Happy Birthday, Brynn!

Brynn turns 8 tomorrow!  We spent a lot of the weekend celebrating - first on Saturday in Collins, and then on Sunday in Depew.

First up:  Collins Birthday!

Enjoying yummy strawberry cake at Grandma and Grandpa's house.

Present time!  Brynn got lots of really neat Lego Friends sets, and a Spirograph!  Remember those??

And of course, some game time with Grandma.

Birthday in Depew:

Presents first - Grandma won the best present reaction with a soundtrack from the movie Frozen.  Aunt Lisa won the most confused reaction with a "Boogie Board" (which is apparently some kind of electronic writing tablet).

Cake - Pokemon!

And just some random party shots:

I apparently didn't take any pictures of Jonas at this party.  He was there.  So although this is technically still Jonas' blog - he is pretty hard to find in this post.  I think you can spot him on the right side of one of the gifs if you look close enough...:-)

Happy Halloween!

We did a couple of fun things for Halloween this year.  

First, we had our church's annual Trunk or Treat on Sunday.  Jonas dressed up as the black Spiderman and walked around and around the gym and got tons of candy.  Then we heard a fun devotion led by Mr. Willert.

 On Thursday we headed to Uncle Mike and Aunt Mary's church for their Trunk or Treat, despite the windy rainy weather.  Jonas dressed up as a shark this time, and Duane dressed up too.  Apparently I was the party pooper with no costume :-)  There were no hot dogs as planned due to the rain, so all 12 of us went to Pizza Hut for some dinner.  Yum!

In keeping with our tradition, we graphed all of our candy.  Duane and Bransen helped us out, and the candy bars won by a long shot!

I hope you all had as much fun with your families as we did.  Happy Halloween!

Happy Birthday, Jonas!

Jonas turned 7 on October 8th.  He is growing up to be such a smart, funny boy.  He is very interested in science right now, and decided to have a volcano birthday party.  We invited all his cousins, Brynn, Bransen, and his friend Denny from school.

"Hot Lava" game (like Marco Polo)

Making our own volcanoes!

Our balloon race - don't let the balloon touch the ground!

Presents!

Our volcano drawing contest - The kids actually got really into this!

Cake Time!  We put sparklers in the middle of the cake to be the exploding lava.

The next day we went out to Collins to celebrate Jonas' birthday with the Gabels.  Duane did a Mentos/Diet Coke experiment and the kids blasted off a rocket with Papa.

We spent most of the afternoon outside finding caterpillars, playing on the trampoline, and launching apples into the woods with a giant slingshot.

Then it was time for LOTS of ice cream cake!  

And, of course, presents!

Thanks to everyone for sharing Jonas' special day with us!  

Random September Stuff

Jonas painted a project for our Compassion child, Benjamin.  The Lafferty girls painted some for their Compassion children, too.  We wrote Benjamin a letter all about what fall is like here in New York!

Our last boat ride of the year

A campfire in the woods in Collins

We went over to Uncle Mike and Aunt Mary's to watch Star Wars.  Jonas was really spoiled with lots of good treats!

Reading together :-)