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Grandma and Grandpa Grage flew from Minneapolis, Minnesota to Grand Rapids, Michigan to spend the week with us.  Here’s Kayla with Great Grandma Grage.

We had a beautiful snow here today.  And it was the type of snow that was perfect for packing!  Not wanting to miss an opportunity, we bundled up to head into the winter—I mean, autumn—wonderland.  30 minutes later, we were ready.  

It’s a lot of work to get the girls outside in the winter, but it was so worth it!  We weren’t the least bit cold, and the snow kept falling on us as we played.  We built our traditional snowman, not once but three times.  I’m not sure if it was intentional or accidental, but every time I turned my back sweet little Madeline had knocked the snowman over.  Finally we finished, snapped a few pictures and decided on a name.  So here’s Fomkah, our Snowman.  He was named after Fomkah the sneaky bear from a Dora book the girls loved.  

Two weeks ago we vacationed in our back yard.  With temperatures in the upper 60’s, we spent most of the daylight hours playing, having picnics and going for walks.  I put laundry and cleaning on hold, because I knew winter was coming.  Here are the girls, geared up for an afternoon walk:

The summer weather is over, and winter is here.  We don’t quite have enough snow to build a snowman, but the girls are eagerly awaiting a couple more inches of packing snow.

Savannah is nearing 9 months now.  She has been army crawling for about two months and occasionally takes a couple crawling steps on her hands and knees.  She can get where she wants to go pretty quickly!  Savannah’s words so far are “mama,” “dada” and “more,” and she does a little bit of sign language.  Here’s a picture of the pretty girl:

Madeline is our fun-loving middle girl.  She enjoys life, wears ballerina dresses, and carries princesses with her everywhere.  She also likes holding Savannah.  Spending time alone with Madeline is delightful.  I cherish those moments!  

Kayla is the type of child who, if you give her a spare moment, creates some sort of imaginary world for play.  I definitely support and encourage her imagination.  However, I’ve discovered that if I want to do some sort of learning activity with Kayla, I have to be very careful of “transition times.”  Before I know it Kayla has entered her own little world, and it’s tough to bring her back to reality!  She and I work together to find the balance she needs.  She’s super creative, and she’s a great reader, too.  I can’t believe the stories she is already reading as we work on phonics together.  

Stay tuned for more news from our family …

Today at lunch Kayla was picking the flaxseeds off the crust of her bread when she said, “mmm, Mommy, these are so good.  What are these?”  I explained that they are flaxseeds, that they’re super healthy and that they can even help your skin not to itch so much.  Motivated by my speech, Kayla was eager to try some plain, so I poured some on her plate from a container in the fridge.  Madeline wanted the same.  I lost count of how many times the girls said, “may I have more flaxseeds please?”

I didn’t intend to make my own belated birthday cake this year.  It just sort of happened.

Each week Kayla picks a recipe from her Sesame Street cookbook.  We make a shopping list, purchase the ingredients and then spend some time cooking together.  It’s great fun for me, and good practice for my little cook!  So far we’ve made sweet recipes instead of nutritious side dishes—like cool cucumber soup and golden zucchini coins.  That’s what you get when you let the lil’ chef choose! 

The recipe Kayla picked last week was “Elmo’s Hooray, It’s My Birthday Chocolate Cake.”  As we were making the cake, Kayla said it should be for my birthday, since mine was the most recent birthday in our family. 

 So, hooray, it was my birthday last week!  We even had enough candles.  

(On a side note, I had a terrific birthday last Monday.  Aaron, the girls and I went out to dinner, had ice cream and walked to one of our favorite parks.  It was a perfect birthday.)

Tuesday was our first official day of school, though it wasn’t much different than most days this summer!  Learning together is the norm for us, but it’s always fun to make a big deal out of the start of school in September.  Carrying on our tradition we started last year, we camped in our tent (in our yard) Monday night.   Once again, it was a perfect night for camping!

Tuesday morning we enjoyed blueberry pancakes for breakfast and then had Bible time together (complete with musical instruments for our praise song).  Next we did chores before moving on to the rest of our school time.  We recited the pledge of allegiance, and let me tell you, hearing a two-year-old saying the pledge was flat-out adorable!  I wish I had videotaped it.  

Here’s our first day of school picture:

Kayla used the camera for the first time and took a picture of me, the teacher:

Next was gym class outside—racing, jumping, galloping, throwing, kicking balls, doing somersaults, etc.  We played a little wiffleball, but I think Daddy makes a better teacher when it comes to playing ball.

We wrapped up the school morning by building towers with the stacking cubes and practicing numbers, shapes and animals.  Madeline said this was her favorite part.

In the afternoon Kayla and I did a reading lesson together, working on words with the short-o vowel sound.  She’s turning into quite the little reader!

In the evening, while Aaron was at the men’s prayer service, we had a play date with some good friends at Jameson Park.  It was a wonderful, fun-filled day. 

Remember the quote about stopping to show your child a rainbow because a rainbow may not stick around for long?  Thursday evening’s weather produced the perfect ingredients for a rainbow.  As we drove to Meijer, the rain poured down while the sun was shining.  We were watching.  We were ready.  And then, there it was.  ”Kayla, look!” we called.  ”Madeline, do you see it?”  Unfortunately, from the back of the van, they just couldn’t get a good view.  As soon as we could, we pulled into a parking lot.  But within moments, the rainbow vanished.  So the wait continues.  One day we’ll get to show our girls a beautiful rainbow, but to this day, they still haven’t seen one.  

More to come soon, but for now I’ll leave you with this picture of two best friends.

Kayla is four today!  We had a birthday party for her at Island Park last night, and today the girls and Aaron ran in the Highland Festival Races.  Madeline ran 50 meters, and Kayla ran 100.  Aaron’s race was a 5K.  Everyone had fun and did a great job.  Here are a few pictures:

Kayla with her Mickey Mouse cake

Madeline wearing Grandma’s Mickey Mouse shirt

After the Fun Run

On a much sadder note, Aaron and I drove to Lansing after the party last night to say good-bye to my grandma.  She has been in the hospital since the end of April with numerous health problems.  We thought she was going to make it, until yesterday when the medical staff discovered she developed pneumonia.  My dad called yesterday saying they expected her to pass away that afternoon.  Thankfully she was still alive when we arrived at the hospital after 10 p.m. last night.  We stayed for a couple hours and arrived home around 1:30 a.m.  She was still hanging on today but will probably pass away soon.  I appreciate your prayers.  This has been a hard season.  

Here are the girls, and their friend, Nolan, with Dora.  Madeline still tells everyone that she saw Dora at the library.