Haley's 6th Birthday

Yes, you're right. Haley's birthday was 1 month ago. And we just now we able to fit her party into our busy life. Don't feel too sorry for her. She had a party with grandma and grandpa AND a family party where we went bowling and out to eat. So she certainly wasn't neglected. I was hoping she would forget all about having a party with her friends, and after about 3 weeks went by I thought I was home free...but no, she remembered and so we had her party on April 18th. One month, almost to the day.

Her theme was Princess again...same as last year. I told her that she had a princess party last year, but it didn't matter to her. She is SO into those princesses. She invited 6 girls over on a Saturday morning from 10-12. When they first came in I had them do a craft. They designed their own treat bags. They glued on felt cut-outs and sequences on a little cloth bag. They really enjoyed that, and then when it was time to go they were dry enough to put their take home treats in. We then ate cake and ice-cream, had a pinata, opened presents and then played games. We played musical chairs, and you can see in the picture Jeff got into the middle and had a little fun too. It is so easy to entertain girls at this age. A few rounds of musical chairs and some random dance time and then I pulled out the game "Hullabaloo" and they were ready to go when their parents arrived. It was just the perfect amount of time for 5 and 6 year olds.

I have included in my pictures Haley's very very best friend Dayna. Dayna and Haley are just inseperable. They just love each other! Dayna and Haley spend Lots of time together as they spend ALL day on Tuesday and Thursday together since neither go to Kindergartne those days, and then MWF at school. Dayna is a sweet little girl, as well as her sisters that are Jenna and Mikayla's age too. Another family with 3 girls!

Easter Company

For Easter dinner we had some friends over from church. We had Nathan & Brandi Schmidt and their two girls Madison and Delaney. We also had Amanda Terpstra, and Jim & Judy Wegren over. It was a nice afternoon, but a long day. I had to be at church at 8:15 for worship practice. We had 2 church services, a 9 and a 10:30. I sang in both services. After singing in the first portion of the 2nd service I left to go home and get lunch ready. By that time it was 11:00 and I had NOTHING prepared! I quickly put the ham in, peeled, boiled and mashed the potatoes, got the corn on, made green bean casserole and put together a relish plate. I then swept the floor and cleaned up the kitchen. I was done and waiting for everyone to arrive at about 12:15. Whew! That was cutting it close. Luckily Brandi was bringing the dessert or I would have been in trouble.

After lunch we had an Easter egg hunt in the yard, where Steve & Sherryl (our neighbors and church members came to watch-her brother was in town so they didn't join us for lunch). They came inside after the egg hunt and everyone stayed and chatted until about 4 pm. Wow I was tired!

It was a nice day celebrating Jesus' resurrection. Our church services were great. We had about 150 in attendance. There were 7-8 people that accepted Christ for the first time!!! That equals a successful Sunday. :-)

Easter 2009

Regional Tournament In Des Moines

Regional Volleyball Tournament was a VERY bitter sweet event.
We all arrived on Friday night the 3rd of April. The girls swam and just really enjoyed each others company. You just never know at the beginning of the season what your getting into with "subjecting" your kids to a new group of girls. I was a little worried...just wondering what influences we were exposing Jenna too. (If you are a parent you understand this.) It was one of the best decisions we made, it was just such a wonderful experience. The whole season...beautiful girls with the most amazing personalities that were so loving and kind to one another. They were such encouragers and really stuck for each other when one of them made a mistake on the court. Lovely families too that I will enjoy remaining friends with for a life-time. It is nice to know that although Jenna goes to a different grade school/middle school, they will all funnel into the same high school and she has some wonderful quality girls that she is already friends with. Jenna has already seen some the girls at other community events and has enjoyed having a larger circle of friends that she would not have normally had.

This is not to mention the amazing skills that Jenna learned under her coach. "Pitch" is the girls varsity coach at one of the local huge high schools and has taken his girls to state victories. He has amazing coaching skills and on top of that is a Christian man. He is a great influence on the girls. At the beginning of the season, watching them practice, I was for sure thinking that he has never seen a more non-talented group of girls...not even able to get the ball back over the net!!! But with HOURS of diligent teaching and coaching he transformed them into the BEST team at Regionals.

Saturday the girls went 8-0...they dominated every team with their bump, set, spikes every single time! The other teams didn't know what to do...then Sunday came....

We began Sunday morning looking AWESOME! We were beating the J-Hawks of Urbana. The first game was 25-15, and the 2nd game we were winning 21-7!!!! We only needed 4 points to go to the championship game! At this point all the parents got a good lesson....THEY ARE ONLY 11 AND 12 YEAR OLDS. For some reason they forgot every skill they ever had, lost concentration, and the other team began creeping up...as the other team began gaining on us,,,we lost all confidence and ending up losing that game 25-23. IT WAS AWFUL!!! The girls were stunned and CRYING! So disappointed in themselves that they lost that game. It went to the third game and by then the momentum had changed. (Volleyball is all momentum and once it changes it is VERY hard to gain it back.) We are not discounting several BAD BAD calls that really upset our coach by the referee. She really robbed us of a few key points. But all in all the girls lost the game themselves and we ended up losing to that team. So we tied for 3rd out of 30 teams. It was very heartbreaking. I didn't know that i could be so disappointed over a volleyball game...but I felt devastated and wanted to cry myself along with the girls. It was a GREAT learning lesson for them....you have never seen more disappointed girls.

It is still a hard subject to talk and think about...and Jenna doesn't like to even think about it.

Jeff saw Pitch later in the week and asked him if he had gotten over the lose. Pitch said that he was still disappointed but that he didn't NEED that win to show him that our team was definately the best team there. There was no other team with the same skills as ours. And he was trying to be satisfied with that.

Ok- I will stop boring you now.
It's kind of like the Cubs....there's always next year!!! :)

Fun at Regionals!

Although the ending wasn't the best, we did have a great time. The girls swam and enjoyed each others company. We also went to the mall and got to see the Easter bunny. Haley and Mikayla enjoyed being around Jenna's friends. We also went out to eat at a restaurant in Des Moines called "Noah's Ark" and it was pretty fancy and had really yummy Italian Food. We gave the coach. a sweatshirt with the teams logo and his nickname, Pitch, embroirdered in it. We will all miss him!

Happy Birthday Mom!