We have been so blessed this year and continue to have so much to be grateful for. We love and miss you all and hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving.
Remember to stop, take a breath and enjoy the day, everything doesn't have to be perfect.

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving. We had Tom and Michele over for our last Thanksgiving together. They will be moving to Savannah Georgia at the end of December. We have truly enjoyed having them be apart of our lives. Here are some fun pictures of dinner and the clean-up. I forgot to get pictures of the prep.

Making Noodles with Dad

Monday night Matt came home and dinner was in the making. When he learned I was making Chicken Noodle Soup, he told me he would love to make homemade noodles. WOW! Did I hear that correctly? Matt has always been a great helper when I need him, but rarely does he want to take on a task like this. He was enjoying himself so much, the next thing I knew he had involved all the boys in his project. As I was doing other prep for dinner, I thought I better capture this moment on camera.

The noodles were delicious. A lot better than store bought egg noodles!

Thanks honey for making dinner more enjoyable and involving the kids. I figure it must have been the trip that revived him since he was able to have some 'me' time. That is a reminder for me how important 'me' time is for everyone, Moms and Dads alike!

Krazy Kart Pack Meeting

Matt and the boys loved this pack meeting! When else are you able to push each other around on a cart and be crazy? Each cub scout/dad team takes turns pushing each other through the course. When they reach the end, they quickly switch places and trace back to the starting line. After every boy has had the chance to do this they get to do it again. This time the steering wheel is changed and when you turn right, the cart goes left and vice versa. It is a lot of fun to watch these boys drive the cart as well as pushing their dads around the course. Here are some pictures I took, trying to catch the craziness.

Family Fall Pictures

We tried so hard this year to get some good family pictures outside. It seemed like nature was against us. Either it was raining or we had the sun against us. We developed a couple of these, but they didn't turn out so well, but we thought we'd post them anyway. Maybe next year. =)

Ouch, Tears & Stitches

Basically as soon as Matt left for his fishing trip, I spent the evening in the ER with Clarissa.
About 6 p.m. Friday, November 14th, Clarissa fell and sliced her forehead open. I couldn't believe it. I was home with all the kids and within two hours of Matt being on an airplane I was panicking as I saw that Clarissa had just injured herself. I took Danny with me so he could hold the towel to her head in the car. I had Jake stay with the other kids. Thanks to Tom and Michele for coming over to stay with the kids while I sat in the ER with her.
When they numbed her at the hospital, they used a cotton ball with medicine and just taped it to her forehead. Yeah, no shots!! When they were stitching her up, they placed the blue sterile hospital towels around her. The one they placed on her face had a hole in it so they could see the wound. The doctor couldn't believe that Clarissa was watching her stitch it up. We calmed her down be asking what color of popsicle she wanted when she was finished.
Four hours, 2 stitches and $100 later, I brought Clarissa home, gave her some Tylenol and put her in my bed. I was told to watch her every 2-3 hours through the night so I figured since I was already dead on my feet, it would be best to have her in my room. She did really well through it all.
On Thursday, November 20th, Clarissa went back to the ER to have her stitches removed. Overall, she did fairly well. She was a little freaked out when she saw the nurse holding little scissors near her face. We reassured her that she wouldn't feel a thing and it would be just like when mommy trims her bangs. That seemed to calm her enough for the nurse to do the two little snips and all was done.
(The pictures were taken on Sunday evening and on Thursday at the ER.)

Matt's Steelhead Fishing Trip

Matt (I) had a wonderful time with his dad and brothers this past week. We were able to take some time to get together to fish, laugh, bond together and eat delicious food! The Rogers bunch had to show everyone else how to catch a fish the first day! After that everyone started catching up because the guide put us on the slow holes. It was a much needed break and a chance to clear my head. I am glad the kids were good for Angie while I was gone. I also got to stay with my brother, Colin, and enjoy seeing his home and family. I think I am the luckiest guy alive. I am surrounded by people who care about me and my family.

Here are some great pictures of Bighorn Sheep we saw along the way.

I also shot a quick movie of us in the jet boat. The first part is us traveling down to the lodge on the first day. The second part is when we traveled back up a small water fall. Notice the narrow space in between the two rocks we went up.

NICU Fashion Show & Silent Auction

We had a wonderful opportunity to help out with the Annual NICU Fashion Show and Silent Auction. This was our first year helping out, but it was the Fourth one for the Family Advisory Board (FAB). I was able to make some hair ribbons and Christmas cards to auction off.


Our family was able to wear clothes from Lands End and show Abby off at the event. It was a lot of work, but the outcome was great. During the show, there were 2 videos shown. The first one shows the babies while in the NICU and the second one shows them now. The videos were made by a FAB member. Thanks Billie for doing a wonderful job on these videos, they definitely are tear-jerkers. It is amazing to see what progress these little preemies have made. Enjoy the videos!

Please click pause on the media player at the bottom of my page so you don't have two songs playing at the same time.

Then . . .

Miracle 2008

and Now

So Amazing 2008

Look Ma, No Hands!!

Abby is offically walking all over the place! She started walking on November 1st, which would make her 21 months/18 months corrected!!

Believe it or not, at her corrected age, she beats our family average for walkers. Only Danny beat her at walking and that was at 13 months old. Our latest walker was Aaron at 21 months.

To put this into perspective, Abby has beaten all expectations and will not let anything or anyone hold her back. She has met or exceeded all of the milestones set by her older siblings.

Abby, we are so proud of you for all you have accomplished in your short life. We love you and are glad to have you in our family!

Clarissa & Jake

Clarissa loves riding the four-wheeler.

One Saturday afternoon, she begged her big brother Jake to take her for a ride on the four-wheeler. When it comes to Jake and the girls, he will do about anything for them, so of course he took her. He totally made her day!

Happy Halloween!

We could not have asked for a more beautiful evening for trick or treating! We didn't even need a coat or jacket. It was so fun to see the kids in costume without being covered up.

Danny went dressed as 'Cat in the Hat', Jake was 'Harry Potter', Aaron was 'Darth Vader', Caleb as a wizard, Clarissa was 'Cinderella' and last but not least, Abby was a little pig. The girls had the best ride in the neighborhood. While they rode in the stroller, the boys collected candy at the neighbor's for them.

We had our Ward Halloween Party a couple of days earlier and Caleb won the 'Best Witch or Wizard' award. He was so surpirsed when they called his name. What a perfect way to end the party.

We also had the opportunity to have Tom and Michele go with us and the kids. Tom had just finished his last day at work so he is now officially retired from General Motors and unfortunatley will be leaving Michigan. We will miss them so much. Thanks for all you have done for our family. You will be missed more than you know.

Carvin' Pumpkins

This year we decided to have the kids carve their own pumpkin. What a mess that turned out to be! They tried carving different types of things on them, but we learned the pumpkins were too small. We ended up having a lot of different jack-o-lantern faces.
Maybe next year we can buy a couple big ones and see what types of things there are to carve on them.

Pumpkin Pickin'

What a beautiful month it was. The weather was mild, warm and mostly dry. I love to see the leaves change colors and start to fall off.

Our family has a fun tradition to go pick out our own pumpkins from a local fruit farm. The kids love to walk through the patches to find just the perfect pumpkin to be made into jack-o-lantern. We couldn't have asked for a more beautiful afternoon.

We had a lot of fun and were able to take a lot of cute pictures.

You may ask where is Jake's individual picture? Well that is a long story. A couple of days later, I had my camers sitting out on the counter. When I was busy working on scout stuff, my sweet little Clarissa, who was suppose to be sleeping, got a hold of my camera and in a few minutes deleted all 95 pictures and videos off my camera. Luckily, a friend of mine told me the next day that as long as you don't take anymore pictures you can get them back. Well I didn't even think I could get them back and had to use my camera that evening. Well it turns out that if your camera card is deleted, you can get them all back for FREE!! The only problem I had was that I had already taken about 2 dozen pictures, so Jake's pumpkin pictures were covered over by the new pictures. I was also unable to get back the videos.

So if any of you have sweet little inquisitive children like mine, here is the web site that helped me get my pictures back, http://www.download.com/Art-Plus-Digital-Photo-Recovery/3000-12511_4-10513647.html?tag=mncol;psum . Thanks Jolene for telling me about this!!

Caleb's First Field Trip

Now, we move into the month of October.

Caleb was so excited to go on his 1st field trip. We have a local orchard near the school that allows school groups to come and tour their faciltiy.

They first took Caleb and his class on a long walk out to the orchard where they were able to pick some apples. Then they walked back to the building to learn about the different types of apples and they sampled different kinds. They were then given a tour. During the tour they learned how all the apples are washed, stored and even saw how they turn apples into cider. I think the best part of the field trip was the homemade donuts and apple cider. Yummy!! The day was a great success!

Salmon Fishing

On September 26, Matt, Danny & Jake had a wonderful opportunity to go Salmon fishing with the Boy Scouts. They left on a Friday late afternoon and drove to Manistee and came back on Saturday evening.

To give you a little perspective, the stream they were at was about 8 to 10 feet wide at best and had some deep holes where it turned. These big King Salmon seemed very out of place but were a welcome sight. You could almost reach out and grab them by the tail.

Who Says You Can't Sleep Anywhere?

One day while I was working on the computer, Clarissa was playing with some toys on the stairs. I realized that it had become to quite so I decided I should go see where she had ventured off to. I was surprised to see her asleep on the stairs.

I quickly grabbed the camera, took a picture, then carried her off to bed so she could finish her nap in a safer place.

Sweet Dreams Clarissa!

Abby's in Nursery!

Our last child is now in nursery. Can you believe it, we can finally have time to enjoy our classes at church! It has only been 11 1/2 years since we have that opportunity. =)

Abby loves nursery! I think it helps that Clarissa is in there with her. It is so fun to watch them play with the other children. I think Abby's favorite part is definately snack time!!

Happy 10th Birthday, Jake!!

Our Jake turned 10 years old on September 19th. Because of pack meeting, we decided to celebrate it on Sunday, September 21st.

All Jake wanted for his birthday was a skateboard. I found his present early on. A couple of days before, I happened to find a keychain size skateboard. I thought it would be fun to wrap it up and give to him. Jake is such a sweet kid that after he opened it, he didn't even fuss about it. We said that was all we had for him and started to clean up. While he was cleaning up, we got the real skateboard out and boy was he surprised.

Thanks Jake for being a good sport while we made you the center of our joke!!
Abby also loved the skateboard.