First Day of School

 The first day of school picture in front of the fireplace.

Ally, my 4th grader!  Where has the time gone?!

Drew is in 1st grade and ready to go to school all day!

Everyone was waiting outside of the doors to go in before school.  Notice, the kids are wearing long-sleeves!  It was chilly for the first day of school!

She is growing up way too fast for my liking! :)  Although, she is getting to be more fun!

Drew is quite a character!  Good luck Mrs. Colter!

Drew's new classroom.  He has a lot of his friends in his class, including Lia!

Ally's classroom-Mr. Tabor's 4th grade.  She didn't want to look at me.

Megan had fun walking Casey to school to pick up the big kids.  It's just the 2 (or 3 with Casey) of us now!

Drew had a great first day!  He's excited about 1st grade!

Ally had a great day too, and was relieved to have a lot of her friends in her class.

We are excited about a new school year here in the Washburn house!  It's going to be different with Drew in school full days now.  Megan and I will have lots of time together.  The kids have wonderful teachers and have already made a lot of new friends.  I think this will be our best year yet (hopefully!)!

Ally turns 9!

Ally turns 9 today! I can't believe it's been 9 years since she came into our lives. She is such a sweet, loving girl. Looking back at pictures of her over the years really makes me see how fast time goes by! It's so hard to think that she's already halfway to 18! Ally is a wonderful, creative, loving girl who loves her family and loves Jesus. Happy birthday to my sweet girl!

Ally as a newborn

1 year old

2 years old

3 years old

4 years old

5 years old

6 years old

7 years old

8 years old

9 years old

The things they say...

Yesterday while we were walking down Main Street, Megan saw a car and exclaimed, "Mommy, wook. A banana car!" It was a yellow car! Now whenever she sees things that are yellow, she calls them "banana" for the color. Makes sense!

Whenever Megan sees something that she likes, she says, "Dat's puufect!" or "Dat would be puufect." It's hard to say no when she says that!

This morning Ally was talking about the weather (which was 23 degrees, high of 31-yes, on March 24!). She said, "Well, if we had gotten snow during the winter storm yesterday, then this temperature would be great for sledding. But we can't sled on leaves! And it's cold enough for the ice to iceskate, if only there was ice in the ice rink. I guess we'll play inside this afternoon." Oh, how we are ready for spring in these parts!

What better way to carry your baby than in your coat!?!

All green on St. Patrick's Day-Drew loved it because green is his favorite color!

Ally and Nana on the bus to the Ford Rouge plant. I'll try to do another post on our visit with Coach and Nana.

There's grass!?!

We have had a ton of snow this winter! There have been several times where the snow has just about melted away (except for the massive snow drifts), when we get hammered with more snow! Needless to say, the ground has been white for a long time (with patches of grey dirty snow).

During the last "melt down," Drew came running over and exclaimed, "Mom, there really IS grass under the snow! It's REALLY there! And it's actually kind of green!"

Hopefully we'll be able to see a lot more green in the near future. We came close yesterday, but 3 inches of snow overnight took that vision away, at least for a few more days! This is Michigan after all!

Loose Tooth

I realized that I have been terrible at keeping up with this blog. I keep thinking that I need to do fancy posts with pictures in order of what we've been doing. Obviously I have not been very good at this though. The kids do so many funny things, and I don't want to forget them. I think I'll put the stories up as they happen and then fill in pictures later!

Today, Drew has one of his best friends, Lia, over to play. These two are quite a pair! Lia has her first loose tooth, and they are both so excited about it! Drew immediately gave her an apple and told her to keep biting it so the tooth would get looser.

The kids were playing upstairs, and then Drew ran downstairs, almost panicked, and said Lia's tooth almost fell out! (In reality, her tooth is loose, but not "falling out" loose!) They then found a tooth pick (I've never heard of a tooth pick being a losing tooth tool!) and headed back upstairs. I overheard Drew tell her, "Lia, we need to go into the bathroom over the sink. When your tooth falls out, there will be a lot of blood, so you need to be over the sink!"

After a few minutes they came downstairs looking sad. Here is our conversation:

Drew- "Mom, is there anything I can do to help Lia lose her tooth? Could I tie a string to a door and then to her tooth and slam the door?!"

Me-"No! Don't worry Lia. Just keep wiggling your tooth, and it will come out when it's ready. Sometimes it takes time for a tooth to come out."

Drew (as they walk out of the room)- "Ok Lia. We'll just wait for an hour, or maybe a little less, and then it will be ready to come out!"

I think we need to work on learning patience and the concept of time!

I love listening to the conversations between these kids!

We really are here!

So, it's been forever since I've last posted! We have been so busy, between school finishing in June, going on a family trip to Chicago, going on our annual trip to Tennessee and then the beach, getting through our second training camp (with another visit to TN and NC!), starting school, and the football season starting. We'll see if I get around to posting pictures from all of those adventures. I'll try, but there are no guarantees! Instead I'll just start from the most recent things we've done.

Between the preseason ending and the regular season beginning, Jeremiah got a day or two off. We had a great time spending time together as a family. On one afternoon, we drove up to Bay City, Michigan to see Lake Huron. After taking some wrong turns and thinking we were never going to make it to the lake, we ended up finding a really neat "hidden" place! We had a great afternoon and soaked up the time spent together!

Megan is definitely a "Daddy's girl!" She had a great view!

The kids were excited about our adventure.

We followed this path through the grasses and reeds to the edge of Lake Huron. It was beautiful!

We made it to the lake! It was a gorgeous day-bright blue sky, cool temps. Fall in Michigan is great!

Still heading down the path.

We have decided to get a picture with all of our feet in all 5 great lakes while we live up here. So far we've gotten Lake Michigan and now Lake Huron!

Our own "private" hidden beach. The kids had a blast!

Megan liked walking into the water and throwing the sand.

Jeremiah, Ally, and Drew walked way out into the lake. It was very shallow for a long way.

Megan was throwing sand...and getting her pants soaked! She left without pants on!

Looking back toward the lake. The path we took is hidden in the grasses.

We had a wonderful day! We love taking day trips all over and exploring our somewhat new home. Hope to share more adventures soon!

Springtime in Michigan!!

So, I have really been slacking in the blogging department. Instead of going all the way back to December, I thought I'd just start with some recent pictures. I'll try to get back to our winter at some point! We had a fun one, lots of travel, snow, and fun! But, springtime has reached Michigan (although it's gone today, but not for long!).

Last week, we had some beautiful weather! Several days were in the upper 50s/low 60s, which meant we were outside all day long! The kids loved getting out and playing! We're ready for spring to get here and stay!

Drew, Megan, and I went on a "signs of spring" hunt. We found many flowers just popping out of the ground!

Buds in the trees with a beautiful blue sky background

We had to spend a lot of time in our backyard (which has a creek in it). Drew and Megan had fun checking out the creek. Drew even taught Megan how to throw rocks in the water (which she loved!).

Ready to hit the woods!

Can you tell that he is loving the outdoors!?!

Throwing rocks in the creek. I had to hold her hand so she wouldn't end up swimming in the creek!

We went to a local park on another beautiful day. The kids had a blast! Megan learned how to go down the slide for the first time and loved it! She went down this slide countless times!

Drew was having fun doing an obstacle course throughout the playground.

I think Megan will be our "fearless" child. I helped her do the balance beam once, and then she decided that she could do it by herself!

Not much fear in this girl! She thinks she should be able to do anything her big brother and sister can do!

I just loved this picture! Megan sat like this for a long time! I wonder what she's thinking about! You can see Drew's eyes peering out behind her.

Hope you enjoyed our springtime pics. I need to get some of Ally on as well. She was in school during these times. I hope you enjoy your springtime! I'll try to get better at posting more often!