Cole's Birthday Party

Cole turned 5 last week, and he had a birthday party at BounceU with another friend from school who turned 5 a few days before Cole.

The kids had a great time sliding,

Shooting,

and climbing throughout the party.

It was a great group of friends, and Cole loved all the activities!

Mead and Laine had a good time playing too - glad to be a sibling of the birthday boy :-)

Check out the look of determination when Cole was swinging the bat!

Cole and William - double birthday boys!

Kings for a day

Pig Pickin' 2015

We recently had our church's third annual pig pickin', and Penny was in charge of roasting the pig again.

He is getting the hang of it now, and our kids look forward to spending the day outside with Daddy and the other helpers.

As evidenced here, all random objects become play toys while waiting for the pig to roast.  So glad we live right next door to the church so the kids can come and go all day!

Ice skating

The kids had a day off of school a few weeks ago, so I took them to the ice skating rink.  It took them a little bit to warm up, but once they remembered how to skate (from last year) they all did well!

Cole loved wearing hockey skates and skating like the big boys do.

Mead and Laine were both gliding across the ice pretty quickly.  Fun to see them enjoy something they've had to work on - everyone persevered through the falls and had a good time.

Grandparents Day chapel

Friday was Grandparents Day at the kids' school, so they had a special chapel.  This was the first time Cole got to stand on the stage with everyone else, and he was so excited.  He smiled his way through the whole song of "Jesus Loves Me"!

Laine and her class did a nice job singing "I'm in the Lord's Army,"

And Mead and her class sang "The Wise Man Built His House On the Rock."  They all did a great job - makes me so thankful for their school.

Tree chopping

Last week we got two trees cut down near our house.  Both of them were rotting, and both of them had become a potential hazard.

The kids were so excited to climb on them and watch as they were cut into smaller pieces.

The front of our house gets a lot more sun now.  Love Mead's face here as she's on top of the hollowed out tree trunk.  That's a lot of rotten wood!