Karate tests

Meredith and Jeremy are really enjoying their karate classes. Jeremy earned his yellow belt back in December. On April 15, he had a test for his first of three orange stripes towards his orange belt. He earned that stripe is practicing hard for his next stripe. On the same day, Meredith had her yellow belt test and passed. So they are both steadily moving forward and learning more each week.

Jeremy (the short one) sparring with his friend Sean (last month)

Meredith with her new yellow belt!

Home Improvement

We had to have our main sewer line replaced on April 15. Not how I really wanted to spend money on home improvements, especially after replacing the boiler in January, but we can't live without a sewer line. Jason loved the excavator that came to dig a trench through our yard.

Jeremy turns 6

April 9 was Jeremy's birthday. We celebrated the Saturday before that with my parents. We all went bowling. It was a lot of fun, but Jeremy scored better than I did! I don't have any pictures of bowling, because my camera died. But I have a few of the gift-opening:

A new webkinz pet "Ponytail"

A day this summer for the whole family at Dutch Wonderland!

Port Discovery

I took the kids and my parents to Port Discovery in Baltimore for a day during spring break. It's a children's museum full of hands on fun. There is a diner where the kids take your order and serve you the food (fake, of course). There's a whole exhibit about Egypt and the pyramids. The highlights for Meredith, Jeremy and Jason were the water-play area and the 3-story climbing/activity area. If you're within driving distance of Baltimore, you should really check it out. The website is http://www.portdiscovery.com/.

Easter

We had a lot of fun coloring eggs this year. Jason really got into it for the first time. Meredith was starting to be more creative with them, dipping them in several different colors.




We spent the afternoon with my parents, doing the traditional egg hunt, eating the ham dinner and playing games. Oh, and playing with Grandad's model train, which isn't finished yet, but has a bit of track to run on so far.

USS John F Kennedy

On March 22, the retired aircraft carrier traveled up the Delaware River to the Philadelphia Naval Yard. We were able to see it from the highway, but as we drove a bit further into Pennsylvania, we were able to get out and watch it. It was really thrilling to see a ship of that size on the river.

A Storm

We had a storm on March 8, lots of wind and rain. Our huge evergreen toppled over. We couldn't believe it! It didn't seem that windy; we've had worse. But we were very fortunate that it didn't fall on the house, cars or fence. Brendan was able to saw off all the branches, and then my dad brought a few friends from church with pickup trucks and a chainsaw to saw up the trunk and haul it all away.

Snow and Uncle Kurt

We had our last snow of the season February 22 and actually had a snow day off from school! There was only a half-day scheduled that day anyway, so they didn't miss much.

My brother, Kurt, and his girlfriend, Jen, came down to visit the next day. They did a lot of reading to Jason and playing with the kids. It had been quite a while, months, since we had seen them, so it was a great visit.

Boy, Am I Behind!

I'm about two months behind on this blog. Things just seem to get away from me. Lots has been going on since my last post, and I finally uploaded the pictures from my camera for all that time - more than 100!

I'll have to come back soon, but now it's time for lunch and then off to school for Jeremy.....