Where are the wild things?

This week the wild things (aka cousins) gathered for our niece's 3rd birthday party. The kids enjoyed their time together playing and eating. A separate group of wild things from the first grade classrooms were also at Great Lakes Elementary this afternoon. Maxine (played by Leah) was their fearless leader. In her debut performance she acted out Maurice Sendak's story Where the Wild Things Are. After practicing for over a month with her class Leah was quite nervous, but did a good job. I'm hoping there will be plenty more opportunities for her to develop a love for acting!

Do you like to play games?

This week was quite busy for our family. Our weekend plans of going sledding were interrupted by the mid-winter meltdown so we stayed home and did some more organizing. Tim put together another bookshelf to hold our growing collection of books and Leah helped shelve them all with me in our under the stairs library. I also purchased a little end table that needed some assembly and Tim put that together too. Leah and Elizabeth had a blast at Chuck E. Cheese and our neighbor's 4th birthday party. We continued our church search and have been drawn to a church north of us for the past several weeks. Tim also enjoyed a another opportunity to shoot his bow in a competition up north. Leah lost her second tooth after it dangled at the bottom of her mouth for quite some time.

Who won the basketball games?

The highlight of this week was the basketball games we attended at Hope this past weekend. My brother-in-law is now the JV coach for Alma College and their team played Hope in Holland. I had never been to the field house before so it was fun to see the new court. My sister and her kids and my parents all met us for the game. The spectators were limited for the first game so the kids had the freedom to go up and down the steps and explore all the seats. To our surprise it was Dutch's birthday and he invited many of his mascot friends from local restaurants and sports teams. Before the varsity game they all came on court and played a friendly game of basketball. Then at halftime Dutch gave away birthday presents to the crowd and Leah was one of the lucky recipients. It was full of goodies: t-shirt, $5 concession credit, buttons, a sticker, a small basketball, and a yo-yo. Even though Hope won both games (silent cheer) it was fun to watch and be around family.

What did you do this week?

We started out the new year bowling on New Year's Day with Tim's family. The girls did great bumper bowling with their grandparents while the rest of the cousins and adults had fun in other lanes. Getting back into the school routine was very seamless since Leah and Elizabeth got up early almost every day of the holiday break. After school this week I stopped and picked up the DVD Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs. We missed seeing the movie in the theater and it's based on a favorite book of mine that I use at school. Both girls enjoyed coming home after school to watch the movie while snuggling up with their American Girl dolls. As a family we also started reading some new books. Our favorite is a book called The 7 Habits of Happy Kids by Sean Covey, but we also picked up a recommended devotional book for dinner time that I look forward to reading throughout 2010.