Weekend of celebrations!

 We had a weekend of celebrating this weekend! It started with my Sister's birthday. We had brunch at our house and ended with monkey bread for the birthday cake. It was just out of the oven so it was melting the candles...so we just used a decorative candle for the blow out candle after singing "Happy Birthday". :)

My sister really enjoys receiving cards so I had the kids pick out a cute card for her . The below picture is them laughing about it.

 We were also able to celebrate a friends wedding. Mark and I have known Ty Beal for many year we had traveled to Turkey together when he was still in his teens. The wedding was really fun it had a 40's feel, lots of character and so comfortable. I'm so excited for them!

 We also celebrated our friend Noah's 5th birthday.

The kids had a great time and Dylan really enjoyed hitting the pinata

It was a busy weekend but filled with lots of great people and experiences!

Spring Recital

 Cadence had her Spring recital concert on Friday evening.

 They played bells and sang a few songs. Zacchaeus was a wee little man was one of them :)

 They were so cute! She had a great night and loved dressing up in her pretty dress for the show. :)

Thank you Grandpa Roberts for getting some good pictures!

When the concert was over, my parent stayed the night because of my family celebrating my sisters birthday in the morning. So, Grandpa Burkholder and Dylan had a camp out in our backyard in a tent. Dylan was so excited!

My dad said it was a pretty rough night sleep...or lack of sleep and the girls were up late the night before so everyone had a lazy morning the next day. :)

Life

Cadence has been saying some pretty funny things lately. I took the picture below one day when we were out shopping. Cadence looked at the picture and said, "mom we are a sandwich and I am the meat part". :)

Also, the other day we were out and Isabelle was trying to push the door open herself and Cadence and I were standing nearby. Someone came up from behind and said, "excuse me sweetheart." Cadence looks at me and said, "how did she know her name? You call us sweetheart."

So cute!

 Other random things this week...I helped with Dylan's 1st grade garden this year. It is just planted in some tilled grass so it has been really hard keeping the grass from consuming the area again. But overall it is doing great. They planted vegetables to be able to make vegetable soup!

And this spelling test was a big celebration in our house this week! Dylan moved up in his spelling level at school a few weeks ago and has been doing great but for some reason he was having a really hard time with this weeks words. There were a few words that in all of our practicing he never got right...especially his bonus word, the name of his school.

He never told me about how he did...I just found it in his backpack. Needless to say there was lots of excitement, praise & encouragement for him! :)

Summer came this week...

 Summer came this week...it was really hot for a few days so on Sunday Dylan had a friend over from church and we pulled out the water slip & slide.

 They had a great time!

 Of course you also have to have popsicles on a hot day :)

I'm not ready for summer yet but I do like that the kids have so much fun in the water!

Baseball has Begun

 Baseball start last weekend. We decided to do Little League this year so we would be meeting others in our community. He also has 4 friends from school that are on the team together...so that makes it even more fun!

This was at opening ceremony when they were announcing their team. :)

Dylan hit a home run his first time up to bat. It was his first home run!

Easter Funny

Yesterday when I was driving in the car with the kids Cadence said,
"Mom when are we going to celebrate the real Easter?"
I answered and told her that it had already passed but we missed it because we were sick.
Dylan then said to Cadence, "What are you talking about...there is only 1 Easter".
She said, "no there is the Easter Bunny and then when Jesus became alive".
Dylan again responds with, "no they are all the same. The red candy represents Jesus blood when he died on the cross and the chocolate candy is brown so that represents Jesus skin or His body. So there is only 1 Easter because they all mean the same thing".

Love it. The thoughts of kids. :)

Easter

 Easter was spent at my parents house this year where Mark's parents joined to celebrate. Unfortunately Cadence and I were really sick with fever and were not able to go. I asked Mark to take some pictures for me...and this is what I got. :)

 The kids went on the hunt for their goodies, the picture above is Dylan and Mom helping Janae find one. :)

 Pretty soon Dylan will have Grandma R. beat in height!

 This is how Cadence and me spent the day, either curled up in bed together or on the sofa together...it was a pretty sad day. :(

Dylan 7 1/2 years old

Dylan is a boy now...no more "little" left in him. He has grown almost 2 inches since his birthday and has gained a bunch of weight and has just filled out. He physically has changed so much this year but also his maturity. I see such a difference in his ability to have self control & make good choices, I am so proud of him and the young man he is becoming!

 Dylan doesn't have many toys that he plays with consistently but Lego's is the exception. He loves lego's, sets up lego battles with all his guys and is always building stuff. He has a system to it all and gets very frustrated when one of his sisters knock over (on accident of course :)) his guys. After all it does take a lot of time to arrange all those little guys.

 He also enjoys building stuff. He built this palm branch fort the other day while I was trimming. He cut the sharp stems off with the small saw and arranged it for him to have a little fort area. He will also build stuff out of wood and loves to use the toolbox that he was given 2 Christmas' ago. He is very creative with his thinking and smart on how to "make things work".  He is all boy, likes boy things...spying on the girls, playing basketball & baseball, likes video games & just running around!

The other thing he really likes to do is put on his video game music and play his instruments to it. I have to be honest and say that it drives me nuts because it is the same little song over and over and over again and he loves to turn the volume way up so he can still hear over what he is playing. :) I'm just glad he enjoys doing music stuff!

Dylan is a leader.

A do'er.

A thinker.

Shy until he is comfortable.

Thrives from encouragement and praise.

A huge eater (he eats more than me already)!

A great big brother.

A great cleaner.

A hard worker.

Committed, doesn't give up.

Likes the hall light on when going to sleep (at least there is still a little bit of "little" in him :))

Get's frustrated when he can't do something right.

Tender when no one is looking.

My prayer for Dylan is that he grows into a man who is a leader of goodness & grace.

I am so proud of the young man that Dylan is becoming.

I love him so much!

Tempe Lake Boat Ride

On Sunday we headed to Tempe Town Lake for a bike ride but ended up renting a boat. :)

Mark has always wanted to take the kids on a ride.

 The boat is super slow so Mark let the kids drive. Dylan thought it was the greatest thing ever! He was laughing and had a huge smile on his face the whole time.

 Of course big brother had to help out. :)

 Isabelle was a bit timid at first but finally by the end was moving around and enjoying herself.

Such a fun afternoon.

I told Mark that it is so fun now that the kids are old enough that we can just "do" fun things without it being so much work or a fit being thrown. :)

Cadence's First Field Day

 Cadence had field day at school last Friday. :)

She did great and had so much fun!

 They did a relay race with running and then skipping.

She kept looking to the side to see where everyone was at, it was so cute.

She received a ribbon for the day and when we were driving home she said that she wanted to put it next to Daddy's metal and ribbon (on the bulletin board) from the marathon. I thought it was so sweet and I love that the kids know that Mark accomplished something really great!