Little Birthday Girl

Two years ago yesterday God gave us our second little girl, Chloe Elizabeth. We are so thankful to God for her and for what she adds to our family.

This lucky girl had two birthday celebrations this year! We had a party last weekend with the grandparents (who were visiting for grandparents day at school). The second party was just our little family celebrating yesterday.

Chloe loves Dora the Explorer, so this was one of her favorite presents - a Dora picnic basket. It's also gotten a lot of play time from Noah and Olivia! Isn't it great when a sibling has a birthday?

She was sooo tired by the time we had cake and ice cream. I think she was watching to make sure Swiper didn't swipe anything (or, of course, Noah and Livi)!
This was her little cake she had yesterday, on her birthday. Noah is pointing his finger "Happy birthday to YOUUUU!"

Yummy cake!

Let's Go Fly a Kite

The whole family gets in on the action

Olivia learns how to keep the kite flying


It also makes a nice hat!

Grandparent's Day

Last Friday was Grandparent's Day at school. We were so excited that both sets of grandparents could come again this year. Grammy and Grandpa Peterson won the plaque the second year in a row for coming the furthest! And I think Grandma and Papa Ice were in second place! So we are very blessed to have had them all come.





We all met for lunch at our usual celebration restaurant, Logans! It was a fun day.

Sushi Sweetie

I have been getting into sushi lately after some friends of ours had us over for a sushi party a month or so ago. I think it is so yummy! And Paul likes it too. So I had this same friend over yesterday to show me how to roll my own sushi. We had lots of fun and the sushi tasted delicious!

Olivia rolled her own little sushi roll

She was very pleased with the results!
Olivia and Micah (the friend's son) who loves sushi
Trying out the chopsticks - Olivia preferred the strawberries over the sushi. :)
The finished product - we rolled in rice, egg, carrot, cucumber, and cream cheese. Also included tuna in some and a mystery fish in some, which I won't disclose for the sake of the weak-stomached among us.
It was yummy!

Spring Break

We enjoyed a nice little getaway earlier this week. The kiddos are on spring break from school, so we took advantage of the time off and headed to the Great Wolf Lodge in Wisconsin Dells. Paul made my day on Sunday when he said we could leave early (we were going to leave on Monday) and stay a night in Madison to visit Adam and Kelly Love! We had so much fun at their beautiful house. We even stayed up until about 4 am playing Settlers - these are people after our own hearts! :) The kids had so much fun that I even heard one of them say "Can we just stay here and not go to the waterpark?" Now that is high praise!

All the kiddos (except Chloe) had a slumber party

The marble run was a hit

We made it to the Great Wolf on Monday and enjoyed three days of swimming and water slides. My body was so sore from going down countless water slides with Noah. He is just tall enough to go down the big slides, and he had a blast! Noah and I went down one water slide about ten times in a row, and there were 79 steps to get to the top (Noah counted :) ), so I was one sore mama.

Accessories make the outfit

Olivia loved the wave pool

It was hard to get a clear picture of Noah because he was in constant motion!

Chloe especially loved the chairs. :)

Sharing a bedtime snack

Daddy and the kiddos