Four years old

Four years ago today: Kaelynn Grace Kvernen 3/23/06 2:00 am 7lbs. 9 oz. 20 inches 1 year old:

2 years old:

3 years old:

A beautiful 4 year old:

We love you so much sweet pea! You are a joy and blessing to our family! Happy 4th Birthday Kaelynn!

Giggles and Grins

Tonight our house was known as Kvernen castle and in it dwelled 5 lovely princesses. They had lots of curls and there were lots of giggles. It was a great evening! We celebrated Kaelynn's birthday a few days early as her birthday is actually next Tuesday. Tuesday's during the school year don't lend themselves to good birthday parties, so we invited 4 of Kaelynn's closest friends to come and celebrate tonight, dressed in their best princess attire of course. Here's our little princess: And the princess giving her daddy a pre-party kiss on the cheek!

Emma Kaelynn's cousin was the first princess to arrive.

Here are the rest of the beautiful ladies: Ava, Zoe, Kaelynn, Emma, and Finley

We started the festivities with crown making 101. The results were stunning!

After a dinner of pizza, watermelon jigglers, strawberries, and cherry Kool-Aid, we played a couple of games. Pin the Tiara on the poster:

And, how many gems can you find in the bowl of rice while blind-folded.

It was then time for a cake fit for a princess. Kudos to Sam's Club. I could not have made this cake for cheaper than they sell it for. I love them!!!!

Of course there was present opening. She received some very nice gifts!

And she had her cards read to her, even though Emma can't read anything yet :) She did a good job pretending though!

It was so fun! We celebrate with family tomorrow! I'll post those pictures soon!

Happy Birthday Sweet Pea!

Little update

I know, I know! It's been a while again! We are officially through the sickness! It took us about 3 weeks to get through and it is very good to be on this side of it. I just ended it this morning. We each had a version of the stomach flu and they came about 4 days apart. Connor and I were a little closer together as he had it on Friday and I had it yesterday! But we're all feeling pretty good and are in the process of deep cleaning everything! We're gearing up for a full weekend and glad the germs are gone! We celebrate Kaelynn's birthday this weekend with two very big and important parties. Friday night she will have her first friends party and Saturday will be the family party. We have lots of family coming from out of town and are so excited to have them here to help celebrate her FOUR years of life! Hope you all have a great week!

It finally happened!

I should have knocked on wood last Friday when I was talking to a friend about how we were so blessed to not have had any sick kids this winter yet. Just 3 hours later I came home to the beginning of the madness. Carson had a fever and was supposed to go with his brother and sister to grandpa and grandma's for the weekend, but instead got some really great mommy and daddy time. He's been hacking up a lung ever since. Connor stayed home from school on Wednesday and too is coughing like an old man I stayed home from work on Thursday with a achy/coughing nasty bug, and should have stayed home on Friday too, but duty calls. I am now barking like a seal. Andy is now hanging his head over the toilet and I am wondering if the stomach flu will hit us all this week. I guess it's just our turn!

Warms my heart

A friend of ours took this picture of her at the Christmas Eve service. Andy had it in his inbox for about a month so I got it a couple of weeks ago. I've got to figure out where to put a copy of it in our house! A couple of quick laughs this little one has given us this week- I asked her what is her favorite song to sing to God. She thought about it for a minute and said, "You move my salvation." I of course said, "What??? I don't think I know that one. Did you make that one up?" (Side note- She makes up a lot of worship songs throughout the day.) She sang the melody of it and I immediately knew what the real words were. They are from the chorus of Mighty To Save and the words are supposed to be "Author of salvation". She loves this song by the way and has almost all of it memorized, wrong words and all! We were sitting at the table playing a game tonight and out of nowhere she proclaims, "I just love my grandmas! They're so fuzzy, soft, and sweet!" I'm pretty sure you can take that as a compliment! I would take it as one!

Snow day

So what do we do when it looks like this outside and school is cancelled? We paint!!!

We play store and house...

We play with lots of cars...

We make forts in the living room... We even get in a science lesson... Measuring with a tape ruler... Yes, it's a full day! And fun to be together...

Battling it out...

My prayer at 6:15pm was "Okay God, I'm done battling without You!!!" This is how the day looked to bring me to this point. I battled with 1st graders as we made Valentine's bags, went ice skating (yes, real ice skating- there's a rink next to the school) and broke up too many minor issued tifts to care about. FYI- Subs really don't get paid enough to deal with these things!!! I battled with a 2 foot mound of snow at the end of the driveway when I returned from my glorious day with 1st graders. The wind blew most of the snow that I threw over my head onto the 5 ft. snow drifts on either side of our driveway back into my face. AAHHH to be in North Dakota again! I battled with one of my son's as I asked him to pick up some toys and he didn't want to and proceeded to throw a 6-year-old fit! I battled with my daughter as she brought books and dolls to the table and didn't want to bring them back to her room and obey the rules. I battled with the issues in my brain of, "where is the money going to come from?" and "this is so unfair". And after thinking that, I battled with my selfish thinking because it wasn't fair that God had to give up His one and only Son to die a horrible death for me! That's not fair!!!! So, all that to say, I'm done battling without God who deserves glory and honor for who He is, just because He is a good God. He never fails us!!! Oh how I love those words! If that's too honest for you- sorry. I just needed to be honest today!