Catching you up

Here are a few of Alex's actual birthday. Even though it was a whole month ago I like the one of him and Max eating birthday cupcakes for breakfast and opening his presents in the car. He probably won't do that again for a long time. And since we drove to Iowa on his birthday (because we went home for Easter), it lasted 25 hours.



Both boys had their moving up ceremony for cub scouts. Max got an additional surprise. At the end of the night an adult cubscout gave Max a used boyscout shirt. He told Max the shirt had belonged to an active boyscout that had done a lot in scouting. He said he wanted it to go to the youngest scout that night and that was Max.

Yesterday the kids got out of school early, so we made manna. It tasted and looked alot like sugar cookies, the Israelites (sp?) probably would be jealous. But the kids had a lot of fun and so hopefully the lesson that went with it about God providing for us will stick.


Sophia doing her karate moves (she's not taking lessons).


Max won 3 months of free karate from a birthday party. Here he is showing you his moves.

Easter

For Easter this year we were able to go back to Iowa. It was wonderful, we wish we could make it an annual tradition. I was going to show pics. of Alex's birthday (which was the day we left for IA), the pinewood derby and our church Easter egg hunt and Easter in IA, but I realized that's a lot of pictures, so I'll catch you up slowly. Here's all our Easter celebrations in Iowa.




Easter at my dad's with all 9 cousins. We had a great time together and the kids loved hiding and finding eggs for each other.


The Steffen Easter was a lot of fun,and very relaxing. There were about 300 eggs that these 7 kids on the swing found!





The Easter Bunny and Easter Frog came to Grandma Steffen's. Everyone was pretty excited to dig through their baskets, and so Henry was the first to find a hidden Easter egg.



We celebrated at Great Grandma and Grandpa Wood's with Uncle Nick, Aunt Joni and Kale and Brady.

On the swing set

We put Henry in the swing for the first time the other day. He surprised us all by laughing quite a bit. It was fun for everyone.

It's been so nice. We had to get outside to play on the swing set a little.

Aunt Kathy took Alex to pick out his birthday present yesterday (Sunday). He couldn't have been more excited, he got this Atlantis Lego set he's been drooling over for months. He quickly put it together and played with it on and off all day. Thanks Aunt Kathy!

Birthdays and other stuff

Alex had his slumber party for his birthday Friday, the 12th. Originally 3 boys were coming, but one got sick at school and then one had to leave here about 9 at night because he got sick. So one boy made it all night. But they had a lot of fun. Randy brought home a projector from work and we took down the pictures on the wall and had a big screen for a couple movies. Alex had a great time and is ready for the next sleep over already.





Henry's birthday was Saturday. He seemed to enjoy his little party. He liked smashing his cake much more than eating it. And all the kids had fun playing with his toys. He was pushing the trucks he got making truck noises already.




We've got spring fever here, like a lot of you, I think. So here's a few snapshots of the kids outside. The chalk all over Sophia is from her drawing on the driveway and basketball post and then kissing the pictures. And the boys shot some hoops, tossed the football and pretended to poll vault onto the driveway.

Good News!

Number 5 is on the way! (They've already checked there is just one.) Due September 17. Everyone is very excited. Sophia actually said about 4 weeks ago or more, she wanted a baby sister, so we'll see. The boys both want another boy.
Also for those of you in IA we'll see you at Easter.
Love to everyone!

Around the House

Yesterday at school was their 100th day, and in kindergarten they have a party. It was also Dr. Suess's birthday, so here's Max in his cat in the hat outfit he made. He had a ton of fun yesterday.

Here's Sophia in Max's 100th day of school hat. I asked her why she didn't smile. She said let me see (meaning she wanted to see the picture of herself). I showed her and she laughed and said I don't know mommy.

Henry has 3 teeth right now. The bottom front two and then a fang (eye-tooth) on the top. I tried to get a good picture of all 3 of them, but failed and thought this picture was cute anyway.


Alex started taking guitar lessons yesterday. Despite his expression here, he seemed to really like it.

* *Snow ** * Day*

Sometime in the middle of the night (technically early Thursday am) untill the middle of last night (technically early Friday morning), it snowed a lot! Yesterday was a snow day from school and so was today. But the amount of snow we woke up today was very impressive! It was wet, heavy snow perfect for playing in.



Our neighbor's mailbox and shoveling the front step.


Climbing back onto our driveway after talking to our neighbor's plow guy.



The snow before the plow came.



After the snow plow came.



Time to play!