Our New Arrival!!

Little Myriam joined our family on Sat. June 13 at 6:14 p.m. weighing in at 7lbs. 8 oz. She's a real cutie and blond as can be. She has about 4 times as much hair as any of our others.

Sameerah is the midwife that delivered Myriam. She is wonderful and we loved her.

All our little ones were so excited about the baby. They could hardly stand it. It's a constant fight who gets to hold her all the time.

Visit to Lake Michigan

This is out of order, because we went to Holland first, and as it was but 5 miles from the lake, we went there next.  However, most of you are familiar with my blogging issues, so I hope you'll forgive me.  I love beach pictures, so forgive me for the plethora of those, too:)

Toes in the sand.  I just couldn't keep the tummy out of the shot.  I guess Myriam just wanted to be part of the girls:)

We got brave and let Elyzabeth take a picture so David and I could be in one together.  She did a great job with what she had to work with I think!

Lolee had way more energy than some of us.  She thought chasing the seagulls was great fun.

We also got to see another great lighthouse.  Don't know what it's called, but what's in a name, right?

I think the two photoes below have to be some of the cutest I have ever seen.  I love my boys!  What a sweet dad to give up his hat.

Holland Tulip Time Festival

David had a week off school between semesters, so we celebrated the completion of his first year of medical school by going to Holland!  Though not the real thing, it was very beautiful and everything was in English.  Not to mention it only took an hour and a half to get there in a car and required no passports:)

This windmill is called "The Swan" and is the only Dutch windmill that exists outside of the Netherlands.  The miller is trained and certified by the Dutch, and is also the only one outside of the Netherlands.  We're not sure exactly how they pulled this off, but it is true.  It is a working mill, and is over two hundred years old.  It came here in 1964 with a rich history of milling and sending secret messages during WWII.

There was a parade down the main street that all 7,000 k-12th graders in the county marched in.  We caught less than the last half, but still saw at least an hour.  It was cute and very small-townish, which we loved.

We completely wiped Hayes out.  Thank heaven for our stroller.

At Windmill Island there was an antique Dutch carousel the kids got to ride on.  Lolee and Hayes both freaked out a bit even though the animals didn't even go up and down.  It made us laugh.

There was a small tulip field reminiscent of real-live Holland where the tulips stretch as far as the eye can see.  It was still beautiful.

The Butterfly Exhibit

We went with our friends, the Draeger's, to the Butterfly garden as MSU

The kids found caterpillar eggs on some leaves and thought that was the coolest.

Hayes's favorite part, however, was finding this train to climb on out in the gardens.  He was so excited!

Hayes, Lolee, Elyzabeth Sophie and Truman all quite liked the train, until it started to downpour. Welcome to Michigan:)

Yard Fun

A request has been made for photoes of the Myriam tummy.  This was now a couple of weeks ago, but as you can see, we are not holding back:)  She makes my work in the yard especially fun!

Hayes doesn't limit his help to the yard.  He quite enjoyed his time making bread with Dad.

Who gave her that paintbrush?!  But isn't she cute.

Since Lo is home the most often, she is my biggest gardening assistant.  Early in the season she was terrified of anything that showed signs of life, but she is now the best worm-hunter you ever saw.  She likes potato bugs and worms the most, but she is excited to find other new critters to let crawl around on her shovel or her new gardening gloves.

We splurged and got all the kids gardening gloves and hats to protect their fair little selves.  The rock-star glasses were a bonus from a birthday party they went to.  I think they add just the right touch:)

Elyzabeth helped mow the lawn for the first time a couple of weeks ago.  She's a great helper!

Small Animal Day at MSU

Small Animal Day took us to the poultry and horse farms with thousands of other people with small children Saturday morning a couple of weeks ago. We went with some friends of ours from our ward and wore all of us right out.

The kids got to pets chickens and hold baby chicks that had been specially died fun colors just for Easter.

Hayes got so tired all he wanted to do was hold his food and sit in the stroller. Poor kid.

Easter Adventures

Operation Extreme Eggdrop happened on Saturday before Easter. A local church had a helicopter drop 6,000 candy-filled Easter eggs in three different drops. It sounded too cool to miss. It turned out pretty great, only they saved the fewest eggs for the largest group of children, so Lolee only got a couple, and was a little sad about it. We really tried to emphasize that seeing the helicopter was why we were there.

And the race is on!

Our Easter egg hunt at home was much calmer!

We made birds nests out of marshmallows, chow mein noodles and Cadbury minis. The kids thought it was great fun, and our friends we shared with thought we were so clever. Thanks, Mom!

Our egg-dying party was pretty normal, but the kids liked it. We had a group vote on the color of every egg. Good thing we had lots of eggs.