The Weather Outside is Frightful!

We're all hunkered down here in Gresham while the storm rages outside. It's kind of cozy being snowed in for a few days. I'll have to take some of this "down" time to post some new photos soon and get back to my personalized child updates I started (I only got as far as Weston). I hope you're all staying warm!

Snow Day!

Here are Mike and the kids enjoying the snow this past weekend. Elsie made it about 2 minutes before she fell in the snow and wouldn't stop crying. She ended up taking a nap while the others played :) Weston looks upset in the photo because he had just been hit in the face with a snowball by his daddy. Mike says the wind blew it in his face, but I have my doubts. ;)
I'll do another post soon with some of my brother's professional photos!

Thanksgiving Weekend

We had a great time in Bend Thanksgiving weekend! Kyle was able to fly out from Georgia so we enjoyed time with him and Haley all weekend. We had a special time of sharing what we are thankful for during our meal. My aunt, Peggy, was able to join us on Thursday as well. We ate and ate and ate!
The photo above is of Weston and Grace with their new scooters. My parents gave them their Christmas presents early so they could enjoy them in Bend. Elsie enjoyed riding the scooters so much (with help) that they went out and bought her one also for Christmas! I think Noah will have to wait awhile for his ;)
One of the best parts of the whole weekend was that my brother took professional photos of our family! As you can imagine, with four small children going to a photo studio is a nightmare. Kyle got great shots of the kids casually playing and some wonderful "posed" shots of the six of us together. Even a couple with all of us looking in the same direction! If you cannot appreciate how hard this is you may refer back to my blog for Dec '07 when Mike and I tried to get a few Christmas photos with only 3 children. What a nightmare! Anyway, once I get access to my brother's photos I'll post a bunch and order our Christmas cards!

Noah received a bath in my mom's kitchen sink. We have to be careful to wash between all the rolls!

Mommy and Noah. We have a photo of Weston about this age wrapped in the same towel.

Grace and Noah. I'm not sure why he was crying, but it obviously wasn't bothering Grace.

Bye-Bye Kitty!

We had to find a new home for our kitten. :( My allergies were very bad. I listed the kitty on Craigslist Saturday morning and had a call within an hour. A nice couple came and picked him up that afternoon to be a companion to their other kitten. They decided to name him "Spot" for the little spot on his chin. The kids were pretty upset on Saturday but have been fine since then. Mike steam-cleaned the carpets last night to get rid of the cat dander. I feel better already!

Are We Crazy or What?

So...we are officially crazy. We now (at least for the time being) are proud cat owners! We picked up our little kitty last night and brought him home, only to discover that I am very allergic to him! I knew I had some allergies to cats but I didn't know they would be so extreme. I am itchy, snotty, sneezy...the whole 9 yards. We are so disappointed as we really like him. He's fun and cute and even uses his litter box really well. The kids have been having a blast playing with him all morning. I keep telling them they have to give the kitty a rest once in awhile so they don't make him crazy :)

I'm not sure we'll be keeping the kitten due to the allergies, but we'll enjoy him while he's here.

Thankfulness Wreath

Here are a few photos of our Thanksgiving wreath. I ordered these cut-out leaves from the Oriental Trading Company catalog last year, but they didn't come in time so I put them aside to use this year. My friend, Crystal, cuts out a paper tree to put on her wall which they add leaves to (very cute). My tree last year wouldn't stay up and the leaves didn't arrive so it was quite a flop :) I opted to just tape our leaves to the mirror this year. I think it turned out pretty well! Even Elsie got involved and did some scribble leaves. If I had to guess, I think she is thankful for crayons, candy and her family...probably in that order ;) Grace and Weston even drew some pictures of Jesus on their leaves!

How true and beautiful this verse is!
I told Mike to do his best pose for this mirror shot. This is his "thinking man" pose.

Fireproof the Movie

Mike and I were able to go on an awesome date last night! My mom was in town for one of my soon-to-be sister-in-law's bridal showers and was gracious enough to babysit all 4 kids so we could go on a special date (thanks Mom!). As part of our date we went to see the movie "Fireproof" (click on red button that says "enter website" when you go to this webpage). We were a little hesistant about how "cheesy" it would be. We loved it! It was such a wonderful movie and not very cheesy at all (still slightly, but only a tiny bit :) We thought it was very encouraging, especially for anyone who is going through hard times in their marriage or will go through hard times in their marriage (so...pretty much anyone who is married!). I would recommend it to everyone to go see!
The only downside to the movie was the couple behind us who was loudly crunching, scraping, and rattling their popcorn constantly as well as talking to each other fairly loudly. When they finally finished their popcorn we thought, "whew, peace at last!". A few minutes later the man went and got ANOTHER huge bucket (they must have just won the lottery for how expensive concessions are :) We'd had it by that time and moved forward a couple of rows. You know it had to be bad for my husband to agree to move (he's very polite)!
I hope you all get a chance to go see it in the theater or rent it when it's out!

Piper Blog on Feeling Crummy

Here's a great post from the Desiring God blog about what to do when we feel crummy. If you click on highlighted words in my blog it will take you directly to the webpage I'm writing about.

Being Silly

This is a classic Elsie "pretending to be shy" look. She tries very hard not to smile :)

I let Weston and Grace lick the beaters after I made a chocolate cake. Weston reminds me of a Frenchman with a mustache.

Advent Conspiracy Promo Video

Our Chubby is 2 Months!

Noah is now 2 months old! I took him to the doctor's yesterday and he was a whopping 13 lbs, 14 oz! He was in the 92nd percentile which means he is heavier than 92% of all babies his age :) He obviously is being well fed. :)
I'm hoping Noah will start sleeping through the night soon. Last night he went from 11 ish to 6:30 this morning. I think he slept longer due to the shots at the doctor's. I remember Weston did the same thing and then went back to his normal schedule the next night. I guess we'll see tonight ;)

Weston

I've been wanting to do posts to update the specifics of what the kids are up to lately. They are growing up so fast I thought it'd be fun to have a record of what they're into right now. I'll start with Weston and do separate posts for each child.

Weston has officially started Kindergarten this year. We are doing a great homeschooling curriculum called Sonlight and are enjoying it very much. We are pretty relaxed with our schedule as it's his first year. A typical day includes a math worksheet, reading time, maybe some copy work, and Weston has just started reading 3-word books on his own. We are way ahead of the curriculum schedule for the parent reading, way behind on the science projects, and right on schedule for the math :) I'm still learning how I want to structure our "school" time. I'm not a creative teacher, so my weakness is teaching the concepts as opportunities arise in regular life. When Weston wasn't understanding the math concept of counting by tens and working with dimes and pennies in the math worksheets, we took a week off from the worksheets and worked with beads and real pennies instead. I'm trying to train myself that I don't have to stick to the curriculum if I don't want to. The curriculum is there to serve us, we're not there to serve it!

Weston also spends a good part of his day coloring. Although his personality seems to be headed toward type "A", he seems to have freedom from perfectionism when he's doing art. Last week he colored about 30 army guys with various vehicles, uniforms, weapons, etc. He's really into military stuff right now (I'll have to scan one of his artwork pieces to display on the blog).

Other activities my son enjoys include bossing his sisters in pretend play games. He's pretty put-out if they don't want to play attack/war/boy games with him. In the summer, he spends a lot of time outside doing boy things. He usually wears some type of camouflage clothing every day.

Weston looks forward all day long to when Mike returns from work. Mike is definitely his favorite person in the whole world. This can be a little exhausting to Mike as Weston is so intensely needy for his attention when he's home. Usually Mike and Weston spend their time playing sports together or wrestling. Weston played soccer this past spring and we plan to have him try T-ball this next spring. Although he's small for his age, he's got surprisingly good hand/eye coordination. He can really whack the baseball over our fence!

One of Weston's quirks is that he doesn't want to throw things out. Broken toys, random piece of thread, cardboard, you name it, he thinks he'll have a use for it! Hmmm, wonder where he got the "keeping everything" quirk? Papa John, any ideas? ;)

Weston is very loving toward his sisters. He especially is tender toward Elsie and does great with gently leading her and teaching her. He likes Noah and talks to him often but hasn't been too interested in holding him much. Weston's chores include helping to fold laundry and dust, Swivel-Sweep the floors, run errands for me (fetch diapers, etc), and help his sisters with things.

Some of the things he struggles with are being bossy (hmmm, I have no idea where he got that one, I've never been bossy :) and not desiring to be independent (he'd rather be told and helped than to try it himself first).

Well, there are some highlights of my son and his life! I'm sure I'll think of many more things I should have included after I finish this post. I can always go back and add more later. Below is a picture Weston colored for me today. It's a princess with a flower in one hand and a coffee cup in the other :)

Not The Best Marketing Campaign!

I saw this picture and title on one of Mike's favorite blogs, Between Two Worlds. Pretty funny!

Dahl Happenings

Here's Noah at about 7 weeks. The first thing people say when they see him is, "Well, we can tell he isn't starving!" It's been so fun to see him start to smile and coo. He's a pretty happy baby and seems to be fairly laid back so far. We've amazed how much he looks like Weston as a baby. We didn't realize it until we came across some of Weston's baby pictures. The only differences in their baby photos are Noah's dark complexion and more turned up nose. Grace loves to hold the baby every day. One day she sat and held him for over an hour! She was happy and he was happy so I just let them be.

Big sister holding again. I like this photo as Noah was so awake and alert.

Elsie's getting in on the action. She likes to hold the baby too. Her limit is about 3 minutes :)

Trip to Seattle

This weekend Noah and I were able to take a trip up to Seattle to visit my friend, Leah. Mike was sweet enough to go it alone this weekend with Weston, Grace and Elsie so I could take this trip. Leah and I had a great time shopping in stores with breakable things since we didn't have our toddlers with us (although Leah almost took down an entire rack of clothing with Noah's stroller :) Noah was a good sport and slept the entire afternoon while we went out to lunch and shopped.
I was also able to stop in Lacy on the way up and back and see Mike's Uncle John, Aunt Marion, Aunt Elaine and Cousin Catherine. It worked out perfectly both ways as Noah was just starting to cry about 5 minutes before arriving in Lacy. It was wonderful to catch up with them and Marion even sent me home with some yummy mint brownies. I also had my first eggnog latte of the season this weekend. I burned my tongue though which probably served me right for all the sugar I've been eating lately :(
It was a wonderful weekend and I'm so blessed Mike encouraged me to go!
Aunt Marion and Noah.

Catherine and Noah.

Hello Kitty Coloring

I found the girls coloring together this morning by the front door. I thought they looked pretty cute in their pj's. It was one of the those wonderful moments where they were actually getting along and not crying, squealing, taking, pushing, etc. The rest of the morning was kinda hard so this was a bright spot in my day!

Pumpkin Patch

Last weekend we made a quick trip to a nearby pumpkin patch. It was fun to pick out a few pumpkins to carve with the kids and browse around the farm near Boring, OR. We decided we'd go to a different farm next year as this one was very crowded and we joked that they wanted to charge us $ if we even sneezed. :) We only wanted to spend money on a few small pumpkins which meant we had to constantly say "no" to all the other fun things they charged to do.
We haven't carved our pumpkins yet, but I'll post some photos when we do. We plan to roast some of the seeds to snack on while we're at it.

Which is the cutest pumpkin?

It was too hard for me to hold Elsie's hand while pushing Noah's stroller, so she hopped a ride with the pumpkins :)

Fat and Happy Baby!

Well, I've survived my first week alone with 4 kids! Noah's also 4 weeks old today.
Here's a few photos to update you on Noah's new chubby look.
Grace and Elsie were helping me bathe Noah in this photo. The water ripples make it look kinda neat.

Here's Noah in my favorite outfit. I think he looks pretty sweet in the blue and brown.

Clean kids after the bath! You can tell how much Noah's grown when you see the other kids holding him. He takes up a lot more of their lap!

On My Own!

We took this photo 2 weeks ago now. Elsie was holding Noah first and you can see she didn't like giving him up to Grace. This is one of the only photos we have of Weston and Grace where they aren't doing their fakey smiles.
In the photo below Weston is enjoying some Noah time :) So far, it seems like Noah looks like a mix of Weston and Grace.

Well, here I go! Tomorrow I will officially be on my own with the four kiddos. Needless to say I probably won't be doing much blogging this week :)

In anticipation of the week ahead I realized I'd need to plan a few things out. First of all, I decided I need to get up ahead of the kids no matter how tired I am. I plan to get up by 7:15 (the kids get up at 8:30), get myself ready, make my coffee and settle in for some time in God's Word. Lately I've been pretty cranky as I've neglected getting my spiritual cup filled. When I spend time with God in the morning by reading my Bible it's amazing how much more patient and loving I can be with the kids and my husband. I sure don't have patience and love in me naturally! God has to give it to me first before I can dish it out at home ;) I printed out a new Bible reading plan to do the New Testament, Psalms and Proverbs in about 3 months.

I have also realized that to be successful at homeschooling Weston I need to teach him how HE needs to be taught, not how it's easiest for ME to teach. My son is showing signs of type A personality with a bit of perfectionism thrown in. He does best at homeschooling when it's more structured and he knows what to expect. He now knows, and we practiced last week, that we start homeschool at 10 o'clock every day and go until about 11:30. Of course, since he's only in kindergarten, our "school" time is pretty low-key and relaxed (lots of me reading fun books to him and a little of the other subjects). I want to make sure not to make him hate school when we've only just begun! Grace and Elsie also do homeschool with us. Grace has a few preschool workbooks she does and Elsie does her homeschool by coloring in her coloring books :) We did start homeschool back in July knowing we'd be a little "hit and miss" with having the new baby :)

Well, now that I've shared a few of my plans for the week, can I ask that you pray for me? I know it's a lot easier to plan than it is to actually accomplish the plans. When the kids are fighting, the laundry's undone, the babies have dirty diapers, Noah needs nursed and the house is a mess I need an extra large dose of God's grace in order to speak kindly and lovingly to my kids.

The Meaning of "Noah Peter"

Noah- "comforter, peacemaker, preacher of righteousness"
A few days ago I wrote that I would do a post with why we chose "Noah Peter" and the meaning of the name. Obviously, we named Noah after the Noah in the Bible who built the ark :) While doing a read-through of the Bible last year I realized what faith in God Noah had to have in order to steadily build the ark over many, many years (may have been over 100 yrs.). Chapter 6 of Genesis brings us the beginning of the events that led up to the flood and the salvation of Noah and his family. Here are a few verses about Noah that led us to choose the name:
Gen. 6, verses 5 speaks of man's wickedness and that "every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually." However, verse 8 says, "But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord." Verse 9 says, "Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his time; Noah walked with God." After God gave Noah the instructions for building the ark, verse 22 says, "Thus Noah did; according to all that God had commanded him, so he did." Our prayer is that our Noah will also walk with God and obey all that the Lord commands him.
The Noah in the Bible was obviously not perfect (as seen in Gen. 9), but I think this highlights even more how Noah's righteousness did not come from within himself. Noah was made righteous (God saw him as righteous) due to his faith in God and belief that God would keep His promises to save His people. We now know God fulfilled all His promises to mankind through providing His own son, Jesus, to die on the cross in the place of those who believe in Him. Noah was looking forward to Christ, while we stand looking back.

Peter- "rock"
Noah's middle name is after one of Jesus' 12 disciples. The book of 1 Peter (written by Peter) would have to be my favorite book in the Bible. My sophomore year in college I did a Bible study on 1 Peter which included reading the book 50 times and doing written studies for 5 days a week for 10 weeks. Although I had "accepted" Jesus as my savior when I was a child, I did not truly begin to seek Him and give Him my life until after I made some very bad decisions my freshman year and realized I could never be "good" enough on my own. I simply could not change myself while trying to do it through my own strength. I finally gave it up and told God that He needed to rule my life as I was making a pretty bad mess of things. :) God began to open my eyes to Himself and His grace through the Bible study of 1 Peter and other passages in scripture. I had read the Bible my entire life but all the sudden it became so exciting, and I started to grow spiritually. I was finally able to turn away from some sins I had always struggled with because what I found in Christ and His forgiveness and love was so much better and more fulfilling. I identify with Peter the most of all the disciples as Peter was impulsive and impatient like I am. Peter even denied knowing Jesus when He was led away to be crucified (Matthew 26), but Jesus forgave him and restored him (John 21:15 and ) so much so that Peter later became one of the pillars of the early church. Jesus says of Peter, "On this ROCK I will build my church."

Like Noah in Genesis, we pray Noah will walk with God and obey Him, and like Peter in the New Testament, we pray that Noah will find forgiveness and grow into a wise and faithful man.

Noah Update

Noah is now 1 week old! We've been enjoying him immensely and our only complaint is that he's not awake enough during the day! At least he's also sleeping well at night. Last night I fed him at about 11 p.m., he slept until I woke him up at 3 a.m., and then slept again until 8 a.m. Although I'm still tired from being up in the middle of the night, I feel pretty good and am happy with how things are going.
Weston, Grace and Elsie love to hold the baby and talk to him throughout the day. I was a little worried that Elsie would be jealous as she's pretty attached to Mommy. She hasn't shown any jealousy and loves to hold her brother and rub his head. My only concern is that she would try to pick the baby up by herself and drop him. We're pretty careful to not set him where she can step on him or pull him down.
We've also discovered that Noah likes to pee-pee when his diaper is off. He's "sprinkled" us almost every day! I've now learned to always have him on the plastic changing mat and try to keep him covered at all times. It can be challenging to try to wipe him, get a fresh diaper on him, and keep him covered all while he wiggles around. He also managed to do his #2 on me the other day. He's pretty talented for only 1 week old!
Mike has been off work since Noah was born and will also take a few days next week. I haven't even left the house since coming home from the hospital and we've all been enjoying some good family time. We've been blessed with meals from our church family, Household of Faith Community Church, almost every day which has been awesome! I'm so glad our church has been bringing meals as I heal from my c-section. My husband has many talents, but cooking is not one of them! I did get permission to share this funny story from this week. The other day I asked Mike if he would be willing to make some banana bread as we had some ripe bananas sitting on the counter. I teased him that I didn't know if he could do that without messing it up (he has a history of recipe blunders). He very proudly told me he could make banana bread without messing it up and he didn't even need my help. After the kids were in bed he set to work on the recipe. He seemed to be doing great and was obviously being very careful about following the recipe precisely. At one point he asked me where the cloves were and I told him they were on the spice rack with the black lid. Once the bread was in the oven it started to make our house smell soooo good. When it was done Mike cut a couple of big pieces and dug in. He started to say how it was good but that he must have gotten a pocket of cloves that weren't stirred in. He continued to eat for a few minutes before he realized something was very wrong. He went into the kitchen and held up the bottle of WHOLE cloves and asked me if this was what he was supposed to put in. I do have to give him credit that the whole cloves were on the spice rack with a black lid just as the GROUND cloves were. I was laughing so hysterically that my incision starting hurting pretty bad! Mike had to drink a bunch of milk and eat some cottage cheese to cut the burn from all the whole cloves he ate. It was so sad to throw those 2 beautiful loaves of banana bread into the garbage, but it did give us both a good laugh. :)
Here's a few photos from this week. I'll try to do another post soon with the meaning of Noah's name and why we chose it.

Here's Noah as our dinner-table centerpiece. We got the idea to put the baby on the table during meals from our friends, the Chupps, who used to put their baby, Selah, on the table while they ate. It's a good way to include him in the family even though he can't sit up yet.

Grace loving her brother.

Baby Noah Has Arrived!

Noah Peter

Sept. 19th at 2:25 p.m.

7 lbs, 5 oz. and 19" long

We are extremely tired but are doing well and so thankful to God for our new son. We'll post more photos later, but here's a few to start with.
Saturday morning

Big sister Grace

Big sister Elsie loves her new brother.

Big sisters and big brother with their special shirts on.

Mommy and Noah
Noah in the tummy a few hours before he's born :)

Prayer Request From Church's Prayer Chain

Please pray for this man's young wife. When you watch the news clip her joy in God is evident even as she grieves.

This was the prayer request sent out at church:

I would like to ask for prayer for my friend Preston Newby's family. Preston was a good friend of mine from Multnomah Bible College, and he was killed a couple days ago (9/15)as he was helping a stranded driver on I-5. Preston leaves behind a wife (Tara) and one young child. Tara is also pregnant with another child, which makes this time even more difficult. Please remember his family in prayer during this hard time. You can watch the news story on Preston's death here (http://www.katu.com/news/local/28491769.html?video=YHI&t=a). Thanks for your prayers.-- Steve Marquardt

Riley Jonathan is Here (Jane's Baby, Not Mine)!

Jane and Jon's new baby boy, Riley Jonathan, made his entrance into the world on Friday afternoon, Sept. 12th (his due-date)! Riley weighed in at 7lbs, 6 ozs and was 20" long. We are rejoicing with our friends at the birth of their first baby, and such a cute one too! Jane was blessed with a pretty easy delivery (the epidural sure did help :) As you can see from the photos, Jane doesn't even look like she just gave birth! Congratulations Jane and Jon!

New mommy with a tired smile. Only 4 more days for our new baby to be here!

Congratulations Kyle and Haley!

My brother and his girl, Haley, officially became engaged this past weekend! We are thrilled Kyle found such a wonderful girl to marry. The wedding will be Dec. 28th, 2008 (less than 4 months to plan)! They've asked Weston and Grace to be the ring-bearer and flower girl for the occasion and me to be a bridesmaid. We feel honored they would include us in the special event. Grace is thrilled about her upcoming job. Weston is not so thrilled, but I think he'll come around and get excited. He does remember how he received G.I. Joe toys for being in Eric and Christi's wedding :) The wedding will be pretty convenient for us as her family has lived in Gresham for over 30 years and all the festivities will be close by ;) After the wedding Haley will move to Georgia where Kyle is stationed with the army.

The beautiful ring!