Today we took my brother to the airport so he could go home after visiting for the week. We had a great time with him, and I’ll be posting more pictures later on to prove it. For now here are two that Sean took with his new fancy phone…

Here is Calvin displaying some very fat cheeks, a little bit of a grin and a pronounced man chin…



The trip was apparently exhausting, so Calvin decided to take a little nap holding his new “Pat the Bunny” from Uncle D.

Maggie was a very compliant patient.



She is probably the only person ever to think the worst part of going to the dentist is the light shining in your eyes. Even the cool sunglasses didn’t cut it…

Are you afraid of this man?


One afternoon Maggie and I went to hang out in the main lodge with a few people, including Ben + Katie Hanson. By the time Maggie wanted to sit down, there was only one seat left at the table, and it was next to Ben. He was telling a story very excitedly in a loud voice, and Maggie kept a close eye on him as she was pulling her chair out. As he got louder, she started moving the chair away from him, never taking her eyes off of him. Ben noticed that she was scooting her chair away, and asked her, “Maggie, are you scared of me?”. Without taking her eyes off of him, and continuing to move the chair away, she matter-of-factly said, “Yes I am”.

As you can see from the next picture, she later decided that Ben is actually not so scary.

Maggie with her dad before megabox (for those of you interested in megabox, and who isn’t, as far as we know this was the first time it was played in the snow)



Here is the-almost-first-picture-of-Calvin-smiling. I was a tiny bit too late, so he looks…mmm…I don’t really know. Intoxicated?



This is Mag’s good friend, “missah tuh-wee-sah”…aka Teresa Weinberg.



Here is another really good friend, “missah fwisk”.


At Double-K, where we have the Snow Retreat, they were short on workers, so they recruited Calvin to supervise the mixing.



Although he was having fun here, during the last part of the ride home, Calvin was not a happy camper. The only thing that kept him quiet was Micah’s pinky-finger-pacifier.

I know they’re supposed to be pictures of our kids, but I wanted to post these too…

Here he is “singing” his duet of “Flower In the Rain”with Jaci Velasquez. This year’s rendition was made particularly special because of David Zimmer’s (autographed) silver ladies’ silk shirt.



Here is another picture from Tony Kevin. Notice the hat - made by Annie Grook.



Here is Sean with part of his posse of guys. That would be Tony on the left, Jesse Martin’s head in the background, Micah-the-intern-Lugg videotaping and Chuck Weinberg in the blue hood. Sean is of course enjoying the power of wielding the megaphone.



Here he is, apparently thrilled to be getting ready to go home in our sweet ride. That’s the intern there in the back. We like him.

Here is the small group I get to be a part of - we’re only missing Keri in the picture. I love our group! Poor Calvin is the only man.


Here are two weird pictures that I couldn’t pass up. Kimmy claims this is a normal kissy-face. You can decide for yourself. I think it’s freaky.


This disgusting picture of Felicia is more related to our kids…Calvin left that lovely deposit on her shoulder. He claims that he did not have anything to do with the giant wound on her chin. Actually, she got that tubing down a hill and had an even nastier scrape on her side.

(Well, at least it’s less than a month since I last posted - maybe I can get back into doing this more regularly. By the way - thanks for all the comments! I know I haven’t been very good about responding, but thanks for looking and commenting!)

Our one28 Snow Retreat was the first week of February, and I have a significant amount of pictures to post from it. However, if this does not satisfy your snow-retreat-picture-longings, check out this page on the one28 site for a ridiculous amount more.

Here are Maggie and Calvin ready to go out in the snow.



Calvin resembled a large, red, fleecy star fish.



Here are Ben + Katie Hanson (who are expecting their own little man baby in July) and LaShani escorting Maggie to the field. By the way, Maggie thinks the bus that’s in the background is really cool and can’t wait to ride in it.



Here is how to make a snow angel…



Maggie’s super-cute friend Ellie Sarr brought her sled to the snow retreat…



Ellie loved riding in her sled until she fell, face first, into a snow bank. Then she decided that Maggie could ride for awhile.



Maggie convinced Patti Frisk to drag her around for a long time.



Then it was on to throwing snowballs. Thanks to Tony Kevin for these pics…

Okay, okay! I know it’s been FOREVER since I put up a post. Things were a little crazy with our Snow Retreat (pictures coming shortly). Anyway, I am finally ready to go - and I have quite a few pitures. I’ll get as many up today as I can.

Here’s one I really like of my mom and Calvin - this was before Christmas, so it’s kind of old. I’m not sure why Calvin looks so concerned here…

As I have been sorting out our mess of pictures, I’ve come across some that are too good not to share, so SKH suggested that I use them in a weekly “blast from the past” post. Even though this will make two posts in a row of things that are not our children, you will certainly recognize why this picture needs to be posted for the world to see.

In the summer of 2000, Sean and I took a team of high school students from Grace Community Church to Northern Ireland on a missions trip. (Actually, it would be more accurate to say that I took them and Sean joined us two days later…once he had sorted out his passport issues with our U.S. House Representative and spent many hours alone in different airports trying to get to us.) Overall, this trip was full of difficulties and while I know we grew spiritually and did even have some fun, basically it just made us thankful that after 26 days, it ended.

One afternoon we were driving all around Northern Ireland (and actually, a significant portion of the south as well) to pick up team members from their various ministry locations. We only had one student, Shannon Roehr, with us at this point. As we were driving (in the infamous minibus) through endless miles of green, I saw a cow…and then I had one. Sean and Shannon had not seen the cow, and by the time I could coherently speak to tell Sean to turn around, we were far enough down the road that he was not really excited to go back, but he decided to humor me. We ended up having to go quite a ways down the road to the next round-a-bout (super fun intersection replacement) to turn around and then go all the way back, but I think we all thought it was well worth it.

Here is the cow that caused all the fuss…


Sick.

In the cow’s defense, she had very new twin calves, but still - that’s gross. After we took this picture, the calves got freaked out and started running away, which caused the cow to do her best to run to keep up. It did not look very comfortable at all, and I’m surprised she didn’t trip.

Newman and Strawberry are looking to plan a spring wedding…we’ll keep you updated.



For those of you who haven’t had the pleasure of having your own Strawberry Shortcake, please note that he’s not kissing her in this picture…he is smelling her lovely strawberry-scented hair.

I recently got an e-mail from Annie Grook asking for foot measurements for Mags and Calvin. I thought this was an appropriate prompt to post this picture of Maggie…


So Maggie is a men’s size 13, Brooke.

When I actually measured their feet, I did find something kind of weird. Brooke wanted the length of their feet and around the widest part. So the weird part is that for both of them, the measurements around and for length were the same - Maggie was 6” and Calvin was 4”. Being a curious person, I decided to see if this was true for myself. It wasn’t. I was overly disappointed by this, probably because I’ve been watching a show on the Mandelbrot set and so I am obsessed with finding patterns and equations in everything.

I did try to make cute little tracings of their feet, but they weren’t so cute, so I’m not going to post them. Calvin’s doesn’t even look like a foot - he is a little too wiggly to have a good foot tracing done.

Maggie received a few new babies to add to the ever-growing collection. That is little Maggie on the left and Jaelynn on the right.



I know that I’ve already posted a similar picture, but look how cute!



This was the first time Maggie was really enthralled by a story. Annie Grook gave her a copy of Peter Rabbit as well as a hand-knitted Peter complete with blue vest (Maggie is holding him in the picture). When Grandma got to the part about the vest having brass buttons, Mags quickly started examining her little Peter to be sure that his vest matched the story - good thing Annie Grook had paid attention to detail.



One night Grandma had held fussy Calvin until he fell asleep and was then joined by Maggie, who had woken up with a bad dream. Looks like everyone is pretty cozy for song time.

I don’t have a lot of pictures from Thanksgiving - wasn’t really into taking pictures as Calvin was only like 36 hours old - so I’ll share a few of what I do have. Here is Maggie with Auntie Sarah (Zimmer). They were exploring the Weinberg’s new house and stopped at the landing to talk to us.



Here is Mags making lots of trouble with Susi Zimmer and Nathan Board.



And I know this is a picture that includes neither of our children, but look at my skinny husband! And he’s even skinnier now…yikes!

We had hoped that our doctor (Dr. Vold) would be on call for Calvin’s delivery, but God had Dr. Nicolav in store for us. We had never even met him before this, but it couldn’t have worked out better - we loved him, and he did a great job.



After his first bath, they put Calvin in this little blanket nest that he really seemed to like.



Maggie came with a lot of little plastic dinosaurs for her new little brother…as you can see from the next two pictures, she liked him right from the start.



Then it was time to visit with Boppa and GG…



Later on, as she was going to church with Boppa and GG for Thanksgiving Eve, Maggie came back and showed her Dad her new book of pictures of Calvin.



Nap time…

At Calvin’s shower in October, Maggie got a gift as well - her first box of animal crackers from Mrs. Uncle Jim and Esther. She loved eating them, but loved the box even more. She carried it as a purse until it fell apart. Fortunately she has just received a new, orange knitted purse from Annie Grook - pictures to follow.

This was a strong contender for Calvin’s annoucement. I couldn’t get past Maggie’s fountain/swan hand, though, so it didn’t make it.

Everyone liked this one too…

And I think this one is funny - it looks like Maggie thinks Calvin is doing some hilarious dance move.

This is not a great picture of Calvin, but it’s for those of you who haven’t gotten to see him in person…it shows his funny white-blonde hair pretty well. Along with his giant man hands. He is screaming in this picture because he was sad his first bath at home was over…or something like that.

A few weeks ago we had enough snow that it collected a little. Maggie LOVES the snow and took advantage of it with Dad, throwing lots of snowballs and making a tiny little snowman. Of course she had to look good while playing in her cute horsey gloves and hat - thank you Annie Grook!

…foot.

On Sunday night as evening church was starting, I put Calvin’s car seat into the nursery and headed back into the service. Just as I got to the doors, GG (my mom) rushed out, dragging a crying Maggie behind her. I asked what was going on and GG said Maggie needed to go potty RIGHT NOW. So I took over the dragging responsibility, explaining to my now bawling daughter that when you need to go potty, you can’t stand still, you have to run to the potty so you won’t have an accident. This made no difference in the dragging at all, and she kept saying something unrecognizable with all the crying - the only word I thought I understood was the last one, and it sounded like “poop”. So I just kept telling her she could go as soon as we got on the potty. Once I got her on the toilet, nothing happened, and she kept crying and repeating the unknown sentence. I told her I was going to shut the door to the stall and let her calm down and then she could explain what was wrong. A few moments later, she said “Mama, I am ready to tell you”. So I opened the stall door and pointing to her foot, she said “I not saying ‘poop’! I saying I don’t know what in my BOOT!”. So, I unzipped her little boot, and there was her My Little Pony brush, bristle side up, poking her heel. After Maggie and I (and the other lady in the bathroom) got done laughing, we talked about why shoes are not good toy boxes.

After such fun tucking Maggie in for a full night of sleep, Calvin decided to do the same. After his 10pm feeding, he decided to sleep until 7! Hopefully this is the first of many nights. I think he heard us saying his sister slept through at 8 weeks and wanted to get his in under 7 weeks.

This picture is from Maggie being tucked in last night. When it came time for us to leave, she said “Oh Mama, please let Calvin stay here!”. I explained that he was too little to sleep with such a wiggly big sister, so she asked how big he would have to be to sleep with her. I said that maybe when he was three we could try it out. She laughed and informed me, “Calvin isn’t going to be three…he’s a boy!”. I’m not sure where she got the idea that boys can’t be three, but there you go.

Here are two pictures from Calvin’s first Sunday at one28. Maggie was very excited to be sitting with Grandma when her little brother was introduced…

Maggie enjoys everything about Red Robin…except Red Robin himself. He produces much terror and screaming…

For those not in the know, Brooke Higgins’ most important alias is “Annie Grook” - here she is playing that role…