She's 4!

Matt and I are amazed that our little baby is four years old today! We are delighted to have such a big girl now and are really excited to see what God has in store for her. Here are some highlights from our day:
Anna sitting with picture bear. We were reminiscing about when picture bear was bigger than she was!
Matt made homemade Belgian waffles for breakfast! YUM! Anna mostly ate the whipped cream.
After breakfast, Anna opened some presents. She was very excited...
...then decided that these cool things needed to be played with right now! She was really excited to get this little sink that she can fill with water and wash her dishes! What fun--and what a mess!
After Matt went to school, Anna and I got working on decorating her birthday cake. She chose to have a princess cake. I'd never done anything like this before, so I was rather nervous about it. Once we got started, it went pretty smoothly and turned out to be a lot of fun!
My cute little princess with her princess birthday cake!
We took our cake to the seminary for lunch and shared it with some of our favorite guys/gals there. It was fun to have them sing Happy Birthday to her! (We're making another cake for the family birthday party on Saturday.)
Anna chose to go to Red Robin for supper tonight. It's her favorite restaurant (and she's celebrated all her birthdays there). We had a wonderful day celebrating the big 4!

Drumline

Tonight after we did some catching up and ate some dinner with my sister, brother-in-law and niece, we headed out to see my nephew in his drumline performance. We really didn't know what to expect and were extremely impressed! This group of about 26 high schoolers have been practicing for months and performed in several competitions. The performance was really awesome! Of course, we think our nephew rocks on the drums! They have a state competition this weekend--I'm sure they'll do really well!

Celebrating!

Getting all dressed up for a steak dinner at a fancy restaurant was our way of celebrating tonight! Matt sustained his oral comprehensive exam today at the seminary! We are so very proud of him! He's worked and studied hard for a long time. We're ready now for a different pace as Matt finishes up the semester. Regular school work along with an interview with the denomination, a case study, graduation, and the job search now stand before him. These next few months are sure to fly by!

Bike Riding!

It was sunny when we got home from babysitting this afternoon, so Anna wanted to play outside. When Matt got home, he got Anna's bike down from the garage. She had so much fun riding around. Her riding has greatly improved since last summer, so she was able to ride down to the end of our street and back to our house pretty much on her own. We're thinking that taking family bike rides will be a highlight this summer!



She ran out of energy by the end of her ride!

Happy Birthday, CTS

Calvin Theological Seminary celebrated its birthday today. That meant that Matt didn't have classes (nice for studying before oral comps tomorrow) and that we celebrate with breakfast together and a program that roasts several of the professors. It was a lot of fun!
My cuties look adorable in their CTS t-shirts!

Girls Weekend

Anna and I had so much fun this weekend with my sister and nieces! My brother-in-law was out of town and Matt enjoyed some quietness at home to prepare for his oral comps coming up on Tuesday while we were away. We did some cooking and baking on Friday night.
Jenny and Anna (mostly Anna) played dress up. Anna was a princess; Jenny was.....???
On Saturday, Sue had to deliver the food we made, so the girls and I did a little shopping, went out for lunch, then braved the cold and drizzle to watch the Grand Ledge St. Patrick's Day Parade.
We went (at least in part) for the candy...
...and other lovely goodies they threw out!
Anna was so very cold and tired that she preferred to just sit all wrapped up on the curb! She did enjoy the parade, though.
The girls enjoyed hanging out together! It was wonderful to have some relaxing days away from home and to just do some fun things together and talk and play and talk. Maybe we'll have to do this more often!

Bugs and Other Stuff

Since I didn't have to babysit on Monday, Anna and I hopped on the bus and headed downtown to the Public Museum (free on Mondays). They had this cool bug exhibit (that Anna was a little petrified going into). She warmed up a bit when I kept pointing out cool stuff and just talking about what was there. We found some activities for little kids that finally captured her attention and then she was very excited.

She took her turn climbing on the giant spider web a few times. She tried really hard; this was how far up she got.
Then we found these bins filled with oatmeal and one or two small lettuce leaves. Anna grabbed one of the plastic spoons and started digging around.
The bins were filled with mealworms and small beetles moving around in the oatmeal. Anna was quite fascinated with this. She kept coming back to the bins again and again. She was even so brave that she had the beetles crawling on her hands.
This was about as close as she would get to the oversized, moving bugs on display that scared her.
One of Anna's favorite museum activities is to go to the train depot. We buy tickets and snacks at the window. Then we wait for the train to arrive at its destination.

The carousel is always a big hit! She got to ride it three times!
The doll collection is the highlight of the museum for Anna. She loves looking at all the dolls, playing with the family in the dollhouse and having a tea party. She was especially thrilled that her 'baby' Amy was able to come along to the museum with her. We had a really fun day!

Bad Hair Day

SUNSHINE!

We have been enjoying days of sunshine here! We just finished a really busy week (despite the fact that Matt didn't have classes this week. He's been studying for the oral comps he has to take on the 16th) and wanted to do something together and outside. After discussing our options, we decided to head to Holland State Park and see how Lake Michigan looks this time of year.
We walked down one of the snow covered piers.


Then Anna wanted to swing. The swings were really high up, so Anna preferred to be in the little kid swing. She had so much fun--especially when Matt gave her underdog pushes!
She almost made it home awake. She fell asleep about 6 blocks from home. We had a great day!

Sugar Shack

Thursday night, our friends Aaron and Michelle and their kids invited us over for dinner before heading over to the sugar shack. Some people from their church tap maple trees and make syrup. It was amazing and we had a fabulous evening!
After collecting sap from about 250 trees, the boiling begins!

When it reaches the right temperature, it's transferred to another tank until there's enough to start filling jugs.

We got one of these tins filled with the "first fruits". This syrup is from one of the first batches! He had little jugs for each of the kids. Anna was pretty excited.



Of course, we had to have pancakes for breakfast the next morning with our pure maple syrup! YUM!!!