Thank you all for coming out and supporting our fundraiser at church yesterday,  We had so much fun and felt so blessed.  Odin and I are super excited for our mission trip this fall.  
Love this sweet card Jonah made for a senior friend of ours..

Our bunny butt pancakes

creative goodies from my little Liv
(wood stick vase)

Some friends of ours blessed this little star with another guitar...can you feel the excitement

beautiful  cards and letters from my kiddos..love their hearts

This girl was saving for a bunny for over a year and a half and every time the bunny lady checked in with us..the babies passed away.  She figured God was telling her to move on.   So after a few months of the losses she decided she 's using the money to paint her room.  And that she did.  It's been the same for the 12 years we've been there.  She chose mint green.  We had lots of little helpers painting every where!

This guy had a little too much fun with the glitter.

Odin trying to grill pizza in the snow storm we had a week ago.  It turned out great for not knowing how to do it.

Yes...guess who did this...

bottom braces on and she's got a sore mouth. She's decided she doesn't like them anymore.

This is what goes down while we're trying to school.

love this hard working man of man..

Olivia loves creating with Play dough

She made a little lantern and a Keurig for her American girl dolls. She never plays with her dolls but she loves making things for them.  She loves anything cute, small and miniaturized.

Thank you wonderful neighbors for the delicious warm banana bread!

Olivia made me some chapstick, shampoo and sugar scrub.

These 2 actually getting along and playing great together.  Win Win!

We love helping and making meals for families.

Yes..accidents happen all the time in this house on various levels.

Love our laundry room.  It gets kind of crazy in there when everyone is trying to get winter stuff on though.  

Their homemade cards rock..it's so fun to see what they come up with.

My wonderful friend blessed us with love from IKEA.  My kiddos love them at her house so now we have our own.
thank you, thank you

homemade soup is gone every time...i''ll have to start making a double batch. I will have to find a bigger pot then or use 2 pots.?.

Yup..let her do this and it felt totally weird to me.  I haven't had polished nails since in high school.

We are trying to finish school this week so we can finish working on our rummage stuff.  This year it is May 17, 18, 19th 8-6

We have 9 families that have donated lots of beautiful nearly new clothes, house décor, games, books, movies, toys and we have over 40 lego sets for sale.  We of course will have funky buns too.  Come on out and say hi.  It will be the most organized and clean rummage you have ever been too.

Sorry about the video...here it is!

big day ...

This young lady decided to get baptized.  She was super excited and has been waiting a long time for this.  

thank you Word of Grace family for loving her so!!!

she's done with club volleyball season...

Lakeshore storm had a great season...4 tournaments and they took first at  3,  then 3rd on the last one.  They also competed at the badger state games amongst 67 other 12 year old volleyball teams in the state and took home 6th place.  Crazy!  Olivia had a lot of fun and has come along way from when she first started club.  Thank you nanee and papa for giving her this opportunity to shine. 
We are so proud of you. 
Keep it up #3
We love you!

lots going on here

First off we took Grandma Mimi home and then 5 of us seemed to get an awful sinus/flu cold.  No puking but fevers, sinus crap and body aches like you wouldn't believe.  We are a family that never usually gets sick so it totally sucked.  On a good note i'm behind on my reading so i was able to read 4 books in 5 days and it rocked.  Loved all the books i read.  Sad and truly disturbing to beautiful and touching.

This little star is completely potty trained.  I think everyone here loves him in his undies.  He's so darn cute.  Now we just have to work on wiping and not sliding off the potty.  Bittersweet for me being done with diapers.  I have been diapering for 14 years and i love it!!

Love this man with all my heart..

This star waited a year and a half for this autograph...

busted...

the protectors of my menu for the week

my happy salad muncher

life is what you make of it

Our pork nachos were amazing..no leftovers here

Love how the kiddos make their plates.  So blessed and thankful for all of our food.

latest art projects 

thank you for the flowers grandma mimi

seriously..this was papas birthday card..

thank you for the coffee blessing...

I honestly just haven't had any time to write as you can see.  

moms–what you do matters.

And if you never accomplish anything more than mothering these sweet and sour kids at your feet or towering above your head, than you have done it all.

You have done enough.

 We change diapers and  wipe butts.  We clean and trim other people’s finger and toenails. We give up the other half of our lunch so our child can have a second lunch. We smell socks and underwear to determine if they are clean or not. We wait for hours and hours and hours in doctors offices, dental appointments and practices.  We nag and mend and listen and love. We weep and whisper prayers and wear weary babies and we wish for answers. We constantly clean up messes we don’t make. We give up our bodies, our beds, our figures, our very lives for other people. We sacrifice something we really want for something our kids really need.

We say yes.

And then we say yes some more. Some days we say yes without getting anything in return.

Because that’s what moms do.

  The unseen, unknown hard work of motherhood is changing your kids’ world. And it matters that you do it.

On day there won’t be anyone asking to borrow our clothes, reaching for our hand, making us handmade cards, filling our car with smells, our home with messes, our lives with noise.

We love that even though we don’t love every minute of motherhood, every phase, every hard day that leaves us weary and wondering if we are doing it right–

we love that God chose us for them