Four

At the end of April Alice will turn four years old.  We decided that since her birthday was coming up, we would celebrate it...

Happy Birthday Alice!

90 Days

In January our church took a challenged to read either the whole Bible (Old and New Testament), The Old Testament, The New Testament, or The Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) and Acts in 90 days.  Today is the 90th day.  Chris will have completed (he is a night reader and will be finishing tonight) the whole Bible in 90 days!  Emma and myself finished the New Testament Challenge.  Madi did the Gospels and Acts, actually finished a few days ago.  It has been a challenge to stay caught up, but a blessing to see consistency with the girls reading the Bible.  We read a daily family devotion, but have not challenged the girls to be in a daily devotion time with the Lord, until this challenge.  They do 40 minutes a day (5 days a week) of reading for homework.  They have incorporated their daily reading of the Bible into their homework.  Some days Emma would even read more as to stay ahead of me in our challenge.  Now I am going to encourage them do more in depth studies.
This challenge is to get an quick overview.  I especially enjoyed reading the Gospels all together.  I know the Gospels pretty well, but it connected more to me then ever before.  I will be starting the Old Testament tomorrow.
As Christians it is so important to read the Bible so it can be a lamp to our feet and a light to our path (Psalm 119:105).  My challenge to you is to get into a study, do an overview, or pick a small book like 1 John and read it for a bit.  However you do it, get into God's word!  If you do not have the Lord as your personal Savior I still challenge you to open the Bible and truly seek out what it says.  If you don't know where to start, start in 1 John and then John.
Would love to here your testimonies.    
  

Cinnamon Snaps

Last Friday, while the girls were at school, Chris, Alice, and I made Cinnamon Snaps.  We had a fun time and the end results were delicious.
When the girls came home we went to Cabela's to see the fish and the preserved animals.  We ran out of inexpensive things to do in the rain and snow; Cabela's was free.  We then came home and had Chris' famous hamburgers.  Yum!  At least they are famous in our house.

Rolling

Last Thursday we went roller skating. Thursday's are $1 a person.  I am thinking I will be taking the girls more often, although it's not fun with a headache; it's loud in there!  Despite the noise, we had a blast! The girls got a good workout.  Emma counted her laps and she proudly went over a mile.  This was definitely the girls favorite activity of the week.

This was Alice's first time putting on skates.  She was so cute and did a good job getting a hang of it.  After a bit, Darryl got her scooter and she flew around the rink.

As you can see there are not many skaters in the background.  We got there right when it opened.  By the time we left it was busy.

Zoo

Last Wednesday we went to the zoo. When I say "we" I mean all of us, even Chris. We had a great time...

Madi couldn't resist putting her hand up. 

Sweet Day

Last Tuesday we went to Sweet Candy Company Factory.  We had a free tour and tasted yummy candy.  We couldn't take pictures inside the facility, but couldn't resist to take a picture of us in our hairnets that we wore during the tour (I did have my picture taken with my hairnet on, but thankfully it's on Darryl's camera, although I wouldn't have shown it to you anyways).  After the tour we went out to dinner at Chili's.  The girls were excited to eat out; we were too, because all three girls ate for free!  Then we headed for AWANA and Alice got to go to Cubbies, which she loved.  Us adults used our gift cards at Cold Stones and had about an hour of adult conversation.  I would say Tuesday was defiantly my favorite day of activities.

Note:  Chris had to wear a beard net because of his facial hair.

Snow Day

As I mentioned yesterday, my brother, Darryl and my niece, Alice came to visit for a week.  We were so excited to spend some time with them.  We were sad that Auntie Anne had to work.
 It had snowed on Sunday and hung around enough for the girls to play in on Monday.  There were snowball fights, snow angel making, sledding and snowman making.  Chris and Darryl joined in as well.

Madi, Alice, and Emma

Madi was excited to see the apricot tree had blossoms on it.  She told me several times about it.

Since the snow was melting quickly by the time the girls got home and Alice got up from her nap, we decided to stay home and sled down our slope in the front yard (north facing so had more snow then the back yard).

The three girls and the snowman.

Explosion

Last Saturday night, the night before my brother and niece were coming, Chris and I went to bed after watching two episodes of 24*.  We were going to watch just one, but decided to stay up and watch another.  Not two minutes after we laid down to go to bed we heard an explosion and both of us flew out of bed and went running.  I went running into the girls room to protect them form any further explosions since a bomb just exploded in our garage/kitchen.  Chris ran straight to the water heater.  Apparently I have been watching way too many episodes of 24 and Chris apparently knows exactly what a water heater pipe bursting sounds like.  Thankfully he got down stairs to the water heater within a few seconds so there wasn't too much water.  And a huge blessing that he was home and heard it right away so we didn't have any water damage.  We (including our company) had two days without hot water.

* 24 is a a suspenseful TV show that deals with terrorists attacking the United States.

Zion National Park

This picture was taken at Zion National Park.  I have many more pictures to post, but wanted to share a picture now since it's been a long time since I have posted one.  It's hard to tell because it's brown, but the girls are standing in front of a river.