boy Brookie sure looks like she's having tons of fun.

Proud parents to be!

Watch out Al! There's a bucket just about to....

...dump on your head!

Taste this Daddy...

But Dad, I like the taste of sand, why don't you?

Fun with sand.

Greg and Michelle. Notice the tile thingy behind them. Don't know how she spotted that one... there were hundreds of them!

weekend at Grandma and Grandpa's

Right after our camping trip I headed out for Midland while Derek stayed home to work! (He was also going camping with the youth from church, so I didn't feel like being home alone all weekend. ) It took us over 6 hours with the border wait and WAY too much construction. The girls did pretty good, considering they'd been in the car 5 hours the day before! What troopers. Oh, wait, maybe I'm the trooper. :)
Anyway , it was Dave's birthday (29!) on Friday, so we celebrated it along with Geneva's 3rd bday too. (plus Brian and Rob and myself all have summer birthdays..). I think we were just excited that we were actually all together ON someone's birthday that we went all out. Ok, not really, but "all out" Mulder-style. We actually did SOMETHING for Dave. We made a newspaper for him... I wish I would of taken a pic of it, we were quite proud of it. And we got him a subscription to the Midland Daily Snooze Oops, i mean News. We even hid the "made" newspaper inside of my parents newspaper so that when Dave opened it up, he saw a pic of himself with the birthday headline, and an "article" about how his siblings got him a subscription to the paper. How creative we are, hey dorks?
A great weekend as always. It was nice and hot, and once again, we took full advantage of Dave and Christel's pool!

Love you, mi familia!!!!

Uncle Bobby and Brooke

I love my Grandpa!

Cleaning up the mess she made.

Christel, who had a job interview while we were there! She got it! Teaching jobs in Michigan are rather hard to find, but who could turn down our Christel!?!?

Eagerly awaiting the (frozen) cake.

Happy Birthday to YOUUUUUU

Note the frost on the cake.... (it was rather a last minute, "oh ya" let's eat the leftover cake from Dave and Christel's wedding!)

I think we have a lot of pictures of Geneva with her Uncles....

Brooke really loves her Grandma A LOT. She basically wants nothing to do with me when Grams is around. You'd think this might make me sad? Nope. :)

Brookie looking none too happy. But at least Uncle Brian is having fun in the kiddie pool!

Let's go Grandpa!

Bailey put up with SOOOO much "petting"