Pretty

Eliya and Gabie had their picture taken yesterday, posing with flowers outside the church. Eliya decided to keep her flower in some water because it was so 'pretty'. Rachel is becoming a girly girl - oh dear! She tromps around the house in little plastic high-heeled shoes (quite well I might add!) and purses.

Ice Cream!

We got a 'make your own blizzard' machine from grandma and grandpa Haase that we decided to try out tonight. You put in ice cream and candy and it comes out as soft-serve blizzard. It was delicious and the girls had fun helping to put the candy into the machine, and even more fun eating it!

5 & 10 K Honker Run

Well, we're off and running...literally. We began training for a marathon back in July that we are going to hopefully run in June (we wanted to give ourselves plenty of time to build up on the miles!). Today we ran in our first competition together (the only other run I did was back in June before Mark started running). It's called the Honker Run, which is located right by the same place we took a bike ride not too long ago. It's a beautiful area, and we ran along the river. We are looking forward to that river being an ocean come June! :0) Mark ran a 5K (3.2 miles), with a time of 27:07 (a personal best), and placed 7th in his age catagory. I ran a 10K (6.4 miles) with a time of 54:11 (also a personal best) and placed 1st in my age catagory, 4th overall. We all started together and then the 5Kers turned off, so Mark was done quite a bit sooner and grabbed the camera - hence why there aren't any pictures of him running, we were both busy at the time! :0) We had a great time and the run felt good.

P.S. We got awesome shirts for running that have a big goose that's wearing running shoes that are about as big as it is - hence the name 'honker run'. I didn't get a picture of those though.

Homecoming Parade

As you can see, the girls had a lot of fun at the homecoming parade this afternoon. We missed daddy as he had to run to Sioux Falls due to an emergency with a member, but they were thrilled with their haul of candy they got. Tomorrow we will be running in the Honker races in Pierre, let's hope the wind is calm and tempuratures warm!

Angel

I almost forgot....Gabie's new best friend - why do I have a feeling we'll be getting a dog before too long?

The Rest of the Week

This was a busy week with company and such, and although I was great at taking pictures on Monday, I kinda stunk at getting the camera out the rest of the week.

Tuesday - we ALL went golfing. It was a beautiful day until about the 7th hole when the wind picked up quite a bit. The girls did great. Rachel took a nice nap and we had 3 carts to tool around in with 2 adults and 1 child per cart. I won't tell our scores (although I think papa did pretty good!), overall it was a very fun day. The only yucky part of the day was having to go back and have some work done on my back. I had some moles removed a few weeks ago and one came back from pathology positive so I had to go back and have some more dug out. Say some extra prayers that they got it all so this report comes back clean.

Wednesday - Eliya and I had school and nana even joined us. Mark had services at the manor in Faulkton so it was up to papa, Stephanie and Travis to entertain the younger two. They must've wore them out pretty good because they were taking naps when we got home. (I hear Travis gives a pretty good airplane ride!).

That brings us to today....everyone left so our house is a bit quieter - when the 3 primary noise makers don't leave it's not what I would call quiet though! This is homecoming week here so we will go to the parade tomorrow and the football game tomorrow night. The girls are very excited about tomorrow night as Eliya and Gabie get to spend the night at Kirstie's house after the game. What a great end to a busy week!

Happy Birthday Travis!

Reading stories together.

The guys team (minus Mark, whose down on the floor).

Gabie loved playing legos with Adalyn.

"Really daddy, I know the answer!"

Today was Travis's birthday. Mark had to go to Pierre and I had preschool so we didn't do much celebrating until later in the day. Nana and Papa arrived and we also invited Levi, Jess and Adalyn (thanks for coming guys!) to join us for a fun night of food, games and celebrating. We had a build your own pizza line, Chex mix, crackers and cheese spread, candy and ice cream cake (okay Sarah, I agree - renaming everything you gorged yourself on isn't such a good idea!). Then we played a round of Scattegories followed by Scene It (boys vs. girls - girls won! - no thanks to me, I stink at that game unless it's the Disney version). The girls loved having a new friend to play with, although Rachel doesn't quite grasp the concept of 'gentle' yet. sigh. It's hard to convince little girls to go to bed after such a fun evening!

Visitors

We were excited that Stephanie and Travis came to visit from New York. Eliya and Gabie haven't seen them since last summer (which is REALLY long in little people time :0) Rachel saw them over New Year's. When they arrived Gabie was so funny - she introduced everyone, "I'm gabie, this is my mommy, that's Elie and this is Rachie - my daddy's at work." Too cute.

We've been having fun catching up, reading stories and playing games. We had a lazy afternoon on Sunday as Mark had to work so we just laid around and watched TV.

Group Shots

I'm working on the girl's Christmas presents - I'm making Gabie and Rachel a prayer book of their family and special friends. (Eliya already has one). Stephanie and Travis arrived on Saturday so it was a great chance to get a couple of more recent shots taken for the books. We also needed a mommy and daddy with their girls updated picture since we didn't have any since Rachel came along.

Nothing New

on Wednesday morning the girls made butterfly pancakes with mark - they had a lot of fun decorating them too.

We've had a pretty quiet week, we're just adjusting to getting back into the fall schedule of things. The girls are all doing well, Eliya is loving school, Gabie is extremely jealous, but looking forward to the fact that she gets to go to Sunday school this year. Rachel is busy trying to keep up with her sisters and loving her friends at daycare.

Running in Circles

Mark has commented a number of times that if we ever move from this house that we will have to find another house with a 'race track', because the girls love to run in circles.



as promised...a picture of Gabie.

Piggy-tales

This was what Rachel had when I came to pick her up from daycare....too cute!

I'm feeling guilty for the lack of Gabie pictures from this past week. I will try to take some in the next couple of days. Her ears are much better - one tube is completely out and after draining for about 10 days has settled down. The other ear stopped draining after about three days of being on the antibiotic. I do have an apt. for her with the ENT in November so we'll see how her ears look then and go from there.

Sunday School

This past Sunday was Rally Day Sunday where we recognize the past years achievements and celebrate the start of a new year. We had planned on church at the park - which was a great idea, minus the 20-30 mph winds - ugh! That made for a chilly morning. I didn't have the camera because I was helping to lead the service on guitar. The kids in the Sunday School lead all the music - we sang Shake a Friend's Hand, the JOY song (complete with jumping!), a couple of slower songs and Radical God (yes, we did the chagga, chagga part :0) so it was a crazy morning, but a lot of fun! Eliya got a trophy for attendance last year and she also got her banner and first level of memory work that she completed! I was so proud of her for memorizing all those verses, and she was pretty excited with the cool stuff she got, I took this pictures that night before going to bed.

For Claudia...

I thought you'd enjoy this Claudia :0) The crazy places that kiddos fall asleep - the picture of Gabie is actually from a couple of months ago, but Rachel fell asleep in the middle of the floor on Sunday afternoon during football.

Eliya's first week of School

Here are some pictures from Eliya's first week of school - I'm sure you'll notice that she and Kirstie are still attached at the hip :0) All in all it was a great week - she loves school, and I have to say that this was the best first week of school I have ever had as a teacher - it was awesome! Although very busy getting back into the 'schedule' of things, so that would be why my blogging has been lacking. I haven't taken much for pictures at home, but at least I have some fun ones from school to share! :0)

First Day of Preschool

This was Eliya on her way out the door before her first day of preschool. She doesn't go to school until 12:30, so she was actually on her way to daycare, but we wanted to grab a picture. Don't worry she got rid of the red juice lip before going to school!


Playing at school with Kirstie and Logan.

Cheerleaders!

You can't blame Gabie for looking the way she does, I would too if I had to wear Iowa instead of Nebraska! :0)

Time for Bed

I love this picture of Eliya - she was in a 'posing' mood tonight, insisting that I take all kinds of goofy pictures of her, but this one turned out really good.


I love you big sister! Rachel was giving Gabie lots of hugs and kisses, even though she was so tired she fell asleep half-way through bedtime stories and didn't even move when Rachel started giving her loves.

Ears

Poor Gabie. She has had an ear draining since this weekend so I took her into the clinic today to see if everything is okay. Well, she has a double ear infection - hence the gunk coming out of the one ear which still has a tube in it. The other ear however the tube has come out so the infection is trapped. Sigh....so less then a week w/out the tube and we are on an antibiotic - why do I feel like a broken record player when it comes to Gabie and her poor little ears. So we are back on the charts to see if she will need new tubes put it once these have completely fallen out. Time will tell - meanwhile we are just at the beginning of the fall going into the cold and flu season - oh joy! I feel a long winter coming on (maybe that's just because it's so darn cold already!).

Rachel's Hiding Place

This is a little cupboard at grandma and grandpa haase's house that Rachel found her way into. At first we couldn't figure out where she had gone - she shut the doors even! But she laughed and peek-a-booed us out again and decided this was her new favorite game as we were packing up to leave Monday morning.