Happy Thanksgiving

We had a wonderful and very tiring Thanksgiving here in Minnesota. The weather was a balmy 40 degrees and no snow in sight. We ate a good breakfast and watched the NYC Macy's parade (wishing we could visit there this Christmas season). After that is was crunch time, or clean up time that is. "Take that upstairs to my room!" is a phrase I repeat often when company is coming over. This time was pretty good, only a few things on my bed as I was crawling in.

We had two families over and ate a traditional thanksgiving meal... plus homemade perogies! They were awesome and a good appetizer too when the turkey was still in the oven. It was great to spend the day with good friends especially when family is so far away. Emma made her "famous" cranberry sauce and Abby made her newly "famous" apple pie.



All the kids played Yahtzee



And had a candle light dinner





This is the table runner I made this year the day after, notice the candles are much shorter. God is good.

Abigail's Drawings & Art

We borrowed a Where's Waldo book from the library that proved to be quite hard and after working at it for a while as a family Abigail proclaimed "I can make a where's Waldo!" This reminded us of the time that they made their own "I Spy" pictures by setting up elaborate scenes and using the digital camera to capture them. After several hours of passionate creativity the series "Where's Woof" was born. Use the key to learn what you should search for then have fun finding the characters and artifacts in the scenes. Also included are a couple of drawings that Abigail made and her Grandma Ward colored.
Key:

Scenes:


Drawings:

Celebrating Autumn

We have taken some more pictures of the family. We've been pumpkin picking, carrot harvesting, and bethany birthdaying. Check out our photostream! Click on the photo gallery link at the top right.

cooking mama, typing for me

cooking mama
My Name is Emma and I am 8 years old and I wanted to write something on my parents blog so I decided to write about having a wii at our home and I like to cook and there was this game that was called cooking mama and I really liked it and I wanted to get it so my parents decided that they could by it for me so I had my life time supply of wii games on the wii of course not ten thousend game's for the wii.













Well, a totally different story about my typing lesson practices My mom found this website and its free so we (me and my sisters) go on that website to practice typing at first even the first lesson was the f and j key's and i eventually got it but every thing else was really hard but here I am sitting at the computer doing the blog typing in the right way to type well nothing else to tell you but i am 8 1\2 exactly

girl scout troop 11307 earns a badge!

Girl scout troop 11307 [which I`m in] went on a trip to the Baker Park and we earned a badge! We learned all about swans and how they were going extinct and then the park brought some swans to there and they have over 2,000 swans now. The place is really beautiful! We went on a walk and looked at leaves and we saw some swans floating in the lake. They were trumpeter swans. When we past the spot where there was the swans Caitlyn did not know they were trumpeter swans, even I had no idea! I thought they were just geese! [this all happened in the car when we were in the place and just about to drop me of ] Then, after our walk, we all met back at the lodge and talked about swans and air pollution and we came up with ideas to help there not to be so much air polluting and then she brought out a real swans wing! We all passed it around and she said only to stroke it with one finger. It was so soft! After that, I separated into my group that I was going to drive home with. I had so much fun! Right before I hopped out of the car she gave me my badge. I ran up our steep drive way and into my house. The family was all watching my family`s favorite show,biggest loser! Its were people lose wait and they weigh themselves on a scale every week to see how much they have lost. Then a person goes home. Its on every Tuesday night at seven until nine.

Michael Card

A few weeks ago our church hosted a concert by Michael Card. David, being a song writer himself, got to talk a little with him. "Mike" (as he introduced himself) is going to look at David's stuff and consider it for this project. Maybe David will get something published by a "real" studio! Here is a picture of them. Sorry about the lighting. (Michael Card is actually tilting his head back to reduce the glare on the top of his head! How great is that!)

Tuesday's Breakfast

In the Ward home, we love breakfast!

Caitlyn's: "pancakes!... actually not pancakes.... the peanut butter oatmeal"
(from Deceptively Delicious)
Emma's: "that apple stuff... what's it called?... that we put yogurt on?...."
(Good morning apple crisp)
Abby's: "eggs and bacon... no wait, wait, wait, wait.... yea... eggs and bacon"

Today we had eggs and muffins.... pumpkin millet muffins.... mmmm.

The neighbor asked me on Sunday afternoon if I was cooking up a storm. His wife said, "She's got five kids... she's always cooking up a storm!" That's why I've got to wear an apron mom!

"Old" Friends and T4G

We took a trip as a family to Louisville last week. David went to the Together for the Gospel Conference (T4G) and the rest of us visited "old" friends and places. We drove by our old house, went to the big thrift store (got a slew of good kid books 29 cents each!), went to "our" mall and had pretzels, went to the Stam's house and after to the prayer meeting at Clifton and saw a bunch of great people.
We visited the Fullers and went to the zoo with them. Louisville Zoo is the best zoo we have ever been to!

We had a picnic with the Copelands at the seminary. We saw Craig Johnson too.

We had dinner at the Murray's and the girls actually got to sleep over! They were ecstatic! A few of our kids have always looked liked theirs. Cory and Emma:

Caitlyn and Claire:

It's nice to see things haven't changed that much!

Wanda Gag

We have been reading some excellent stories from Wanda Gag this week. She is so cool! Just look at her:







My favorite so far is the book "The Funny Thing". It is about a little man who makes food for the animals in the woods. He comes across this animal that he doesn't know. It turns out that it is not an animal but an aminal (my mom would like that one!). This aminal eats little children's dolls and the little man thinks up a plan to change that. You'll have to read the book to find out how!

This next picture is from the book "Millions of Cats". I think by far it is her most famous book but ALL of her books are just as good. She has such a unique style of writing and illustration don't you think?




Here is the cover to another of her books that we read this week:



This story is about an invisible dog named nothing-at-all. He doesn't mind his invisibleness until some kids come and take his siblings but leave him behind because they couldn't see him. He is told by a bird that if he spins every day that he will go from being "nothing" into "something". While he spins he chants "I'm busy getting dizzy".

Happiness is... cooking dinner while Caitlyn and Ben are in the livingroom "busy getting dizzy"!

April Showers....

Here in Minnesota spring comes slow and steady and this year we weren't sure it was coming at all! Well yesterday it finally rained! Yes, water did come out of the sky and it didn't stick to the ground. In fact I actually ran out in the middle of it to clean up some outside toys and I wasn't even wearing a coat!

Today we were out and took some pictures of things that are starting to grow in our yard.

Our lilac tree:

Some day lilies:

A weed/tree thing on the edge of our "woods":

A hosta:

And of course these little guys:

Bethany at Easter

Here's our first attempt at posting a video taken with our webcam to YouTube. We didn't have the microphone set up correctly so there is no audio. Bethany is a little over 5mo old in this video.

February Pictures

We know that we're long overdue for posting some pictures so here ya go! These pictures are from late January to late February 2008. Bethany is between 3 and 4 months in these pictures. When it comes to discerning who she looks like she is our little chameleon, that is, she seems to have a few features of everyone in the family and looks like whoever she sits next to! To illustrate we've made a collage of baby faces (though we don't have any digital pictures of Abigail when she was a baby since she was born before digital cameras were affordable or good). Click on the collage to see our updated pictures!

Like arrows in the hand of a warrior,
So are the children of one's youth.
How blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them - Psalm 127:4-5a