Second verse same as the first.

I wanted a chance to share some of my favorite memories as well as some of my favorite pictures, so here I am to encourage you all to not only read my blog today but also to (as Chris said) look at our new 'flickr' account. I will try to put the pics that we have on the blog as I sit down to blog but there are a lot of times that I want to put like 30 pics on here and I do not have a lot to say so I will try to keep both of them updated, really I will.

So the things that I took away from Sicily I wish that I could actually put into words. It was THE most amazing vacation that I ever taken. There was is so much that I want to tell each one of you individually but I will try to be as general as I can here.

Mom and Dad did a great job showing us as much of Sicily as they could in 3 days and I want to thank them again for the opportunity to go there. There were a lot of firsts on this trip; it was the first time that Micha took a plane, it was the first time that Chris or I had been to Europe, it was the first time that Micha has seen a beach (BTW she LOVED it), it was our first family vacation, it was the first time that I felt real jet lag (I am not sure that I am still over it), it was the first time I took a vacation and NEVER thought about work, and it was the first time of many that I went to Italy.

I am going to try to sum up the whole trip in as little as possible, I know right now that this is going to be really hard because there are a million things that I want to say about Sicily.

As Christine said earlier I miss the smell the most. There are a lot of orange trees there and right now they are all blossoming so anytime that you were in the north east part of the island no matter where you were it was like smelling the orange blossoms. I had never encountered such a strong pleasant smell over that large of a space.

I loved the history that was involved with Sicily, I think that my favorite day was the ruins just to look at them and imagine how those people built them and looking at the cities on hills and to think about the battles that took place to keep their city in their control. Just looking at the things that were built over 2000 years ago was incredible.

Mount Etna was so phenomenal to look at every time that I could look at the volcano I could not take my eyes off of it. It was just the most beautiful piece of earth that I have ever seen. I added a picture but it does no justice to actually looking at it with your own eyes.

My favorite part of the whole trip was to watch how much fun Miss. Micha was having. There were parts of Micha that I met on this trip that I had never seen. Sometimes it was not so great, she was more tired than she had ever been in her life, and other times she showed me a caring side of her that I had never seen. Yesterday I was making breakfast and she asked, "What are you making for breakfast daddy." I told her, " I am making biscuits and gravy I hope that is okay, I know that Uncle Ken just made us biscuits and gravy but I wanted them today." She answered with the most amazing thing that I ever heard from her lips. "Whatever you want to make is okay...people need to be thankful for whatever they get." Wow that is quite a thought for anyone, yet alone a four year old. In fact it has made me think the last few days. I should be thankful for everything that I get.

Thank you so much Dad and Mom!!

Italy

We had an incredible time in Italy. It was absolutely amazing. The scenery, the sights, the smell, oh the smell. We really miss the smell. We spent 3 days there and 3 days traveling. We could have spent 10 more days! Mom and Dad showed us a great time, being able to be there with them was such a blessing.

We got home Thursday and went to Tulsa to the zoo on Friday, we have run Micha ragged!

We did put a flickr on so you could view some of our photos.

Hope you enjoy them.

EASTER

We had a cold Easter, but we are very very thankful we didn't have snow.
Saturday night Mike told Micha while she was sleeping the Easter bunny would come and leave a basket by the front door. Immediately that did not sit well with her. She was very upset that a walking huge bunny would be lurking around in our yard, in the dark, while she was sleeping. After about 20 minutes of trying to explain to her that he was a very nice bunny we decided to tell her he was not real and then told her what Easter was really about. Once we talked about Jesus she was cool with everything. "So okay mom you can put an Easter basket outside for me if you want"

We had a really great day, We have been doing the nursery at church and for the first sunday we had one child besides ours, piece of cake. This Sunday we had 5. So we had fun with that. We would love to be more involved with the childrens ministries. Nursery is the first step, we'll just slowly work our way up. Mike has always wanted to work with the youth.

We went to Duenweg to have a cookout at my parents' like we always do.

The kids ate tons of candy. Logan didn't find one egg, he totally was not interested in anything except for what was already in his basket. When I finally got him to start looking for eggs they were all gone............ so his darling sister hid some of her eggs in the play house and took him in to find them.

Although it was a little cooler than we would have hoped for we still had a great day.

On another note...........Caden is walking. Just cruisin all over the house. Now he can keep up with the other two.

I have a good video but I haven't the slightest clue on how to post it so I will leave it for Mike.

Hope everyone had a great Holiday.

Happy Birthday Logan

A few weeks ago we had decided to have Logans Birthday Party this weekend. To be honest (and this is sad) I had totally let it slip my mind. I mean like usually 2 months ahead of time I am getting excited.

With all we have been so busy with one day I was like oh yeah Logan's Birthday is in April.

Anyway, we had prepared very little. Wednesday night I stumbled upon a clown. Which was cool. The kids really liked him. He did magic tricks, jokes, and last but not least balloon animals. (Debby, you really hit it with that one!)

I felt a litlle sorry for the guy because of the age group we had there was little to no attention span.

But the adults watched the whole thing. I enjoyed it.

We had such a busy day, Mike and I both had to work this morning, we had nursery at church and then the party at 3. But we made it and Birthday boy is up way past his bed time.

He was confused all day as to what was really going on. He woke up from nap at 2:45 and there was a party here? At about 9:30 tonight (we had some friends over watching a movie) Logan came up into the kitchen raised his hands in the air and said "ITS A BIRTHDAY PARTY, ITS A BIRTHDAY PARTY!"

(And we will do it all again in 2 months. I should probably start planning now.)