Blessed Friendships

Savannah and I enjoyed the opportunity to spend some time with some of my treasured friends this past weekend.  We traveled many hours and had a great time.

We were close enough to my travel-mate and fellow blogger Allie to meet her for a yummy lunch.  Allie adopted at the same time that we adopted Wyatt, and we were in the same travel group.  She traveled with her two oldest boys, and we think her family is super.  I truly enjoyed the opportunity to catch up with Allie over lunch and am thrilled we were close enough to reunite even if only briefly after five years.  Hopefully, we will someday get our entire families together.

We traveled with my friend Kim to attend her cousin's wedding.  The wedding and reception were fantastic!  Marissa really knows how to engage a crowd, and Savannah and I collected some great ideas for that someday when we hopefully plan a wedding together.  

I have heard about Kim's family often over our 20+ year friendship, and I have met a few of them over the years.  They are such a warm, fun, and open group of people.  I really enjoyed visiting with them.  Kim's kids are so sweet and good little travelers, so we really enjoyed the trip.

beautiful bride

This license plate was tossed under a tree at a shopping center.  What???

sweet Gemma

Wild man Benton

an extra touch from hotel housekeeping 

our view on the road, I am hoping to take the family on a road trip to St. Louis sometime 

A few families have told me that they really enjoyed visiting there, and there is fun to be had for kids of all ages.

silly face

Gemma too!  

In the last few hours of the drive, God reminded us that He is with us.  We stopped for gas and enjoyed watching the sun slip behind the clouds over farmland.  Less than an hour later, a huge deer ran into the path of the car.  Fortunately, the deer was spooked and turned and ran back into the woods, and I swerved enough to avoid a collision.  We prayed for God's travel mercies, and we received them.  So thankful.

Please continue praying for my friend as she finds her footing in a life very different from the one she expected.  With her husband gone, she has a long road ahead.  I ask that you pray also for us also as we strive to support her from afar.

babies, boats, travel

We have to go back a week to start this post. On Saturday May 9th, we had quite the busy day going here at the Page household. Savannah and I started the day by participating in a 5K, and that was fun. However, I seem to have a strange injury on my left foot that is especially trying on stairs - fun in heels at church today. Right after the race, Julia and Wyatt were picked up by my sister to attend an event at church where I understand Wyatt was quite the character. Meanwhile, I was cleaning and cleaning to prepare for a baby shower. Before Wyatt and Julia even made it home, Savannah and I were off to a field hockey game. Andy and Julia headed out for a birthday party for one of Julia's friends. 5:00 arrived shortly therafter, and we showered my high school friend Kim with goodies for her upcoming arrival. My friend Stacey arrived with her mom before the shower, and together, they did a beautiful job decorating and setting up. Andy and Zachary were both on hand to help with some of the grunt work.




The shower begins. See what I mean about the nice job done by Stacey and Barbara?
We invited little girls for the party, and as you can see, Wyatt stuck around. Andy and Zachary headed off to shop after we were set up to go, and they returned just in time to help with the last of the clean-up. Wyatt played nicely (mostly) with the girls, and he and several of the girls helped open the gifts. (YIKES)!

Stacey had this sign in storage, and it made a great decoration to lead people to the shower. Stacey and I grew up across the street from each other, and I met Kim in high school. Stacey knew her from grade school, and we have stayed connected all these years. Ironically, Kim and I have the same last name now, but our husbands are not related. (Kim's husband is also a former classmate of ours).
Here are the three of us and some of our kids. Of course you can't see Kim's baby boy, but he is there. Stacey's youngest child, Karlee, is in her arms.

I think the shower was a success. Savannah loved helping with the games. In fact, she ran them for us. We had people guess baby foods (pulled the labels off the jars and numbered them). Then, they had the task of naming that poo! We melted candy bars in diapers, and they had to guess which one was which. This ended up being more disgusting than I thought it would be. If you have never played this game at a shower, you might be surprised at how hard it is. When I revealed our game plans to Andy, his response was, "this is what happens at showers? I had no idea." Now this baby just needs a name, and he has to await his father's return from deployment in Afganistan to arrive.

In other family news, Andy left for the airport right after a somewhat eventful morning at church on Mother's Day. He was gone for the week, and I got to play single mom to four busy kids. For the most part the week went fairly smoothly. When Andy travels, things are very different here at home because half of a team is gone. Normally Andy takes everyone to school because I have to be at work before anyone can be dropped off. I get the pick-up and homework duty in the afternoon, and Andy cooks dinner while I manage the laundry. For the most part, every other chore in this house is done on a crisis basis - sad but true. When Andy is gone, I trade hours with a co-worker, and I get everyone to school and home. I pick Savannah up late because I leave work at the same time I am supposed to be picking her up. This week was the first week that Andy has traveled since Wyatt has switched school systems, so that threw quite a wrench in the schedule as Wyatt leaves for school after I have to be at work even going in an hour late. Sooo, we enrolled him in before school care, and I dropped him off first, took Zachary to the bus stop, and then grabbed the girls and took them to school. Whew! Our biggest issue at home this week was the dog. Normally Andy stops by the house at lunch time and lets her out. In her younger days, she was thrilled to spend the whole day outside - not so anymore, and we had a stormy week here. I made her spend her days outside and had a couple of days where she came in covered in mud in the afternoon - what a mess!

This week held the usual field hockey, wrestling and AHG schedule. In addition, our church held the kick-off to women's summer Bible study. I thoroughly enjoyed that event on Tuesday night and got to spend some time with Stacey while there. I am so excited to be returning to my home church for study this summer, and it looks like a fun study - but very personal.

On Wednesday I scheduled some fun for the crew. The senior class at the school where I teach goes on a boat ride as one of their last events before graduation. That was scheduled this week, and I took all the kids for what we hoped would be a fun night. The skies were threatening as we left our house, but it ended up being a terrific night. I think Zachary and Savannah got bored toward the end, but all the kids did enjoy the boat.

"Give me some quarters Mom, so I can look."

It was a trip watching Wyatt dance. He was so funny, but he got too rowdy toward the end as he was tired. The boys get frisked (you have to check for alcohol at school events) as they get on the boat, so Wyatt held up his hands to be frisked too. The security guard tickled him, and Wyatt spoke to him every time he saw him after that. He talked to the police officer about his gun and told him that he didn't want to be shot. Wyatt told me after the police officer walked away that if you do bad things, the police can shoot you. I wish I had his dance moves on video. Maybe he will repeat them at my brother's wedding reception this summer, and I can get this boy in action.

We got silly with the camera. Julia took this picture of Savannah and me.

the girls

silliness

a beautiful night

On Thursday I took a much needed nap before Savannah's field hockey game. I thought that would do me, but on Friday, I took a 3.5 hour nap. I then slept through the night and struggled to get up to the alarm on Saturday morning. Andy's flight was delayed, so he didn't get back until Saturday. His suitcase arrived this morning, and it had his razor, so he looks like he belongs on Miami Vice right about now. He left a very distraught Julia last week, so he took along one of her stuffed animals and sent pictures home along the way. He is exhausted right now. And to add to the stress that Andy is facing at home, Wyatt and Julia took our storm door apart. Yes, they took it apart while under Zachary's care. If you know Andy, this is a problem because...well, Andy is no handyman.

And to end this post, I HAVE to share this Wyatt story. We served at church this weekend, and friends of ours had their one month old baby with them. Wyatt saw the baby from across a room, and she was all bundled up in a blanket so you really couldn't see her. He said, "that baby is CUTE! We should get one of those!" Yeah, we'll see about that! It has been a baby boom around here. We ran into some other friends from church this weekend, we haven't seen them in a while. They were anxious to introduce their new daughter who was a week old on Saturday. They told us that they were just trying to keep up with us, and it is now a competition. I say "bring it on!" ha, ha - if we are scoring in numbers, we are in the lead by one

Reunited!!!

We have had fun on our last two days of spring break. Yesterday we spent the evening with the Steitz family and had fun catching up, and today we had lots of fun with the Miracles. Margaret and the kids arrived this afternoon, and we started the fun with some extreme bowling. If you followed our journey to China on our baby jelly beans site, then you already know the Miracles. Nine months ago we met them in Beijing as they traveled to meet Graeme and we traveled to meet Wyatt. Can you tell how excited we are to see them again??!!



Lily and Graeme are ready to bowl!

Wyatt woke up in quite a mood this morning. He was not in the mood for fun, and I thought he was going to have to go right back to bed, but as you can see, his mood improved. Wyatt loved bowling, but he is one competetive little buger. If he was knocking down lots of pins, he was happy, but when he wasn't, he was ready to leave.

Graeme seemed to like the spinning chairs as much as he liked the bowling. He has such a great smile, and he uses it often. He and Lily hugged everybody goodbye at the end of the visit, and he did this on his own initiative.

We found a trick to help the little kids get their balls all the way down the lane. (Graeme's first ball did not make it to the pins, and we had to knock it out of the way with another ball).

Graeme finds a better system.

Zach did a pretty good job with the bowling. He had done the extreme bowling thing before. None of the rest of us had. If you are wondering what was "extreme" about our bowling adventure, it was simply that we were bowling in the dark with spinning lights and lighted lanes.

Savannah's attempt to get a friend to join us failed. I still owe her one. She was a great help with the little kids when we got back home. She set up and played games with them and ran off to give them stern messages from their moms so that Margaret and I could just chat.

silliness

You would think that these kids never get fed the way the scarfed down the nachos I let them buy at the end of the game. Okay, I will admit that getting a treat at an outing is a rare event for them.

our attempts to capture the whole group

Julia and Lily really hit it off. They are both into fashion, and both will start kindergarten in the fall. We are looking forward to getting this group together again in the summer.

and of course if they are good for a picture, they get a silly one too.

We bowled and then came home to catch up. Margaret and I had a nice chat while Andy grilled a delicious dinner and the kids played games and ran screaming through the house.

Andy has worked extra hard this week while the rest of us have relaxed and played. I did not get any home projects done, but this has been a great week. At 8:30 tonight, this is what Andy looked like. He was watching Tinkerbell with the kids - something I am sure he would not do if he weren't tired.

The Children's Museum

Every year for spring break, we take a day trip to the Children's Museum. This year was extra fun because we met one of my fave former students there. Ami lives in the area and collects free tickets, so she was able to get our entire group of 11 in for free! Thank you Ami!! For a mom with four kids, that is a huge savings as this is a trip that we save for months to take. We also brought along Zach's friend Matt and his mom Pam. My sister, her boys and my mom usually go with us, and this year was no exception. However, I think they need a GPS. They were half an hour behind us at take off, then they got lost in the city getting there, and finally, when we left, they got turned around and couldn't find the expressway. hmm - Mother's Day is right around the corner (ha, ha).

So, the first picture was taken at Wyatt's insistence. The display had action heroes in it, so we had to have a picture. This was Wyatt's first trip to the museum, and what a year to go!! They had a comic book exhibit, and a Star Wars exhibits as well as a Planetarium show revolving around Star Wars.

This picture of Julia is a tradition. For three years now, we have taken a picture of her in this tunnel.

Wyatt wasn't too happy about Julia jumping into his dragon lego picture.

This is Ami's daughter Maddie. We didn't get to see Ava because she was in preschool.

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Spiderman and the princess are on the lego throne.

This is Ami with sweet little Maddie.

Matt and Zach

Julia seemed to love drawing at the museum the most. Maybe she needs an art table for her birthday. Oh, where would we put it?

Logan is a brave boy. I would never have put that cup in my mouth.

Tiffany helps Logan and Julia send their boats down the water course.

This is another traditional picture. We all work together to build the arch and then get a picture of all the kids in front of it. Zach just appeared for the picture, and I don't know where Matt was when we took it.

my girls and me

Savannah did not enjoy the trip at all this year. She was outnumbered by boys and little kids. I will be making that up to her. We have two more outings planned this week, and she gets to bring a friend to each.

Grandma and Savannah

Wyatt got Julia back when he jumped into this picture.

Logan took a break under a bench.

Where's Logan? Oh, maybe he is still under the bench.

This is a Chinese dragon, and I took this picture in honor of my Chinese children. There was some information on why dragons are popular in Chinese culture and several artifacts from China.

my dimpled duo

Savannah, true to her math loving self, enjoyed this mechanical display. Wyatt also likes this type of thing.

This is an exercise game. At this point we were to walk like ducks. I can't believe I am posting this picture!

my adventurous duo refusing to smile

These two like roller coasters and taking risks.







This is how we start spring break every year. Today we see the dentist, and tomorrow Wyatt sees the surgeon. We will return to fun on Thursday.