Jake is 4!

Our little boy turned four years old today!  We had a great birthday party for him, at our house, on Saturday.  A lot of family was able to come by to help us celebrate.  Jake got spoiled with all the presents, most of which were related to Cars.

Then, this morning, we had to hustle to let him open our gifts before Church.  After Church, we headed over to the Detroit Zoo.  It was amazing how different the experience is when you feel like the only family there!  We actually got to sit and talk in the the tunnel at the Polar Bear exhibit.  We had a great time watching one of the young polar bears try to turn a seal into lunch.  A very friendly volunteer explained that two of the seals will actually hang out by the window that divides them from the bears just to get the bear to run into it as it tries to hunt!

We were hoping that with the cooler weather that a lot of the animals would be up and moving, but besides the bears, that wasn't really the case.  It was warm enough that they let he giraffes out, so we got to watch them walk around and eat for a while.

We spent the rest of the day playing with Lego's, cars, and trains while watching some great basketball on TV.  After dinner we even made it back outside for some driveway tennis.  We got Jake his own racket and some training tennis balls, and he's really improving in the few short days that we've been playing.  It's no surprise but getting a racket that fits him instead of him using Mommy's really made a huge difference.  Today was also the first time he was able to do a bounce serve.  When we tried on Thursday, he couldn't even get the ball to stay within 5 feet on the bounce, so it was a HUGE improvement.

Please click here to see the rest of the photos we've captured since the last post.

Hello March!

March is a crazy month for us with birthdays, so I figured I'd better get a blog post in while I can.  To be honest, with the amount we post on Facebook, it's pretty much making this obsolete.  Still, it probably makes for an easy spot to find our latest photos since I don't feel like uploading them all both to Picasa and to Facebook.

We have two birthdays down in our immediate family.  Meme celebrated something close to her 30th birthday on the 5th, and Emily celebrated her first birthday today!  Jake keeps thinking his is next, but Grandma has to slide in a week between his and Emily's.

Jake got to have fun with Mommy this winter as they got to celebrate two snow days along with mid-winter break.

Besides that, we decided to try our luck and put our house on the market.  You can find the listing here, and be sure to click on the arrows under the photo to see the other pictures.  If you're interested or know anyone that might be, you can contact our realtor for more info.  While we both hope it sells, Michele is definitely more optimistic about the whole thing.  I think it's just her way of making sure we keep the house cleaner since it has to be ready for viewing on short notice.  I think I've made our bed every day for the first time since I was living in the main level of my parent's house!

Please click on the month to view our photos from January, February, and March.

Happy New Year... it's still the new year, right?

We celebrated the New Year with the Herman family again this year.  Then, the next day, we got to celebrate Maiya's third birthday.

Backing up a bit, the week before we rang in the New Year we had a great visit from the Pruss family.  We had our final Christmas celebration as the kids opened their gifts.  The kids all played together the whole day and then the adults got to hang out and watch a movie while they slept quietly.  We really enjoyed having them stay over and would have liked it even more if they hadn't had to pack up and head home early the next morning.  Maybe next time we'll get them a little longer.

Later that week, we had a few people over to our house to watch the MSU bowl game.  While they didn't win, we still managed to have a great time with our friends.  Jen came from as far away as Grand Rapids.  Melissa, Steve, and Jack came from Brighton.  And, Ryan and Katie came from all the way across the street!

Last weekend, while the girls headed to Bravo's for Nez's birthday, Dan, Pete, and I took the kids to the Livonia Rec Center so they could play in the pool area.  All three kids ended up loving everything, especially the water slide.  Surprisingly, it took the most convincing to get Colin on it, but he was happy he went, and ended up going MANY more times.  We then grabbed a few Hot and Ready's and waited patiently for the girls to return for presents and dessert.

You can find the last of our December photos here.  And, the photos from this year can be found here.

Skating Downtown

We headed downtown tonight for dinner and ice skating.  Meme, Papa, Alison, and Aunt Missy all joined us as well.  We had a great dinner at Hard Rock, and then walked across the street to Campus Martius.

The smallest skates they had were a bit too large for Jake, but for his first time, it was tough to gauge if it really made a difference or not.  He had fun skating between our legs and kept urging us to go faster.  The best setup we found was Mommy supporting Jake under his arms while Daddy pushed and slowed the two of them.  It was the best method for Daddy's back at least.

When our backs couldn't take any more, we let Jake know that we were tired, and he replied, "But I'm not tired at all!"

Alison started off about as shaky as last year during the Motown Winter Blast, but by the end she was able to go around the rink several times by herself without holding onto the wall.

Here are a few of the photos we took tonight.

Merry Christmas!

We had a great time celebrating Christmas with all of our family.  The celebration started early in December when Jake and Mommy went up to the Christmas party at the Moose.  It continued on through a party last weekend at the Herman's house, Christmas Eve at the Husted's last night, and the Christmas Day at home.

Jake was a lot of fun this year.  He knew exactly what to do to get gifts out of bags or wrapping paper.  He kept asking people to not tell him what the gifts were as he got parts of it exposed.  He wanted each gift to be a grand reveal.  Even with splitting up the two sides of the family over two weekends, he still got a bit overwhelmed this morning and told us he just wanted to open the rest of his presents, "next Saturday" since Mommy usually tells him we can do fun stuff on the weekends.

You can find all of the photos we took over the past month in our online photo album.

We hope you enjoyed your time with family and friends and we hope you have a very happy New Year.