Trip to Holland

Here are some more pictures of our trip to Holland.  The first two are some of the only tulips we saw that were blooming.  They said it has been very cold lately and the tulips haven't bloomed yet.

This is a lighthouse on Lake Michigan -- Big Red.  It is on the private property of one of the billionaire founders of Amway who has a huge mansion just up the coast from here.

Here is a man from the Netherlands who works at the village around the windmill I posted on Instagram.  He was showing us a street organ that came from the Netherlands in the 1850's or so.  It worked by pumping air into carved wooden pipes and was very fascinating (it even had two different dumbs that were also driven by air).

Here is a re-creation of a typical Dutch street from the 1800's.

This is one of the two flights of stairs we climbed to reach the top of two different sand dunes.  This staircase had 239 stairs and the other one had over 300.  We were greatly challenged by both.

We ended the day by going antiquing.  We found some flowered glasses that were exactly like the ones we have that have almost all been broken.  We bought eight and now have eleven to replace the ones we originally purchased just after our wedding.

Happy New Year!

Happy 2014!

Hutchinson's Christmas Eve

Grandpa reading the Candy Cane story to Zalen

Jim opening his stocking

Zalen opening his stocking

A BALL!!

Tree earrings with a "force field" around them. Only Jim..lol

Jim reading Zalen the story of Christ's birth

Merry Christmas (God bless us, everyone)

We hope you all have a wonderful Christmas day, wherever you are!  We love each of you and you are always in our hearts and prayers.

Christmas Family Portraits

We had a coupon for JCPenny Portrait Studio so we decided to get some family pictures taken. It was a wonderful experience for us seeing as how we can be together as a family for the most part now.

Thanksgiving

Here are some pictures Joy and I took during our Thanksgiving festivities. Joy and I went to Kellogg Park to look at the decorated trees and the huge Creche then spent time with her Mom at the nursing home. Lastly we spent time with my family.

Hutchinson Pandas

Here are our Halloween costumes!! We dressed up as pandas.

Halloween 2013

Here's a picture of the boys in their costumes. Walter is a chicken. The astute reader may recognize this costume from a few years ago when Harvey wore it, although Harvey was two when he wore it. Harvey is a cowboy/farmer. We had a vampire costume for him that he had helped pick out, but he had worn this outfit to school and didn't want to change out of it when it was time for trick or treating. (His school doesn't do costume dress-up for Halloween, they have a "Harvest Day" where everyone can dress like a farmer.) Maybe he'll want to be a vampire next year.

As for the night itself, it was pretty rainy, so Harvey only wanted to do three houses. We basically just did our immediate neighbors and then came home. I think we got about 30 kids the whole night. I had over half the candy left at 8 o'clock when trick or treating ends. So I left the light on and decided to give away the rest of the candy if anyone else showed up. At 8:15, three teenage boys rang the bell, so they each got two huge handfuls and that was almost everything.

Halloween

 We don't have Noah's pumpkin here because he finished it a few days before we did so it was already on the porch. I did Hello Kitty for Lucy and Eric loves doing the intricate carvings.

 Jack doesn't appear in any pictures because he fell down right before we took them and was screaming...plus he didn't have a costume, what I bought him didn't fit so he just wore a Batman shirt with his monster jacket.

 You can't see them, but Lucy has wings. She was a princess fairy. I made her skirt and her necklace and we bought the wand and wings and the tiara was a birthday present last year.  I found Noah's costume at Good Will sans the mask-he is Optimus Prime-so we wore his Batman mask and cape so he could be super hero Optimus Prime. 

The kids got loads of candy and we have tons of extra, so if you are running low or need a fix I would be MORE than happy to mail you a box-really. Happy Halloween!!

I'm a dufous

I can't believe how long it's been since I've checked out the blog. But to be fair, I hardly get on the computer, for recreations that is, very much any more. I'm on the computer all day long, but not for anything fun. I will try hard to update what's going on with us soon, but for now I wanted to post what the kids' concert dates are for the next couple of months, just in case anyone wanted to attend. Alexis has an A Capella concert this Friday night at the 1st Presbyterian Church in Flint during school. If you want the exact time I'll have to get that for you. Makayla has an orchestra concert on Oct. 28th at 7 pm at the high school. It's a Halloween concert so everyone is encouraged to come in costume. Alexis has another A Capella concert on Nov. 17th at St. Roberts (which I think is in Flushing) at 3 pm. Merrit has a band concert on Nov. 19th at 7 pm at the high school. Makayla and Merrit have a concert together on Dec. 3rd at 7 pm at the high school. Chelsea has a choir concert on Dec. 11th at 6:30 pm at the high school. Alexis has a choir concert at 6:30 pm at the high school. The holiday collage concert will be on Dec. 18 and 19 showing at 6 pm and again at 8 pm on both nights. This is a real neat concert with the high school band, orchestra and choirs performing along with special smaller musical numbers that the kids have to try out for. Alexis is working on a song that she hopes to be the accompanist for with one of her friends singing. This concert is at the high school and the tickets cost money, but it's well worth it. Chelsea has also started playing the cello this year and will probably have some sort of holiday concert for that too, but I haven't received notice of that yet. I'll let you know when I do. Love you all!

Put one foot infront of the other..

Look who is walking like a big boy! He is not a full on walker yet but he is getting there!

Apple Picking Oct. 5, 2013

                                        Happy apple picking and family time!

Fall is here!

Zalen and I walked around downtown South Lyon a couple of days ago to look at the scarecrows. There are a lot of them but I picked out a few of my favorites.