April

 Our month was full of a variety of activities.  

Our family decided to join with our church youth group to help pack meals for Feed My Starving Children.  Lincoln was against going so he stayed with our neighbors.  I thought the process was neat and while it wasn't "fun" in the way you would think it was worthwhile and I would participate again.  My younger girls were less excited about it since it was a lot of standing.

Festival of the Arts

Annika and Lincoln both had pictures in the art festival this year.  

Lincoln REALLY wanted to see the Minecraft movie so Joseph took him.  

Community Easter Activity

Joseph took the Lincoln and Eden to the community Easter activity.  Annika decided 

at the last minute that she didn't want to go.

One of the stations was a child ID card.

Spring Break

Our Spring break was pretty chill.  Rebecah had golf almost every day and the weather was cold.  We even had snow flakes one day.  On the nice days we were able to get out, though.

Green Lakes State Park

While Rebecah was at golf practice one day I took the kids to see Snow White.  I forgot to take a picture while we were there.  I had heard that the movie wasn't very good so I went in with low expectations.  I was pleasantly surprised it wasn't as bad as I expected!

Rebecah has been in three golf matches.  She is improving and still enjoying her new sport.

On the last day of Spring break we decided to take a trip to the Priesthood Restoration 

Site and Susquehanna River.

Easter 

We had a nice Easter.  We attended church and listened to Easter music.  We had our house decorated for the entire Lenten season.  It's always fun to celebrate Jesus and His resurrection.

One new tradition we started this year was our Holy Week door.  I put Easter eggs on the kids' door frames with scriptures relating to Holy Week.  The idea is to symbolize the acts of Christ's last week enabling the destroying angel to pass over us because of His Atonement and Resurrection.  

Lincoln, Annika and Eden each received an Easter display at a Primary activity.  They had fun painting these displays and showcasing them in their rooms.

Kimball is doing fantastic! He participated in three bike races this month.  He is becoming more proficient with the Dutch language where he is starting to forget English words or struggle switching from Dutch back to English.  He has a lot of fun trips planned for his last two months!

Visiting his friend Rafa who is an exchange student from Argentina.

Kimball and Venla (Finland) at a King's Day party.  I guess there is a big party to celebrate the king's birthday each year.

March

March was a fairly chill month.  I didn't mind!!  

Rebecah decided a few months ago that she wanted to take up golf.  She bought some clubs and tried out for the school team.  She made the team and is very excited!!  This is one of the only sports she can participate in because of the permanent effects from her concussions so we were both really excited that she made the team.  Rebecah bought used clubs, but hated how ugly the golf bag was so she bought a new bag.  The new bag is not pictured.

 

Eden's class was learning about persuasive writing in school.  She wrote me a persuasive letter trying to persuade me to take her to McDonald's for French fries and a milk shake.  She was very excited when her letter arrived in the mail and even more excited to go to McDonald's.

I celebrate St. Patrick's Day less and less each year.  I didn't do any fun or festive food this year.  No one seemed to care as long as the leprechaun still left "gold" (Rolo's candy) on the counter.  

The snow is all gone.  We had a lot of really warm days at the beginning of the month in the 50s, 60s and even one day in the 70s.  Now that we are back to more seasonal temperatures, everyone feels colder.

Joseph and I celebrated our twentieth wedding anniversary.  We decided to keep it simple this year and we just had a nice dinner and dessert at home with the kids.  

Kimball is doing well.  He moved to his last host family the last week in March.  He really enjoyed living with the Wartenas but is looking forward to his last host family.  It's starting to sink in that he only has three months left.  Here are a few pictures from his month:

Kasteel de Haar

Pantropica--a hot house "zoo" with birds, fish and foliage.

Speed skating museum.  Speed skating is HUGE in Friesland.

Rotary weekend in Apeldoorn

 Kimball went with the Wartena family to this fun pancake house on a boat for a final family outing. 

Kimball and Sjoerd. 

Kimball has signed up for some bike races.  He had his first race--77 km--at the end of March.  He finished second and was very excited!

February

 Welcome to Winter aka February!  

Rebecah had a band concert this month.  The bands sounded really good and I enjoyed all of the songs.

We've had a lot of snow fall this year.  The last few years have been very mild winters with only a third of our usual snowfall.  This year we are meeting our snowfall averages.

We woke up on Valentine's day to two feet of snow.  It was a complete surprise.  The night before 1-3 inches of snow was in the forecast.  Joseph worked overnight at the hospital and he called me because he had gotten stuck in the snow at the entrance of our neighborhood.  Lincoln and I walked to meet him with some shovels.  A nice man leaving our neighborhood stopped and helped us push the car after we removed some of the snow.  Joseph spent most of the morning clearing the driveway with the snowblower.  Two feet of snow is a lot at one time, even for Syracuse. 

Lincoln playing on the deck in the deep snow.  

Kimball wanted pictures of the snow since it's our snowiest winter in a few years so Annika and the garbage can are for height references.  The snow mounds were ridiculous.

The kids and I worked one morning to dig out our mailbox so our mail would be delivered.  I was grateful for their help.

What a difference a week makes!  After temperatures were above freezing for almost a week the snow was melting faster than I thought it might.  Even more snow has melted since we took this picture. Our deck at one point had probably 3 feet of snow and now we are down to roughly 6 inches of snow on the deck.

The kids had a week off school for Winter Break the third week in February.  It was a fairly low key week, but the kids did have friends over to play and we went ice skating!

We were some of the first out on the ice after it opened and it was really nice to skate before it got crowded.

Eden really improved from last month!  She was able to skate most of the time without the skate helper and she got faster and faster the longer we were there.  She was all smiles!

Taking a break to warm up!

Kimball Highlights:

Kimball's host family took him to Belgium for four days.  Kimball really wanted to visit the Flanders region of Belgium and go cycling there, so Jen made that dream come true for Kimball.

Kimball with Jen's family in Bruge:

[Left to Right:  Jen, Piete, Sjoerd, Quinte and Kimball]

On the way to Belgium they stopped in Kinderdijk (which is a Unesco World Heritage site) to see the windmills.

Kimball also went to a Teddy Swims concert with Chris and Stefan his previous host father and brother.  It was Kimball's first concert and he enjoyed it.

Kimball is doing really well.  He has boring days just like he would have here in New York, but he's also having 'once in a lifetime' experiences.  I can't believe he comes home in four months!