Baseball season in full swing

This was Wyatt's first year of kid-pitch baseball and we were fortunate enough to have a great team! One of the dads of a fellow hockey teammate offered to put a travel baseball team together, comprised of all hockey players, which allowed the kids to not only play baseball with all their friends but also allowed the games/practices to be scheduled around spring hockey! (Kinda ridiculous, but it was nice to not have conflicts!)

We had a really long winter and all of their practices were indoors until their first game, so the learning curve was pretty high once we got outside and started playing real baseball.

My nerves definitely got the best of me, watching Wyatt out there on the pitching mound!

And a few pics of Blake hanging with his buddies--all the younger brothers of Wyatt's teammates. These boys had lots of fun but were also known to get in to a bit of trouble. Here they were bringing a small tree over to show us--we never did determine if it was already broken or if they had broken it out of the ground.

Blake loved hanging with the 'big boys'

So much fun watching these boys get so excited and cheer one another on!

And once again, Blake finds his way to the gear!

(Doesn't matter that he has church clothes on--he can still fill in as catcher anytime)

A few things that seemed noteworthy…..

One of Sadie's goals that she shared at New Year's with our family was that she would get a 100% on a spelling test. She is a great writer but is very much a phonetic speller. And I would also say that I think the spelling words she had were pretty tough for a first grader (a good thing, but also makes it harder to get a 100%). But let me just say that since she had to work pretty hard to get this, it was that much more meaningful!

I took a picture of Wyatt's homework one day because as I looked at it, I remembered the conversations I had with him where he expressed his anxiety about coming into a class where they all knew how to write in cursive and he didn't (since the public schools in Woodbury no longer taught cursive). I didn't hear a lot about it during the school year and saw his work occasionally. But for whatever reason, as I pulled this out of his folder the other day, it hit me and I was reminded of how he had overcome his fears and 'come from behind' to learn something new--and to do it well!!

Career Day at school---we have a future teacher and NHL player

And this picture was taken while I was setting up for our garage sale (my first ever)--Blake took it upon himself to put on some of Matt's hockey gear. And when I saw this face, it was so impossible to get upset with him:)

Easter 2014

What better way to begin a post about Easter than with Wyatt's letter to the Easter bunny that he wrote at school…...

We enjoyed a wonderful Easter brunch after church at the Holter's house (our 2nd year in a row celebrating with them) and we were all so excited they were finally in their new home! (Holters were in our small group at church and we had watched--and helped a bit--as they physically built their own house. Amazing--and something we definitely could not do!)

And then we came home for the annual neighborhood Easter Egg Hunt, which was bittersweet as we knew it would be our last. Watching Nate walk Blake through the neighborhood was so sweet and we knew we were definitely going to miss our great neighbors.

Gracie and Sadie

Someone found one of the eggs with $$ inside!

This is what the Dads did during the egg hunt….

Blake parked himself right by all the Dads and proceeded to eat almost all his chocolate!

…but not before Matt could get some

(Blake could be seen leaving the egg hunt in Charlie's Range Rover)

We had a great day and loved being able to celebrate Christ's resurrection with so many of our good friends here in Minnesota, as we know this will probably be our last Easter here. We were so thankful for the great weather that allowed us to do the egg hunt, which was almost cancelled due to rain and cold weather!!

The Windy City

A few days after Sadie's poetry competition, Matt and I left for Chicago for yet another interview for him.  He had a few leads in the cities and was talking to several groups there and we had just gotten back from an interview in Boulder, CO a few weeks prior. Nothing in the cities seemed to be panning out in a timely fashion and our time in CO was fairly unconvincing either way. The offer in CO was good, not great, and the practice was a decent one although Matt and the guy who owned the practice both feared that Matt might be bored there. So we left CO leaving the door open there but also not fully convinced that we were supposed to go there. Our prayers leading up to our trip to Chicago were that the Lord would make it very clear to us whether this would be a good fit. We specifically prayed that it would either be really horrible or really great, making it more clear for us since we felt  like we didn't have a lot of clarity going in to the weekend. It seemed like we might have several decent options but nothing that really excited Matt.

We left for Chicago on a Wednesday night and drove down to the north shore area. One of the head partners, Lowell Weil Jr, offered to let us stay at their house while Matt spent the next two days interviewing with them and seeing the practice. (First off, that should have been a clue right away--I mean, how many people let their interviewee stay at their own house?!) Matt spent the entire day on Thursday in meetings and seeing their various locations. He ended the day with a dinner with all the physicians on Thursday night. Yet when we finally went to bed that night, I knew it was a good thing that he was excited to talk about his day rather than being exhausted from what would normally be a very draining day for him. Friday was more of the same for Matt but I spent the day with Lowell's wife Wendy, who drove me around the area and gave me the inside scoop on different neighborhoods, schools, etc. Spending an entire day with someone you've just met can be daunting to think about, but I felt like I had known her for years and we had a great time together. We ended the day with a dinner with the partners and their wives at a local country club. This was a completely foreign concept to us--the fact that the partners not only wanted to spend time with their wives but also cared to get to know me and spend time with Matt and I as a couple was a new, and very refreshing concept compared to where we were coming from. The dinner was so wonderful and literally blew our minds away. Everyone at the table had mutual respect for one another and seemed to truly enjoy being together. They were interested in getting to know Matt as a person, not just a physician, and also cared equally about getting to know me. It was such an 'easy' dinner and we felt like we were spending time with friends rather than in the midst of an interview. 

Matt and I left the dinner on Friday night and headed downtown, where we had planned to spend the weekend debriefing on the last two days and enjoying a hopefully-relaxing time away from home. And to say it was amazing would be an understatement. We stayed at the Trump Hotel and had a gorgeous room with amazing views of the city and unbelievable service (which I guess one should expect when staying at a Trump establishment, but you never really know). But what made our time in the city really wonderful was reflecting on the last few days with the Weils. It truly was a gift from the Lord that He was making our next steps very clear to us. Up to this point, we didn't feel confident about where the Lord was leading us but that all ended after this trip. We were not only able to reflect on how great the past few days had been and what a good fit Matt seemed to be for their group, but we were also able to see what a blessing it was that Matt had been in the cities for the past 4 1/2 years. Despite the struggles we were experiencing, the past 4 years allowed Matt to gave professional respect outside of his current group, which made his move to the Weil group even more attractive to them than if he had come to Chicago directly out of fellowship. Lowell Jr. now saw Matt as a peer and told him that, which was a huge compliment to Matt. Yet if we had come directly here after fellowship, any success Matt had would probably have been perceived as being due to the Weils and their achievements. Obviously, we know that any success Matt has had is completely due to the Lord and His work, but to be able to already see why the Lord needed to take us to Chicago via the cities was a blessing that the Lord was beginning to show us already. It was a great weekend and just looking at these pictures brings back such great memories of 4 days where we felt the Lord so clearly present and guiding us.

Our view of Lake Michigan and the river from our room

A trip back to one of our all-time favorite restaurants, GT Fish & Oyster 

(home of the original waitlist)

Academic Fair

Immediately following the performances by the winners of the Poetry Festival, the academic fair commenced! This was our first year at NLA, but we had heard quite a bit about what a big deal the academic fair is. And it took quite a bit of preparation.

The 3rd graders all picked a famous person to study and do a report on. This was Wyatt's first official report--complete with compiling sources, taking notes and writing the full report. He picked Henry Ford as his top choice (sticking with his love of cars) and made a board game with trivia questions for the academic fair. It was a great learning experience and definitely wasn't easy, but that's where we learn the most, right?!

(He designed the game to look like a road and even painted the wooden cars for the game pieces.)

His friends (Nate, Jack and Hunter) learning a bit more about Henry Ford.

Sadie's class had been studying the Ukraine for the past month, so each student built a typical Ukranian house to be displayed. (Sadie's teacher, Mrs. Erickson, also asked Sadie to wear a traditional Ukranian headdress that some Ukranian friends of Mrs. Erickson's sent)

Sadie's Ukranian house

Our little performer....

April is apparently National Poetry Month (who knew) and each kid at New Life was required to memorize a poem. The kids were then supposed to recite their poem in front of the class, parents and judges. (Wyatt recited a poem about Christopher Columbus but asked his teacher if he could recite it to the judges in private as opposed to in front of the class. There were a few other kids who did the same thing and, luckily for him, his teacher didn't see a need to force the kids to get up in front of their peers.) Sadie, on the other hand, was so excited for her poetry recital! (And her teacher required each kid to get up and recite their poem, which I do thing is good for kids to learn how to do. But Wyatt was thankful he didn't have her as his teacher!)

It was a packed house and Sadie loved every minute of it!

This doesn't really have anything to do with the poetry competition, but I took this picture of Sadie's report on owls that was hanging in the hallway outside of her classroom.

Ok back to poetry.......

Sadie found out the following week that she had won the poetry reciting competition for her entire class and was then asked to recite it in front of the entire elementary school. To say that she was in her element would be an understatement. I was actually a bit nervous for her and was praying she wouldn't get too flustered by the microphone, the lights, the big stage and all the people. And of course she didn't. She even looked around the room, looking people in the eyes and using lots of expression as she recited her poem. (I only took one picture because I didn't want the flash to throw her off and make her flustered. Now looking back, I'm quite sure the flash would have just been fuel for her stage presence!)

On stage with the other winners at the end (my good friend Amber, who I taught BodyAttack with, had a daughter who also won for 4th grade--just to the left of Sadie). 

She loved it and we were so proud of her. It was great for her because Wyatt continued to be amazed at her poise and confidence and love of being on the stage. And hearing that from Wyatt just made her little heart soar!

this kid...

With Sadie and Wyatt both in school all day this year, it afforded me lots of time to spend with Blake. Here is a look into my days with this little guy who always keeps me on my toes and cracks me up!!

Can you spot Blake in Target? I took this only after frantically looking around the aisles and calling his name--he never responded to his name and thankfully, I spotted him!

sleeping spot #1--on a chair, under a blanket

A trip to Play-It-Again to get skates sharpened for all the boys is never just a quick trip......asking me to strap on the goalie pads....

Have I mentioned how much he likes 'gear'?

On one of the first nice days in the spring when it was finally warm enough to have the windows down, I looked in my rearview and saw this. I took a quick pic, knowing that someday I would miss seeing that little hand out the window.

A day at the Children's Museum--when I didn't have any kids in school, going to the Children's Museum was a weekly outing. But poor Blake hadn't been there in probably 6 months or more, so I promised him we'd go. Of course the first thing he had to do was paint his face like a tiger!

We took this picture one night when we went out to dinner with the Kuchs at my favorite restaurant, the Blue Door Pub. All of us adults were busy talking and hadn't been paying attention, when Wyatt said, "Mom! Look at Blake!" 

You can imagine all the comments from the tables around us....

Sleeping spot #2---this one was especially hilarious. We were all getting ready to head out the door one night and I had asked everyone to put their coats on and head to the car. We couldn't find Blake when it was time to go and we all were calling out his name, checking his bedroom, the basement, the closets.....and then we headed towards the back door and found this. Out cold.

I had a few returns to do at MOA and had some ride tickets that were going to be expiring soon. Blake wanted to do the giant swings and he didn't care one bit that he was the ONLY kid on them.

Then I let him pick a lunch place and this is what he picked. This boy sure knows the way to my heart.

Can it really be 7 years?

Sadie turned 7 this year--7!! In some ways it has gone really fast and in other ways, she seems so much older to me. She was very excited for this birthday since it was her year to have a 'friend party' (we alternate years for having a friend party or just a family party). Her birthday was on Friday, so we opened some gifts at home before going out for dinner. 

'Frozen' came out on DVD just a few days earlier, so the timing was perfect!

Wonder what this could be....

Isabelle--the new American Girl Doll--who Sadie had been wanting for awhile since we had been reading the Isabelle books at home together. And Isabelle is a dancer as well.

(She also got that little 'Beanie-Boo' from the boys--she loves those Beanie-Boos and I'm not exactly sure why. (They are called Beanie-Boos because the eyes are so big they might scare you!))

Her requested cake--an artist cake. (Notice the swipe of frosting out of the blue--wonder who that could have been?!)

We went to dinner at Osaka Sushi and Hibachi grill. The kids had a blast watching the Hibachi grillers (not sure what you call those guys) and they are so great about involving the kids in all their tricks. Blake was the only one who opted for sushi rather than something off the hibachi grill. 

Honestly, it was probably one of our most successful trips out to eat--so much to watch and see, the kids all loved the food because they could all order exactly what they wanted (Wyatt's dinner was comprised of steak, steak and more steak. Sadie enjoyed a bit of everything. And Blake loaded up on sushi.)

This was the mask they gave to the birthday person when they sang to them--thankfully it was Sadie's  birthday because I think she's the only one in our family who would not only wear it, but also was so excited to do so!

Once our dinner was over, the kids went over to another grill to watch some more tricks. But I had to take this picture on my phone quick because Sadie looked so old to me here. And maybe it's just because it was her birthday--always takes a bit of getting used to a new age!

We came back home for cake and ice cream and a few more presents from Nani and Pops.

This gift needs a bit of explaining. Sadie is the queen of asking for anything she sees a commercial for on TV. And thankfully we have DVR (so we can fast-forward through the commercials) or the kids watch shows on channels that don't have commercials. But on occasion, she still sees some commercials and every time, without fail, she writes the phone number down for the item and tells me, "Mom, you can just call this number and they'll send you_________________". So when my mom said that she had asked for the 'Party In the Tub Light', I was shocked she even remembered and thought it was hilarious that she was asking my mom for it. The 'Party In the Tub Light' is a floating light you place in the bathtub. After turning the lights off, it basically makes the tub look like a disco. And since Sadie not only loves taking long baths but also loves a party, it's as if this toy was made just for her. (I'm sure we are the only people who own one as well!) You can imagine her excitement and shock when she actually got it! 

The next day was Sadie's friend party and she was thrilled the day had finally come! She chose to have her party at a kid's art studio and selected a painting project that each girl would get to do. 

Sadie with all her friends from school, church and our neighborhood.

Paying careful attention to the instructions (have I mentioned before how amazed I continually am at the difference between a boys' party and a girls' party?!)

Sadie always invites two of her good friends that live out of town--Elle Sullivan and Elli Lundquist. And Elle wasn't able to make it (3 1/2 hours is a bit of hike for a 7 year old's birthday party). But Elli came up and it meant so much to Sadie. 

There was a large piece of paper on the wall that all the girls could write messages to Sadie on. I had to take a picture and remember this one from our neighbor Gracie.

Sadie's party was so much fun for all the girls and was exactly what Sadie wanted. We enjoyed some cupcakes and ice cream and each girl got to take home their own artwork that they created. We didn't open any presents because, rather than having everyone bring a gift, Sadie asked each girl to bring a gift that she could take to Children's Hospital for the kids that are there. I had called the hospital and they were in need of LEGO sets, so each girl brought a LEGO set to the party. We piled them all up in a big bag and took them down to the Children's Hospital the following week. Sadie was pretty disappointed that she wasn't going to be able to hand them out to the kids directly, but she understood why she couldn't and was just happy to bring them. Of course the staff at the hospital was also so appreciative. 

But it's a perfect reflection of the heart Sadie has. She is so caring and compassionate for those with the most needs and always notices anyone who is struggling or might be feeling left out. And she LOVES giving gifts. Anytime someone is coming over, she goes through her toys and wants to pick out something to give them. She often takes things to school to give to other kids and holds very loosely to the things of this world. (Last year she wanted to give her American Girl Doll to a girl in her class who wanted it and I had to convince Sadie to give her something else.) 

Sadie brings lots of life to our family and is constantly singing, dancing, performing or talking. Constantly. And we love it!! She isn't competitive at all and just wants everyone to feel included and loved and cared for--which is a much-needed balance for some of the other people in our household (myself included). Sadie lives life at one pace--let's just put it this way....I never need to tell Sadie to 'stop and smell the roses' . (It's no coincidence that she was over 2 weeks late and still needed an extra 'push' from medical personnel to get her to join us!) She is cheerful, optimistic, caring and such a sweet soul. There is no doubt that the Lord placed her in our family to help round some of us out and to point out all the beauty we would be missing along the way. We love you Sadie Joan!