Canada time!

 Our first adventure of the summer was a trip to Canada. We woke up bright and early last week Tuesday, battled the early morning commute and took a "quick" 3 hour flight up to Edmonton. The kids all did really well on the flights to and from Edmonton. Our DVD player died 15 minutes into the flight, so it was all about survival the rest of the time:) Actually the 2 ipads we brought along kept everyone well entertained. Morgan had her Littlest Pet Shop figures that kept her entertained for a while. Hudson and Brooklyn did well as long as they could switch seats every 30 minutes and I'm pretty sure Brooklyn had to go potty at least 3 times:)

Happy to be on the plane finally!

In Edmonton! We had a great thunderstorm one evening. Hudson was pretty scared of the thunder, but we had fun watching the lightening from inside.

It became a nightly ritual that all four kiddos would cuddle on Opa and Oma's bed to eat their fruit and watch a show or two. This was about 8:30 at night but it looked like 6:30. Since we were so far north it wasn't really dark until 11:30 at night. The kids had a hard time believing it was time for bed the first couple nights.

One morning we took the kids to a dinosaur park just a few minutes from Kevin's parent's house. Here are every one's most ferocious dinosaur's face. These pictures show some happy kiddos, but this was one of our hardest mornings. We had some crabby kids and lots of mosquitoes to deal with. However, the park did an amazing job recreating many different kind of dinosaurs. I would love to go back next time we are there to do a little more reading at each of the displays.

Doesn't she look ferocious!

Digging for bones!

We were able to visit with Omama Bodewitz on Saturday morning. We chatted with her for a while in her apartment and the girls covered her arms with stickers. Opa picked up the boys early so they could go to an Eskimo's Fan Day. The Eskimos are the Canadian league football team in Edmonton. Hudson has an Eskimo's shirt that was Ethan's so he was jazzed to be able to wear it and go meet the "Eximos". After they left the rest of us took Omama out for lunch. It was really great to see her for a few hours. Much like they used to be with my grandma the kids were very calm and super sweet to her, it was fun to see.

Saturday night Ryan and Jessica and Makena had us over for dinner. It was a real treat to see so much of them while we were there. The kids loved playing with Makena, especially Morgan, she is my little mommy!

Our best cousin picture...I think Morgan is pouting because she doesn't get to hold Makena and Makena wanted nothing to do with posing for a picture with her cousins. So we brought in Opa and Oma and got a much better picture:)

Uncle Ryan used to keep his 4-wheeler at Kevin's parent's house, but he now keeps it at his house. He was gracious enough to bring it out on Sunday so the kids could take rides. They loved it! This was also the day the weather turned crazy cold, but that didn't stop them from loving their 4-wheeler rides.

We also got to visit with Kevin's Opa and Oma Schenk. Hudson chased Opapa around the house with a dinosaur and he loved that Opapa was so scared! Brooklyn told Omama to follow her upstairs so they could play and after a few minutes she had her put her to bed for a nap:) It was special to see them as well. I think one of the highlights for the older two was our trip to the indoor water park at the West Edmonton Mall. It is a huge water park with a lot of different slides and a wave pool. It's pretty sad that the first time my kids really played in waves was at an indoor water park, despite their multiple visits to the ocean:) I was amazed at Ethan and Morgan's courage going down all the slides they were tall enough too. The very first slide Kevin took Ethan on was pitch black the whole way, but we got off with a smile. He loved it! Morgan did great too. I think she liked the wave pool the most. I was really glad we had swimming lessons before we left because she is an independent swimmer now!

All in all we had a great visit. Everyone slept well and stayed healthy and we had lots of fun with family! Thanks Opa and Oma for a great time!

Graduation

Speaking of milestones, Miss Morgan graduated from preschool last week! It is so hard to believe that she is off to kindergarden next year. Our school recently switched to All day EVERY day kindergarden so we are both going to have some pretty big adjustments come August. Truth be told, Hudson and Brooklyn are going to have some big adjustments too. They will miss their big sister. Overall she really is a great big sister and loves to play with both of them.

The family, minus Ethan. The "ceremony" is only about 20 minutes long so we figured it wasn't worth pulling him out of his last day festivities.

Here is Morgan and some of her friends. She really has a great class of girls. Unfortunately a couple of the girls won't be going to the same school next year. They will miss each other. In this picture you can see the awards that they got around their necks. The teachers are pretty creative in coming up with awards for each of the kids. A couple of the funnier ones were the "Enthusiasm award" and the "Social Award". Morgan got the "Caring Award" and she was pretty proud of it!

During the program singing one of their songs.

Congrats Morgan! We are proud of how much you grew socially and accademically this year. We love you!

Milestones

With having twins there are several milestones that you look forward to, work hard at, dread having to do and celebrate when you reach them. I suppose it's like that with each child you have, but like most of life with twins it is magnified when you have to do it x2. I would say getting them both to nurse well was the first thing, then comes scheduling naps, sleeping through the night, eating solid foods, crawling, walking, and finally potty training. I am so happy to say that Hudson and Brooklyn are both more or less potty trained! It is such a wonderful feeling although we spend a lot of time in the bathroom! I was completely dreading having to potty train two kids, but I ended up following the advice of my good friend who has triplets and worked with them one at a time. Brooklyn was first and caught on within a couple days. Hudson followed after about a month of cheering Brooky on. He too had it down with in four or five days.

Showing off their big kid underwear!

Another huge milestone I was dreading was getting rid of cribs. Hudson and Brooklyn have been awesome sleepers overall and love their cribs. I could put them down for naps and bed time without any objection and if they weren't tired they would just chat with each other. Along with getting rid of cribs meant making a girls room and a boys room. So not only did we want to get rid of cribs, we put together bunk beds and painted... All last weekend, the weekend before the last week of school. Not great planning on our part, but we wanted to get them moved before we go to Canada in a couple weeks and Hudson was climbing out of his crib at least every other day. So we decided it was time. Overall it has gone well, but it is an adjustment for everyone to get used to new roommates. Morgan has expressed that she misses Ethan, and while Ethan would never admit it I'm quite certain he misses Morgan as well. I'm looking forward to the "adjustment" period to be over, that will probably be just in time for vacation;)

Livin' Life

Since Kevin teaches one high school class we were invited to the JSB, which is our schools version of prom. It was a fun, free night out and excuse to get dressed up and hang out with our friends, but boy am I glad I'm not in high school anymore!

Movie night with Daddy while I got to go out to dinner with my mom and sister.

The first of many fun trips to the water park with friends. This has been a great relief a couple times already in our 90+ degree weather we've been having.

Morgan has been taking a gymnastics class that she is loving. It is only 8 weeks so we'll see what she thinks when she is done. Ethan is in tee ball/baseball right now and loving that too.

Our little athlete, Hudson loves to play any sport with anyone who will play with him!

Otter pops! Summer is really here!

 We are reading Trumpet of the Swam with the older two. Morgan and I had sometime at home this morning because she was home sick from school. Hudson and Brooklyn somehow managed to stay busy enough to leave us alone so we could do this diorama together. It was a lot of fun! 

Spring Break

 We had Spring Break a few weeks ago and we were able to do a few fun things. We started off our break with a trip to the zoo with some friends. It was my first time taking all four kids on an extended car ride by myself. They all did great and we had a lot of fun. It was our kids first time to a larger zoo with big animals like giraffes and elephants. They loved it of course!

Fun with friends!

At the end of break I took Morgan and Annika to a tea shop for a tea party. I had given Annika a tea set and a promise of a tea party for Christmas a couple years ago and it was finally time to cash it in. The girls were in heaven trying on all the different hats and feather boas. Morgan talked in a little English accent most of the time, it was pretty sweet. She is really in to Fancy Nancy books so she was using all her fancy words. They got hot chocolate with whip cream and sprinkles and lots of cute little sandwiches and treats. We will definitely be going back there sometime!



Happy Easter

We were lucky enough to have two Easter egg hunts this year. One with our cousins after school so that Ethan could go too...

and one with our friends. Most of the same friends we have done this with  for the last 6 years. We keep adding to the bunch and it sure is fun!

Hudson and Brooklyn really had fun this year. They of course were quite preoccupied with the candy in the eggs rather tahn collecting as many eggs as they could. ( I love this picture of Hudson because it shows how he wears his hats these days. He loves to wear hats and he loves to wear them backwards. I think it's pretty cute!)

I enjoy reading Ann Voskamp's blog every now and then. On this link she describes making an Easter garden with your kids in preparation for Good Friday and Easter. We decided to do it with our kids and they loved it. Each night from Palm Sunday until Good Friday we lit a candle and read from the Bible. It was really meaningful to prepare our hearts for what Easter is all about. I think we have a new tradition started.

And then there was Easter morning. A morning we are all "supposed" to be happy and ready to celebrate. It was kind of a rough morning for us, Kevin and I were busy packing for our trip to the coast later that afternoon and I think the kids felt the stress. The bright moment of the morning was finding Easter baskets at the door that the Easter Bunny (aka Nana) left by the door. We did pull it all together though and managed to get a couple decent pictures. But I thought I should include the outtakes, because that's life afterall:)

One more with mommy because my birthday was the next day:)