We have been married for over 7 years. We were high school sweethearts and our love grew from there. We always knew we wanted a family and were thrilled when we found out we were expecting the first time. Cohen joined our family and our life has never been the same!! Kendall joined us a little while later and we were amazed at how different girls can be from boys :) We have now added another little character to our zoo. We are so thankful for God's blessings and can't wait to see where He takes us.

Thursday, February 20, 2014

Cohen's moral focus award

Cohen's school has a tradition of each month selection a certain "moral focus" they want the students to work on. Then at the end of the month they hold a special ceremony to celebrate those students who excelled in working on that particular focus. Cohen was selected as a student who had really grown in the area of perseverance - and if you know Cohen this is something we are always working on (he is a little like his mom and wants to be perfect the very first time you try something - opps) So we were very excited to join the moral focus assembly and celebrate this with him. Mom, Dad, Kendall, Kirsten with a couple of friends and Nana were in attendance to cheer loudly and embarrass him :) 


Everyone getting seated



Just making sure we were watching :)


The other kindergarten class did a little skit about having perseverance in different jobs they may have in the future



The principal - Mr Bartels calling Cohen's name





Cohen --- we are sooo proud of you and all your hard work!! May you continue to grow and have an eagerness to learn all you can!!

with love from the zoo

Christmas 2014

This Christmas - as usually was super busy!! Lots of family parties and celebrations. But we wouldn't have it any other way right? Christmas eve was spent with Carrie's family. It was weird not having Brian there. Brian is currently in South Korea and we miss him very much!! We have had our fair share of snow this winter but it was nice to see the lights and snow!! Christmas Eve was no exception - Carrie's parents actually lost power so we had Christmas at our house. We also spent time with Carrie's extended family.









We are members at a local garden park called Fredrick Meijer Gardens. They had a special members only event where we could see Christmas trees from around the world, lights everywhere and the kids got to see Santa :) It was a very fun night!!


















Christmas day was spent with Keith's family on the east side of the state. We had just got another fresh dumping of snow but thankfully the drive wasn't too bad. We got in late (as usual) and put the kids to bed so we adults could finish "helping Santa" The day was spent opening presents, eating way to much and even spent sometime outside building a fort out of all the branches that came down in the ice/snow storm.




















with love from the zoo