"Gingerbread" house

Abbi had her preschool Christmas program the other day and afterward we made gingerbread houses. Well, it wasn't exactly a gingerbread house, it was a graham cracker house, but that's not important. It was fun to make the house together since I have never made a "gingerbread" house myself. She did a great job singing all the songs, shaking the Christmas bells, and saying her little lines, as well. Cambria had to make sure she was in the program, too and performed the pre-show selection of "Twinkle, twinkle little star."

Reliving the good old days...

We had a visit from the past this week. We had Weldyn and Barb Houger come and visit. They came up to do a mission's service at our church. Weldyn was one of Rick's and my professors at TBC, and a great mentor to Rick. We haven't seen them since we graduated (Barb even graduated with us) in 1999 (yes, that was LAST century) ha ha. They are doing missions in Asia, and it was so exciting to hear about their ministry there.

Our Little Angel

Abbi was a beautiful little angel at our Christmas program last Sunday. We had a wonderful program with a cantata, human videos, a drama, and pieces that each kid did. Bryce and Abbi sang a duet together, and they both had pieces they spoke. They were adorable, of course.

Tis the season

The Christmas season is definitely under way. Bryce had his school Christms program last night, and he was the cutest little boy there (of course)! He even mastered singing and doing actions at the same time. (Who ever said Wadholm's weren't coordinated, anyway?) Tonight we have our sectional Christmas party (for pastor's and wives in our section). Tomorrow is our Sunday School party, and then Sunday is our church's Christmas program. We are starting this season with a bang!! But if I were to celebrate something over and over, I can't imagine it being anything more exciting then the birth of Jesus. What an amazing miraculous thing God did!

How Big Is a Sugar Beet?

We found a sugar beet this year that is a "little" bigger than usual and so of course Rick had to take a picture of it. As you know when viewing pictures of things where you want to know how big it really is you need something to compare it to...so I thought I'd use my head (and we all know how big a Wadholm's head can be ;-).

Bryce's Christmas list...

All I want for Christmas....is my two front teeth, of course!!

A new couch

You may be wondering, "Who blogs about a couch?" We do...of course!! Rick and I have just purchased our very first couch! Isn't it just lovely? It's nice and soft and reclines on both ends.

beautiful fall day

What a beautiful fall day for us to enjoy. We have many BIG piles of leaves to bag up, but of course it is way more fun to jump in the piles and spread them all around! Actually the kids are excellent workers helping to fill up 9 big bags (with oh so many more to do!!!).

Sugar high

The last few weeks have been consumed by beets. Rick drove truck for beets, and in turn we all fell victim to his gruelling schedule. Okay, it's not that bad. We actually look forward to this time of year. It's definitely a different pace. Plus Rick gets to play with trucks! ;0) The kids got to ride with him for about an hour one day, and they really thought that was cool. His very last day of driving, Jenn's parents came for a visit. It's always nice to get a visit from family for a few days, especially when visits come few and far between. Here's a picture.

Can I stay for lunch?

Abbi started preschool yesterday! Can you believe it? She is getting so big. She goes for the mornings twice a week. When I went to pick her up she didn't want to leave. That's a great sign that she had a good first day. In fact, "can I stay for lunch, too?" and "why does Bryce get to stay longer?" were the first things she said. She just loved school. There is a total of 5 girls and 10 boys this year. Since it is only preschool, I'm sure there are probably a few more that will join the class for kindergarten next year, plus a few will leave to go to the Christian school. All those boys...that's gonna be one busy class. At least Abbi is used to playing with Bryce (and we all know he is several boys rolled into one body--ha ha).

Missing something?

I'm sure you can take a guess.

You lookin' at ME...?

Cambria loves to give us "the look" now--apparently that is her new thing. You may have thought this act only came from adolescents , but as you can see, it has already been mastered by Cambria. For some unknown reason, Rick is the one who usually receives "the look." Oh how cute even rebellion can be coming from her...

Back to school

Well, we have just about 2 weeks of school under our belts now. Bryce is in the second grade this year, and is doing well so far. This week his class is bringing in insects (dead or alive) for one of their science units. This is right up his alley, let me tell you!!! So out exploring he did go. Unfortunately the rain and cooler temps the last few days did not help him much. The best he came up with was a dead mouse full of maggets. Yeah!! Lovely!! A caterpillar would have been nice (my thought). Oh well.

Teletubby addict

We have a Teletubby addict in our house. It all started with an innocent trip to the Library. Each week we let the kids pick out a movie to check out. One week, Cambria found a teletubby video and brought it to me. I mistakenly thought it was a good pick. Since then, she has become a complete maniac over the teletubbies. Even though she has never seen the program on T.V., she has become addicted over the videos. I think our Library has 3 videos--so these get rotated. It's gotten so bad that the first words out of her mouth when she wakes up in the morning is "teletubbies' (however it sounds more like teh-tah). We can't even walk by the living room without a shout out. Good grief!

Na na na na na

This is our nephew, Seth, just keeping it real.

Ho Ho Ho...

Green Giant!! Remember those commercials? I had no idea that the Jolly Green Giant was from Blue Earth, MN (which was just a few minutes drive from where Jordan's wedding was held--and the closest town with a hotel). We were pleasantly surprised to be greeted by the lovely gentleman. The kids thought it was awesome, too. Apparently the Jolly Green Giant has a whole entourage. Bryce and cousin Jonathan are saying hello to the little brocolli/asparagus/spinach???, and Abbi is greeting these other nice farmer friends. Our picture of Jolly is sadly dark, but it's still proof of his presence.

Jordan and Amber

We've added another Amber to the family. Amber Rose is Jordan's new bride (her middle name is forever now to be used so as not to confuse sister Amber with sister-in-law Amber)! Congratulations to you! The wedding was beautiful, and the reception was a lot of fun, too. Cambria only made it through the first half, unfortunately. But between Rick and I, we both saw most of it. The wedding was in southern MN, where Amber Rose is from. Here is a pictue of the bride and groom, of course, and one of Rick and I at the wedding.

The three amigos

This was taken at Jenn's brother Jordan's wedding reheasal supper. Here are three cute amigos: (L-R) Michael, Cambria, and Ricky. They really enjoyed themselves getting to sit next to each other. :o) Michael is Heather's little one and Ricky is Heidi's youngest.

Back to reality

We are back from our "vacation" and are trying to settle back into reality. It's a slow process, which is why it's good that we have a whole week to work back into a routine before school starts. We had a wonderful time seeing family, celebrating birthdays, and enjoying a wedding. Throughout the week we will post pictures of some of the fun things we did while we were gone. Here's pictures of our trip down to Aberdeen to celebrate our neice Sarah's 5th birthday.
Above, Sarah has a Spongebob party with all the cousins. Below, some of the cousins enjoying a picnic on beautiful, lush, green grass (which was a sparcity up here for awhile).

Love and Storms

Yesterday we celebrated a wedding in our church (the first in many years). Our friends Sheldon and Sarina had a beautiful ceremony, which we enjoyed kid free!! Rick did the ceremony and Jenn got to watch with no distractions! After the reception, when we were cleaning up, the town got hit with a nasty storm. Although there were no tornados reported, we had many trees down. Here is a picture showing several trees which were uprooted and leaning sideways, and the bottom picture is of a tree that fell down on a house!

Memories...

A little visitor

Annual Picnic

We had our annual church picnic out at one of the area lakes on Sunday. It's always fun having a service outdoors on a hillside. We just had the most beautiful weather, too. Of course we ate way too much food, and then we got way too much sun (Rick earned a sufficient sunburn). We had some good pictures of Rick and the kids swimming, but they turned out too dark. Here's one of Cambria and her oh so cute pigtails.

Happy Birthday, fatso

Bryce had his 7th birthday yesterday! Wow! We just can't believe it! That morning I (Jenn) called him (since I was at camp still) to sing him Happy Birthday. I asked him if he felt any older, and he said no, but then paused in thought and responded, "I feel fatter." I got a good laugh out of that one (I feel that way too!), then I asked him what he meant. He said it was because he ate one hundred cereals. The kid can EAT, but he is just skinny as can be, so good for him that he feels fatter on his birthday! :0) I think we can all learn a lesson there--we should feel fatter on our birthdays AND be happy or proud of it!

I love camp!

I (Jenn) apparently cannot get enough of camps! I just got back from the A/G MN Jr. High camp, and it was awesome. It's been about 4 years since I've counselled at a camp, so I was a little rusty going into the week. But I stepped it up, and I went in full force. Of course, it's so easy when you are counseling the best girls EVER! There is just something about youth camps that I just love. Youth feeling comfortable enough to really enter into worship (it's just so much easier when you are with your peers), and it's just incredible to see their hearts so hungry after God! It was just amazing. And there's just nothing like getting to act as crazy and dumb as you want, and it's okay because you are supposed to (well, the girls I counselled might have another opinion on that one). My body doesn't quite recover as quickly as it used to, though...but for the record, I did body slam quite a few girls in the mud pit! (note: the mud pit is the place where one of our games took place in which the counselors had to guard barrels, and the campers had to try to get balls into them. It was our job to throw down anyone trying to get a ball into the barrels. Also, the mud had quite a few rocks and sticks in it--so I'm pretty scratched up and black and blue). And, amazingly, I would do it again! Here's a picture of me and all my girls. By the way, Rick had a GREAT time being home with all three kids without me! :O) One time when I called him he said, "I am REALLY ready for you to come home!" Abbi had one meltdown, but other than that we all survived the week.

"Where's Wadholms?" and a wedding

What a busy week we had--but oh, so much fun!! We went to FaHoCha camp this week(12-13 yr olds) where Rick was the camp speaker. The kids spent most of their days catching frogs and then killing them (accidently, of course, since Abbi is not so gentle). We felt that it was one of the best camps we've ever done there. The first time we went was when Bryce was just about 1 yr. old and he was sick the whole week. Well, 6 years later and things haven't changed much. This year Cambria and Abbi got sick. Oh well, that's just how it goes! Can you play "Where's Wadholms?" and find them in this picture? This is a group picture of all the campers, and it was one of the largest camps they've ever had. Awesome!

On Saturday we got to participate in Cory Thompson's wedding to Ashley Wenaas. Cory was in our youth group in Osnabrock when we were there. Ashley is from Carrington, so that's where the wedding was held. Really nice for us since that meant Grandpa Bruce and Grandma Patti got to babysit the kids for us! Yeah!! What a great way to end the week!

MN camp

We are back from MN family camp, and we had a blast. Even though it was "family" camp, we were split up for much of the time. For two of the services, Jenn worked in the infant (up to 20 months) nursery. Let me remind you what it's like when it's past all of these kids' bedtimes and they've been going, going, going all day long--now put together about 15 of these kids with 2 nursery workers (and two kid "helpers") and you can imagine how exciting that was! :o)
Abbi went off to preschool class and loved the puppets! Bryce went to kids church where he learned a new song. The words that he learned were, "Jesus your my superhero, your my star, my best friend...". Now repeat that over and over and over (since those are the only words from the song he remembered) and you can just imagine how lovely our drive back from camp was! :0) Cambria was in the nursery and Rick got to sit and enjoy some great preaching. He even got to hear Damian (Kristan -Torgerson's- husband) for an afternoon service. We are tired out from all the fun, just in time to head off for FaHoCha camp tomorrow! Yeah!

Fun with Friends

We got to spend a day with our best friends from college--Ben and Nikki McIntosh on Monday. We had a fun time taking a tour of Trinity and seeing all the changes they have made since we graduated 7 years ago. Getting to spend the day together was almost like the good old days. The big difference being that between the two of us we had 4 children along for the ride. We had a great time, but it was just WAY too short. We love you guys!! Here is a picture of the four of us, and one of Tommy and Bryce. Nikki and I were pregnant at the same time our Sr. year of college and our boys are only 3 weeks apart. Aren't they cute?

ND Family Camp

We just got back from ND Family camp, and we had a lot of fun. Jenn's dad was the morning bible study speaker. It was really good stuff, and Jenn enjoyed going back in time having her dad be her preacher. We forgot our camera, so there are no exciting camp pictures to see (sorry). We got to use our camper for the first time, which the kids thought was just so awesome! Bryce was so excited to sleep in it that we had barely had it set up when he was already asking if he could go to bed. We got to visit some old friends from our first church (Osnabrock), which was very nice. Plus we got to visit with ND friends we've made over the last 10 years. And, of course, we got to spend time with both of our families. Both Rick and I thought it was one of the best family camps we've been to. With all the years we've gone to this camp, it was the first time we had a sick kid--Abbi had a fever, but thank goodness that was all it was. Cambria got some sort of bug bite which caused one side of her face to swell up some. Her one little blue eye was almost closed. But both girls are much better now! And we are home, unpacking, doing mountains of laundry, and enjoying our own beds for at least a week before we go out again.

Josh gets hitched

We just returned from a wonderful wedding--Jenn's brother Josh just tied the knot with his sweetheart Cindy! Congratulations to you! This picture, unfortunately, is one of the only pictures we got of both Josh and Cindy together. No pictures were taken by Jenn during the wedding since Rick was a groomsman (therefore leaving the children in her care). Abbi was a beautiful flower girl, and she did a great job. The ring bearer saw it as his duty to "help" Abbi distribute the flower petals down the aisle. When they were confined between the pews, this worked out okay. However, as soon as there was open space, Abbi began to move to the left to get away from the ring bearer's grasps, to which the row of petals wasn't such a straight line anymore, but moved quite a bit over to the bridesmaid's side. Oh well, the wedding was still a hit!

Go Bryce....

Bryce doing the Long Jump at the Elementary School track meet.

A campin' we will go!

We are the proud new owners of our very own camper as of yesterday. Gone are the really fun days of tenting with three young children. We are all so very excited to get to try it out soon. The kids have already picked their beds, of course. It has four beds (two made from two tables), a sink, a stove, and an ice box. Yay!!

Bathtime woes

Jenn had an "oops" not too long ago. We had a leaking pipe that was causing water to drip all over our basement bathroom. However, the problem only happened when we drained the upstairs bathroom after a bath. Before we could get it fixed, we had been giving the kids showers, but when Bryce couldn't push the shower nob down, Jenn came to the rescue. Unfortunately, her muscles are just so huge that instead of pushing the little nob down, she pushed the whole faucet head off. Bryce thougth this was great since the water came shooting straight out of the wall. :0) Well, that meant we had to give Cambria a somewhat old fashioned bath in the kitchen sink. She wasn't too sure about this, but it turned out okay.

Yee Haw

Bryce had his elementary program last week and the theme was, "How does your garden grow?" The first graders got to be the gardeners. To complete the outfit, Bryce lost a tooth one hour before show time! Too bad it was a bottom tooth and not a top one. Hee Hee

The Big "4"

On April 20th, Abbi turned the big "4"! What a big girl she is getting to be. For about the last 5 months or so, she's been telling people that she was four already, so I'm sure it was a little confusing to her to be turning 4 "again".

Hoppy Easter!

The only Bunnies we celebrated with on Easter were the ones we ate ;-). Oh, and aren't we a beautiful hue of 'azure'.

Brit Brat

That's my (Jenn) nickname for my best friend from high school--Brett. I was surprised a few weeks ago with a wonderful phone call from her. "I'm getting married!!" Yeah! So off to Halliday I went (by myself, no kids!) and enjoyed two days with Brett, preparing for the big day. She looked so beautiful!! Congratulations girl!

Baby Blue Eyes

Lotsa prayers

Usually when we say prayers with the kids they tend to be the same so that it is easy for them to learn how we pray. Abbi has decided to add her own little prayer to all her prayers--whether it is for supper, KIDS church, or before bed. Her prayer is "for my lotsa grandmas and lotsa grandpas". AMEN

Snowfall

According to Rick, it was "snowing snowballs" this last weekend. Here are some pictures to prove it. It was quite beautiful.

Happy Birthday Rick

Yes, it is Rick's birthday today. 29 years old. He of course reminded me that he will never be as old as me--thanks Rick, so sweet of you to say. Older and wiser, older and wiser...that's all I have to say about that. Unfortunately we are celebrating this wonderful day in sickness. Bryce has strep, and the rest of us are just trying to compete in our sicknesses to get the most sympathy. Somehow I (Jenn) never win in this category. I suppose Rick can win the sympathy votes today, after all it is his birthday. Happy birthday to you (cough, cough), Happy birthday to you (sneeze, blowing noses), Happy Birthday dear Rick (cough, sigh), Happy birthday to you! (FEVER) :0)

Pretty in Pink

"Mommy, I love pink!! Pink is my favorite color!!" says Abbi. You think? Here she is all bundled up and ready to go play outside in what else, but pink, pink, pink.

Mommy's little helper

At the age of 13 months, Cambria has truly become a member of the household. This is done by having a household chore. This special chore is called "help mommy unload the dishwasher". The chore consists of Cambria grabbing whatever is nearest to her (usually it starts with the silverware) and starts handing it to mommy. Mommy then proceeds with a "thank you," followed by the next dish, and so on and so on. She's actually quite fast with this chore and mommy needs to move quick to keep up. It could be a spoon one second and a bowl the next--a fork, then a plate. You just never know what she will pick next. Mommy has to be ready to either move to the drawer or the cupboard. The only part she hasn't mastered (well, I guess there's actually two) is unloading the top rack (she can't reach that yet) and learning whether the dishes are clean or dirty. Sometimes mommy is loading the dishwaher and Cambria starts to "help" put the dishes away. Oh well. It's all gotta start somewhere.