Then and Now

Makenzie 1st Birthday

Makenzie 4th Birthday

Sydney 1st Birthday

Sydney 4th Birthday

Pretty amazing, but we have the exact same Happy Birthday crowns that they wore for their first birthdays! Hopefully we can keep them for a long time and compare pics when they are 18! We celebrated their birthdays on Saturday with a party for family and friends. We explained to the girls that it was not actually their birthday, so then on Wednesday, when it actually was their birthday, they thought they were now 5! Like a year had passed in three days! Of course, at times, it feels like a year (or four) has passed that quickly.

I was so excited about my political involvement that I forgot to update you all with pics and stories of the girls 4th birthday party. I will be sure to update later. Tonight, I'm too lazy to upload pics and brag on my adorable girls. Had a Tastefully Simple party last night that went great. My good friend Teresa is a new consultant and it was her first party. I stayed up late cleaning up and then had to get up at 5:30am to be at the hospital to interpret for a surgery.

Started a project in the girls toy room to change out the blinds and got the wrong size...it said 72 in. on the box but when I got it home and opened it, it was only 64 in. Aaacchhh!!!! I was so frustrated! This is after my second trip to Lowe's since the first blinds I bought just didn't look right. Too tired to deal with it tonight. When we moved in last year, I would have been going to Lowe's at this time of night (8:30pm) just to get the house settled. But now, it can wait! And I have three loads of laundry going. When really all I want to do is lay on the couch and read my book club book that is so great I can't put it down (Twilight by Stephenie Meyers). So I guess that's what I'm going to do!

Once in a Lifetime Experience!

Moms For Palin!!!

The line to get into the Town Hall Meeting with McCain and Palin. And this is just half of it, it was curved around three times and around the building. Of course, it was totally worth it!

I had the opportunity to see McCain and Palin at the Grand Rapids Community College Fieldhouse last night, and had a blast! A friend from church (Julie) has been volunteering at the Republican office and was able to get two extra tickets. First of all, I was so honored that she thought to invite me...I always have a great time with her and Sherry. Secondly, I couldn't wait to see McCain/Palin in person and get to hear them answer some questions. I really enjoyed seeing them together and the way they played off eachother. After the first question that McCain answered, Palin asked if she could add something, McCain said, "You always do!" Of course, the women in the house went crazy!

I thought Palin was direct and to the point, while at times, McCain would be general and not precisely answer the question. Not too surprising, somewhat expected. I was still pleased with what I heard and the experience just proved to solidify my decision to support McCain/Palin.

Journey Church Update...from my perspective!

Church was so great today, it made you think that this is the way church is supposed to really be. We did something different by having Jon's sermon at the very beginning after a video and song. The message today was about reaching out and Jon just kept reminding us that 50,000 people die everyday without knowing Christ. What an overwhelming number...but we can start one at a time. Then we played a video with the song "Tears of the Saints". One of the lines says, "this is an emergency"...whoa. While the video played, we could write names on the stage of people that we are praying for to come to Christ. Now we will see those names every Sunday, and hopefully remember.

After service, we had a GroupLink lunch where we met with our LifeGroups for this semester and got to know eachother a bit and got info about our first group, etc. Anyway, this was really exciting for our group because we had two new couples (we're doing a Young Married group and the time they have all been marred does not even add up to half the years Jon and I have been married!) who have only been coming to Journey for three weeks and are already getting involved in a group. So cool!

And to top it all off, attendance was really good in spite of all the rain we've had this weekend. Even new people came out in the pouring rain...and Jon was worried last night! There were so many things that went wrong this morning before church, the projector was not working at 9:50am and Jon's mic was not working at 9:45am. We had to move our BabySteps due to flooding in the hallway and there were buckets everywhere for the leaky roof. God and His purposes are so much bigger than physical problems and it was awesome to see His work happening in spite of all the distractions. He obviously really wanted us to hear this message today. God is so good!

...And they're off! To school that is.

In front of their school with the sun in their eyes.

In front of their lockers. At the orientation the week before, they got their picture taken for their lockers. Kenzie refused to smile, so the picture in the hall that everyone sees is terrible. Lovely.

With mommy and daddy in their classroom. They had nametags on the table as they came in and they had to pick out their own names. I was very proud of our little preschoolers, they got theirs right away!

Now this one is precious. This one did cause a few tears even for me.

Night Before Preschool Excitement

The girls start preschool tomorrow! We picked out their clothes tonight (of course, Sydney was really into that and Kenzie didn't care less, she let Syd pick her's out for her) and got their backpacks ready. It's hard to believe that these little babies are going off to preschool. It just feels like yesterday that they were born and then they were crawling, then walking, then talking...now school?! Unbelievable!

We will be taking lots of pics tomorrow...if Jon can see past his tears (he's way more emotional about this than I am)...and I will post them later.

Affects of Laughing Gas

Sydney had to have a filling put in her baby teeth last week and they used gas to kinda make her woozy and ease the pain. She was pretty hilarious on the gas. At home, it must have still been in her system because she put her panties on her head and danced around! She was a riot! We're still laughing just remembering this one!