Easter

Easter week-end was a lovely spring week-end full of family and fun.  We kicked off the fun with a Friday night dinner with Zach's family to celebrate all the April birthdays.

April birthdays

The food, cake, conversation, and presents were all good, but the highlight was all the fun the cousins had playing together.

We followed up Friday night family fun with a Saturday morning brunch with some of my family, complete with the first of the Easter egg hunts.

Yummy brunch, fun play time with Uncle Ethan, and an Easter egg hunt?

Winner, winner!!

Our Easter Sunday was another wonderful , beautiful day celebrating our risen Savior.

We enjoyed Sunday School, brunch, and Easter service at church.

After church we had a little time to head home so the kids could find their Easter baskets.

A movie and a book for Briggs.

A movie and a journal for the girls.

We then headed to Zach's aunt's house for a scrumptious lunch and enormous Easter egg hunt...and bunny ear Easter pictures, of course.

The kids always have the best time with their cousins!

Cade helped Briggs during the Easter egg hunt.

And Olivia helped Adelie.

Lila and Staley didn't really need anyone to help them, but they enjoyed hunting together.

We finished off our day by heading to my aunt's house for more cousin fun, more visiting with family, more playing with Uncle Ethan, another Easter egg  hunt, and yummy desserts.

The week-end was full of my favorites.  Family time.  Good food.  Beautiful weather.

And the reminder that we have a Savior who paid the ultimate price because of his love for us.

Happy Easter!!

Best Name Ever

Briggs and I had this conversation today:

Briggs:  "What's your real name?"
Me:  "Do you know what my real name is?"
Briggs:  "Sancken."
Me:  "Sancken is my last name.  Do you know what my first name is?"
Briggs:  (long, thoughtful pause)  "Ellen."
Me:  "That's right.  My real name is Ellen."
Briggs:  "But me and Staley and Adelie just named you Mommy."

And that is my favorite name of all!

Parenting Mistake #617

I taught my kids "The Song That Never Ends."  I thought they'd find it amusing.  I was right.

#itneverends
#whatwasithinking

Six Years Old

Adelie is officially six years old, so this is my annual blog post about my kids at each given age.
It's long, filled with information that only a mother really wants to remember, and is over-loaded with pictures.  Consider yourself warned.

Adelie is still my tall and skinny girl, measuring 46" (64th percentile) and 43 lbs (39th percentile.)  She wears her 6/6X clothes and size 11 shoes.  Adelie is in Kindergarten in Mrs. Doty's class.  Over the past year, she has participated in t-ball and basketball through the park district.  She goes to Stage Kids and was in Lion King, Jr. and Annie, Jr. so far this year with Madagascar, Jr. coming up next month.  Adelie is currently taking gymnastics class, swimming lessons, and goes to Kids Connection at church on Wednesday nights.  Adelie sleeps about 11-12 hours at night, going to bed around 8 and waking up between 7 and 8 in the morning.  She has still only lost her two bottom middle teeth.

Love her smile!

Likes:  Adelie has a wide variety of things she likes.  She is very active and loves riding her scooter, hanging upside down, and climbing on furniture.  She loves to swim, although prefers to spend most of her time under the water.  (Hence the swimming lessons since she is very confident in the water but can only swim underwater.  Breathing is important too.) Although Adelie enjoys being active, she also LOVES drawing, writing, and doing crafts.  We go through reams of printer paper and she always gets excited about new notebooks because she is constantly writing, drawing, and creating.  (I love her phonetic Kindergarten spelling!)

My crafty girl

Adelie enjoys playing American Girl dolls with Staley, stuffed animals with Briggs, and Barbies with Grammie, but more of her play these days is imaginary or craft related rather than with toys.  She enjoys playing school, hotel, spy camp, and putting on plays with her siblings.  She also likes taking pictures with her new camera.  Adelie enjoys being read to, but is resistant to reading on her own (although she is getting much better at it even though she balks at practicing at home.)

Although Adelie doesn't loves working on reading skills at home, she loves being read to.

Mermaids are still Adelie's favorite thing ever.  Adelie is very social and always wants to be included in friend or cousin activities.  She loves spending time with the neighborhood kids and is always asking to have play dates with friends.  She also gets very sad when Staley is invited to a friend activity that she is not invited to.  Adelie plays with a wide variety of kids at church, school, and in the neighborhood, but Aizlee (from church and her class at school) and William (from school and the neighborhood) are two that she asks to do things with the most.  She also loves spending time with her cousins and her siblings.

Sibling love...and goofiness

(Not really sure what they were doing with this pose.)

We don't watch TV or many movies, but Adelie is pretty happy to watch anything we put on.  She likes "bigger kid movies" like American Girl movies and The Greatest Showman, but is also happy to watch Paw Patrol or Dora as well.  Given the choice, she often picks out one of the Little Mermaid movies.  She is my most screen oriented child and, although we keep our home life primarily screen free, she jumps at any chance to do anything on a screen.  (My phone, Uma's tablets, the TV at the doctor's office, pretending to talk/text/take pictures on pretend phones, scrolling through the hundreds of pictures she's already taken on her camera...)  Although she generally finds at least one thing to complain about at every meal, Adelie is generally a good eater.  Her favorite food groups are fruit, bread, and sweets.  Frequent requests include pancakes, waffles, fish sticks, chicken nuggets, meatballs, and corndogs.  Adelie is not very picky when it comes to clothes, but prefers things with mermaids and sparkles.

She also likes to dress in her fancy dresses and accessories

Dislikes:  Adelie has a very sensitive heart and does not like getting in trouble, disappointing people, hurting other's feelings, or being left out. She is not a persistent or goal-oriented child and generally resists trying things that she thinks are going to be hard.  Although she can now ride a two wheeled bike, she prefers to do her scooter.  Although she is getting so much better at reading, she always gets upset when I ask her to do it.  When given the choice between activities, she always defers to easier ones or ones she knows she can do.  She does not like homework, wearing socks and shoes, most main dishes, and being told to use the bathroom.

Life is better when you are barefoot.

Skills:  Adelie is a coordinated child.  She is very flexible and likes to do the splits and back bends.  She can swim underwater and ride a two wheeled bike with a little help to get going.  Adelie loves to draw and write and does well with both, although she doesn't always take her time to make her writing as neat as she can.

Oh so flexible

Adelie is independent with getting dressed, brushing her teeth, brushing her hair, going to the bathroom, and washing herself in the shower.  Because she tends to be in a hurry and rush through tasks, she does need some reminders, supervision, and/or assistance to complete these tasks thoroughly.  We face the same difficulties when she is completing jobs at home like cleaning up or doing her chores.  Can she do them?  Yes.  Does she always do them thoroughly or well?  Not always.

Obviously she rushed through shaving on this day.  :)

 Adelie is a bright little girl.  She does well in school with her standardized tests at school putting her in the 79th percentile for math and the 90th percentile for reading.  Although she prefers not to spend her time working on math or reading at home, she obviously picks up these concepts quickly and easily.  She is reading simple books, phonetically spelling words for writing, and doing simple addition and subtraction problems.

My smart little girl

Personality:  Adelie has great social skills.  She is a very good friend and gets along well with everyone, whether they are older or younger, boys or girls.  She gives heart-felt compliments, loves to make or give things to people, and is generally happy to go along with what other's want to play.  She'll build fairy houses with the neighbor girl, play "hunting" with her little boy friends, dig in the dirt for worms, play dolls with Staley and her friends, or dress up to be in a play.  Whatever other people want to do, Adelie is usually game.  Since she is more of a follower with other kids, that also means that she is less likely to follow the rules or think through her actions if everyone else is doing it.  Thinking through her actions remains a work in progress.  Adelie loves to make people laugh, so she is my child who will do silly things or act inappropriately if she thinks it will amuse others.  However, she is truly funny and often does make us laugh with her shenanigans.

Yep.  That's my girl!

 Adelie is really fun, but also has a sweet, sensitive, gentle heart that makes her very compassionate, loving, and kind.  She is thoughtful and generous and truly a joy to be around.

Life with Adelie is just super!

Love my big 6 year old!!

A Day Out with Thomas

 As I mentioned in my spring break post, one of the highlights of our road trip home was a side stop at a train station near Birmingham, Alabama for A Day Out with Thomas.  We kept this as a surprise for Briggs and he was in awe when we pulled into the parking lot and saw Thomas parked at the station.

This was a big event with a variety of Thomas themed activities, food vendors, and fun for the kids.  We skipped the Thomas video and story telling station, the Thomas coloring area, the sand box, the hula hoops, the mini golf, and (thankfully) the big Thomas gift shop tent, but still had lots of fun with the activities we chose to do. 

There were Thomas temporary tattoos.  Briggs chose Harold the Helicoptor and Adelie chose a train called Rebecca.  Staley chose not to get one.

Both girls had a great time at the big bubble station.  They spent a long time here.

I think this might have been both their favorites.  Briggs lost interest quickly in the bubbles, so he and Zach walked around the train station to check out all the old trains that were parked there.

There were lots of old train cars and train engines that you could look at, climb on, and explore.  Even if Thomas and all the activities hadn't been there, I think it still would have been a fun place to stop for Briggs.

There was a tent that had about 5 or 6 train tables set up.  #heaven  We went in there early in our trip, but there were too many kids and Briggs didn't want to play.  However, when we checked it out later, it was pretty empty and Briggs had a great time.  He did keep moving from table to table to avoid having to share a table with other kids.  Each time another kid would come to play at his table, Briggs would look around and immediately move to an empty table.  While Briggs played train table, the girls enjoyed a big bouncy house.

And then the kids got to meet Sir Topham Hat.

The highlight, of course, was seeing Thomas.  Briggs will be quick to tell you that he met "the REAL Thomas."  Thomas's eyes and mouth moved, he made a peeping sound, and smoke came out of his smoke stack.  But the best part?

We got to ride on a train car that was being pulled by Thomas!

It was a fun, relaxing little 20 minute train ride.  Anytime we can ride on a train is great, but riding on a train that is pulled by Thomas?  Really, what could be more exciting??

So yes, we did take a break from our road trip to ride on a different mode of transportation, but none of the kids seemed to mind.  Especially not Briggs!

What a great way to make the road trip home a little more fun.

Bye, Thomas!!

Spring Break

Last week we enjoyed a warm, sunny, and beach-filled spring break get-away to Florida.  We have a close friend who owns a condo with his family on the beach near Destin.  He had offered that we'd be welcome to use it anytime.  As spring break approached, we decided to see if it would be available for us to use...and it was.  Beach fun and a free place to stay?

Hooray!!

We decided to make it a family road trip.  At 13 hours each way, it was more than twice the length of our longest previous road trips to Pentwater and we weren't exactly sure how it would go.  We took 2 days to travel each way and we had a great time on the road as a family.

All 3 kids did exceptionally well in the car.  I packed lots of things to keep us entertained and fed. Although there were occasional complaints of boredom from the youngest in the group, I was pleasantly surprised at how easy the trip was.  We did have a near miss when there was an urgent potty need while we were stopped in a construction zone.  Luckily it was our son and we had an empty water bottle, so problem solved.

We listened to LOTS of books on CD.  Everyone had different favorites, but we all enjoyed Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Surprises According to Humphrey, James and the Giant Peach, a couple Boxcar Children mysteries, Skylark, and There are No Bears on Hemlock Mountain.  We also listened to The Pond episodes (always a family favorite), The Greatest Showman and Mary Poppins Returns soundtracks, and some of Briggs's Disney books on CD.  The girls got more reading minutes than I could possibly tally with all the books we listened to.

While listening to our books on tape, the kids enjoyed drawing, writing, coloring and doing stickers.  Briggs and Adelie played with Briggs's cars and trucks and their stuffed animals.  There was also plenty of snacking.

And when the kids got a little road weary, they enjoyed watching a few movies and episodes of shows on our DVD player.

We also made a point to stop for some sit down meals to break up the driving time.

And we added in a few special treats along the way to keep it fun.

On the way home, we made a pit stop at a train station in Alabama for A Day Out with Thomas.  I think that deserves its own blog post (if for no other reason than this one is already going to be overloaded with photos), so stay tuned for more information on this fun little road trip side stop.

Once we made it to Florida, it was time for some relaxation and fun.  We settled into our beautiful beachfront condo in a really nice resort.  Our resort had plenty of amenities that we never took advantage of:  free DVD rentals, mini golf, tennis, basketball, indoor/outdoor pools, fitness center, poolside movies, kids activities,...  It was nice to have all that available, but we spent almost all our days at the beach enjoying the sun, sand, and surf.

Our condo was so nice.  It had two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a big living room/dining room, a kitchen, and a washer and dryer.  It had a big enough hot water heater that we could all take showers after a day at the beach without running out of hot water.  #score  It also had a great big balcony and an entire wall of windows overlooking the ocean.

Each morning we enjoyed some family time in our condo before heading to the beach.  We'd have breakfast, read books, play games, draw, or play on the balcony before heading off to enjoy the rest of our day on the beach.

We had beautiful weather all week--sunshine and low 70's made for perfect beach weather.

Each day on the beach had to start with tears.  On our first day, Briggs had a massive fit for the first 20 minutes or so as he wanted to leave due to the "wind" on the beach and the many beach umbrellas.  Too scary!!  After he and I took a long calm-down walk on the beach, he recovered and had a great time.  However, each day started with about 2-3 minutes of tears followed by a walk on the beach and then an enjoyable remainder of the day.  At least he's consistent.  

Once calm and ready to enjoy the beach, Briggs had a great time playing in the sand and at the water's edge.  He never went into the ocean past letting it splash up onto his feet, although he did enjoy jumping over the waves on the shore.  He also really liked seeing all the boats on the ocean, especially the ones pulling parasailers.  There was also a nearby Air Force base, so helicopters and fighter jets were constantly flying overhead along with tourist helicopters and airplanes pulling banners.  You can never go wrong with vehicles on land, on sea, or in the sky.

Although Adelie did venture into the ocean a short ways, she was also more of a sand and water's edge kinda gal.  She loved playing restaurant on the beach where I would order food for Adelie and Briggs to make for me.  Walking the beach and looking for shells was another favorite Adelie activity.

Staley was our water girl.  She loved playing in the water, especially after we found this boogie board in the condo that we borrowed.  She loved to ride the waves!

Staley's other favorite beach activity was playing Frisbee.  Always a girl with goals, Staley decided that she wanted to get 100 catches in a row.  She and Zach finally accomplished this feat.  Frisbee champs!!

The kids made friends with a little 9 year old boy from our resort who played with them on multiple days on the beach and at the pool.  He showed them how to catch clams in the ocean, and the kids had the best time watching the clams burrow themselves into the sand.  It was really cool!

We enjoyed other wildlife beach sightings as well.  On our first two days, we saw dolphins swimming out in the ocean.  On one day another group of kids found a large crab that we were able to watch scurrying sideways along the beach and burrowing into the sand.  We attempted to go crabbing on the beach one evening after dinner since one of our friends had told us how much fun her kids had doing that, but we either didn't know what we were doing (obviously!) or perhaps it was the wrong season because we didn't find any beach crabs at night.

I loved this beach with its white sand and emerald clear waters.  The sand was so white and soft and beautiful.  I feel a little disloyal to our beloved Pentwater beach, but this was the best beach I've ever been to.  The sand was soft and fine and never got too hot in the afternoon sun.  And it brushed off so easily, making us less likely to track half the beach back to the condo with us.  There was no prickly beach grass, biting flies, or beach beetles.  The water was slightly chilly, but nowhere near the body numbing cold of Lake Michigan.  I just loved this beach!

We would pass two of our resort pools on the way back to our room from the beach each day.  Every day the kids insisted on swimming in the pool as we left the beach.  I never minded too much as it was another way to rinse off more of the beach, making us less likely to bring all the sand back into our condo.

The girls preferred the big heated pool while Briggs liked to head over to the little wading pool.  It was only about knee deep on him and not heated, but he loved playing around in it.

We did take one morning of our trip to venture out and enjoy the small local aquarium before spending the afternoon at the pool.

The kids all enjoyed checking out the marine life--seahorses and sharks and penguins and dolphins and sea lions and alligators were some of the highlights.

We all enjoyed the dolphin show.  The other highlight was watching the alligator trainers go into the alligator exhibit to feed them.  It was very interesting to watch them interact with the gators and hear them talk about their work.  I'm just glad I wasn't one of them.

On the way back to our condo that morning, we stopped at a restaurant that also features an alligator farm.  We didn't eat there, but were able to pop in and check out their "gator beach."

It was pretty cool to see that many alligators in one place.  Again, I'm glad I was seeing them from a safe distance.

We enjoyed dinner out and some evening entertainment each night of our trip.  The consensus favorite restaurant was Lulu's.  This beachside, open air restaurant had a beach area with buckets and shovels and hula hoops for the kids to play while we waited.  There was also a hydroplane that took off and landed from the water off the beach, which Briggs found fascinating.  There was live music and the food was very good.  Lulu's was dinner and entertainment, all rolled up into one.  This is where we celebrated Adelie's birthday.

We enjoyed one evening in an adorable little beach town called Seaside.  We went with the goal of eating at a restaurant a friend recommended.  However, the wait for a table was an hour and half, so we instead enjoyed some food truck dinner and an outdoor kid's concert.  While Briggs and Adelie had hot dogs, I stuck it out in a ridiculously slow food truck line to get the rest of us some gourmet specialty grilled cheese sandwiches.  The wait ended up being close to an hour, but it was the best grilled cheese I've ever had.

We spent two of our evenings at a resort community area called Baytown Wharf.  There were shops and restaurants and outdoor entertainment and lots of things for the kids to do.

The first night there was an outdoor concert and we walked around the area, rode the carousel, and played on a playground.  Then the kids talked us into letting them do the ropes courses, which was not in our initial plans.  After the amount of time and enjoyment all 3 kids got out of doing it, however, we determined it was well worth the money spent.

There was a little kids ropes course that Adelie wanted to do.  She had the best time and, after watching her for about 15 minutes, Briggs decided he wanted to try it too.  Adelie did all the obstacles and got so good that she began to run through some of them or go through them walking backwards.

Although Briggs wanted to hold my hand for most of the obstacles, he got braver as he went along and slowly agreed to try some of them on his own.  Both kids had the best time and spent about an hour on this little course.  It helped that they were the only ones on it at the time.

Staley did the big ropes course with Zach, trying out many of the obstacles.  However, they did not get to the highest section on the course.  One of the obstacles on the highest section was a plank that you walk out onto in order to ring a bell.  Staley decided as we were leaving that she wanted to come back another night so that she could ring the bell.  She was very determined to do it, so the next evening we went back to Baytown Wharf for a magician show and some more ropes course fun. 

That night I went on the big ropes course with Staley.  And yes, she did ring the bell.  Adelie and Briggs did the little ropes course and the carousel again.

We enjoyed all our evenings out.  Along with Lulu's and our grilled cheese food truck meals, we also tried out a yummy diner (The Donut Hole) where we all had breakfast for dinner.  We enjoyed patio dining at a nice Mexican restaurant (Cantina Laredo).  And we ate at another beachside restaurant (The Back Porch) with good seafood and some scrumptious hush puppies.  And the best part?  I never had to cook dinner.

We had a fabulously fun, relaxing, sunny, warm spring break vacation.

Hooray for spring break!!