Our Christmas Break

So I find that since I'm not working, I spend very little time on the computer. Besides that, we have been spending the last week plus in Minnesota with family. I'm certainly not sitting here bored, especially with 2 kids. I'm supposed to be back to work this week, but due to technical difficulties, I'm still sitting here not working. It doesn't bother me a whole lot.

We were supposed to have baptism of Phineas Dec. 21 in Volga, SD, but due to the lovely Minnesota weather, i.e. blowing snow, below zero temps, we did not have it. We managed to schedule it for New Year's day in my parents' church, which we also did with Ben. Hopefully everything works out for that service. At least it's not much of a drive.

So we have just been eating, playing games, and watching various TV and movies. I am enjoying HGTV while I can. The grandparents are enjoying the boys.

So I have a few things to do and I will try to update when we get home next week.

Ben Likes His Stairs

So Saturday Jon was downstairs on the computer. I went down to get some laundry and I heard Jon say hi to Ben. I thought Jon had gone to get him because I heard some thumping on the stairs. Jon thought I had brought him down with me. After some confusion and wondering, Jon brought Ben back upstairs. Sure enough, he started right back down. After this he proceeded to spend at least a half hour going up and down the stairs, practicing I suppose. He is enjoying his new freedom of going down the stairs. I put the gate up yesterday and he started crying.

We are doing well here. I hear the word "baby" a thousand times a day from Ben, many of them followed with a kiss if he has access. Ben is very concerned if Finn even makes a peep. It's very sweet.

We are heading to Minnesota on Friday to spend 2 weeks with our families. Jon will also be doing some preaching. Everyone will get to meet Finn and I'm sure they will enjoy Ben. He has changed so much since his aunts and uncles last saw him.

Sorry to make this short, but it's time to go to bed so I can get some shopping and packing in. Tomorrow may be a long day.

Quick Update

So I have been home just over a week with all my boys. My parents have come and gone. Jon's mom is here right now for a few days. Things are going well so far. Ben is doing well. He has lots of kisses for his brother as well as a few hits. His little tantrums have gotten a bit worse but I'm sure they will get better soon. Finn is a very good baby. We're up a couple times a night. That's all I have right now. My brain isn't working well right now from lack of sleep.

Ben and Finn

The Spronk Brothers met for the first time today.

Phineas Jon Spronk

Phineas Jon Spronk was born Nov. 24 at 6:15 PM; 7 lbs 2 oz, 20 inch. Keri and Phineas are doing fine.

The Baby Is Coming

We should have a baby by Monday night if not before. My doctor was gracious enough to just schedule me in and get this over with. Since my employer seems to not want to give me anything to do, I have been using my time this week to continue cleaning, rearrange the closet a bit (again), try to keep on top of dishes and laundry (it could happen before Monday, you never know) and spend more time playing with Ben. This has been a very long week and probably the worst to not keep me busy. I just keep finding things to do, though.

Jon was finished with finals on Wednesday and is enjoying some leisure time. He put up Christmas lights along the wall last night and Ben just loved them. Jon turned all the other lights off and walked around with him. Ben would say ooh along with his dad. When Jon put him down, he followed the lights along the wall just looking at them. He must be learning a lot of B words, because he kept repeating bbbbbbb as he pointed, despite Jon repeating the word lights.

So just a couple days to go. Stay tuned for pictures next week...

My Recipe

Since it was suggested to me to update my blog, and since I have nothing terribly exciting to share except that the Vikings actually beat the Packers yesterday and I actually got to see it, along with a dusting of snow, here is my recipe that the Huisvrouw asked for.

Chicken and Stuffing

4-6 chicken breasts
2-3 slices American cheese
1 can cream of mushroom soup
1 box chicken stuffing, prepare as directed

Put chicken in 9 x 13 pan. Cover each breast with half a slice of cheese. Pour soup over all of this and then layer stuffing on top. Cover with foil and bake at 350 for 45 minutes. Uncover and bake another 15 minutes. (I cut my cooking time a bit as my oven runs hot and dries out the chicken.)

World Meat-Eaters Day

Today, Nov. 1, is World Vegan Day, a day in which to celebrate all things vegan. A part of me wants to start a holiday for meat eating. But then I thought, many of the major holidays revolve around meat: Thanksgiving = Turkey (or Baby Backribs if you are a Spronk); Christmas and Easter = Ham; Passover = Lamb; Fourth of July = Brats, Hot Dogs, and Hamburgers on the Grill; Arbor Day = Hickory or Mesquite Smoked Ribs (OK, maybe that is also just a Spronk thing). So if vegans want their own holiday that's fine. Meat Eaters get to celebrate all the rest.
Jon


P.S. the picture is of the USDA PRIME Ribeye steaks that we had tonight for World Vegan Day. The steaks were awesome. Would have converted any die-hard Vegan.

What To Do

As I sit in my dungeon, er, basement, waiting for work, I am thinking of the things I could be doing, should be doing, and would rather be doing. Sleep is at the top of my list and I believe could fall into all 3 categories. Ben just went down for his nap and I'm thinking how nice it would be to get my banky and my stuffed animals and sleep. I just have to note, I love how easily he goes to nap in the morning (afternoon can be a different story). He was getting crabby, so we went upstairs, found his blanket in the living room where he dragged it earlier, and he picked it up and walked to his crib and waited for me to put him in. I can only pray the rest of his life he's such an easy kid.

Anyway, I think my "nesting" phase is over. I think I've done all I can to rid this place of junk, as some of it really does have to stay. I never did get to my basement shelves, but as I look at them now, I don't have the ambition. And I would just be putting stuff in boxes only to leave it where it currently sits. That's a project for next spring.

I now have the urge to start packing a little suitcase for Ben in case we need to rush him to someone's house, packing my bag for the hospital. I'm ready to set up the Pack n' Play even though Jon can do that while I'm in the hospital. I think I would scare him if he came home and found a suitcase by the door, so I will refrain.

And now we wait.

Now We're Talking

Ben can now say daddy and he is very proud of that. Though he knows who daddy is, everything is daddy. He'll just walk around saying dad-dy, dad-dy. He also says hi in a very sweet little voice and banky. As everyone knows, banky is almost as important as daddy.

Ben has always enjoyed opening and closing doors and drawers. He is now working on pulling doors shut. He just has to learn how to turn the handle. Hopefully that will take a while. It's been quite difficult lately to just walk out of the bathroom or bedroom because he's right there to close the door for you.

He is also a little climber. I'm not sure how he did it, but he climbed on our bed yesterday. He likes to climb on the coffee table when he thinks we can't see him. He likes to try climbing up the footboard and headboard of the bed.

Ben is also enjoying walking. He loves to just walk around the apartment, sometimes at full speed to his own detriment. He will carry a toy in each hand as he walks around, or his wolf, which he can't quite handle yet. As I write, he is wandering around the basement with a golf ball in each hand. He also plays fetch with himself, as he is doing with the golf balls. I'm glad he so easily entertains himself. That's one less thing to worry about when the baby comes.

What a joy it is to just watch him play and learn. We're not sure what we did for entertainment before we had him.

Relearning to Walk

I bought Ben some shoes yesterday. As you may guess, he was not very excited about them. He took maybe 2 steps and just stood there looking around. I believe he was silently protesting me. So after making wonderful progress in his walking, he will have to learn how to walk with shoes on. I hope he does well with this, because I already bought him boots. Maybe I should start those now...

I'm Still Here

Hi if you're still reading this. Though Jon posted pictures recently, I still feel like I should write something. I get disappointed when people whose blogs I read haven't written in a while, so here I am. I have been very busy lately with work. All I've done lately is work and run to doctor appointments. It's rather ridiculous. The weather has been unseasonably hot lately and I've been freezing out my boys running the air conditioner. Poor Ben. I dress him in sweat pants because I put the air on as soon as Jon leaves for school in the morning. In my defense, it gets quite hot downstairs and even Jon enjoys coming home to the air conditioning.

I have been spending some time trying to clean up and rearrange the apartment (Ben has been counteracting my efforts) to try to make room for the new baby's clothes and be able to put up the Pack n' Play and actually have access to baby stuff when I need it. I realize I have a couple of months, but I'd rather do it while I know I have the time and still have the ambition. I had an ultrasound a couple of weeks ago. Baby is measuring a week big but that's apparently not big enough to change my due date. I will have one more ultrasound, so there's always hope...

Ben is doing very well in his walking. He's still wobbly and goes too fast for himself sometimes, but it's so fun to watch, especially when he's walking to me. He prefers to hold my hand to stay up longer. He loves being on the couch with me, going from side to side and bouncing around. He's climbing on the coffee table and tries to climb up the headboard on our bed. Just a little monkey. We're immensely enjoying our baby boy.

Belated Benjamin Birthday Blowout Bananza

Here are some pictures of the various birthday gatherings that Benjamin celebrated with the family back in Minnesota

Ben's First Haircut

Benjamin has gone from a Baby Mullet:



To A Proper Young Boy (i.e. he got his first hair cut).

Yay For Air

I was so excited, I just had to share with everyone. We just got a brand new air conditioner installed. Even though it's like 70 degrees out, if that, I have it running. It's a bit humid out. The guys thought I was funny for having them leave it on. It even has a remote so I don't have to stand on a chair to change it. So that's my excitement for the week. What I can't believe is that Ben slept through it all. He is one tired kid. He's been waking up around 6:00 lately and then taking an early nap. He woke up for a while but then went back to sleep. What a life. Now only if mommy could do that...

Back In Grand Rapids

And we're back. We had a mostly uneventful trip. We almost got stuck in Mitchell, SD, but the car decided after about half an hour that it was ready to head home, and we didn't turn the thing off until we got to Edgerton. As we were leaving Worthington Sunday morning, we had another delay. But Dad worked some magic and we turned the car off as few times as possible on the way home. So we returned to a bloody hot apartment. It is about 90 degrees and our air doesn't work here, so figure my body temperature right now feels like 110. Aside from the little stove inside me, Ben has been very clingy, adding to my discomfort. Gotta love pregnancy.

We spent a day going through the Tetons and Yellowstone. We also went through Craters of the Moon National Monument in Idaho. It's basically a bunch of rocks from volcanic eruptions thousands of years ago. It was very eerie to drive through. I think my favorite part of the trip, though, was going through the Big Horn mountains. It was a beautiful drive. We had a nice trip overall. This picture kind of sums up Ben's trip. He is such a good traveler, especially with 3 straight days in the car seat and not a lot of time to get out and move.

Anyway, we had some nice birthday parties. Ben has been enjoying his presents thus far. I think three-quarters of our back seat on the way home was Ben stuff, presents or otherwise. We had 2 parties and he got his fill of cake. He's taken his first wobbly steps now, just a couple at a time. He actually spent a lot more time yesterday with his Christmas presents than he did before we left. He's growing so fast. I packed up his little winter clothes from last year, and it's so hard to believe he's 1 already. The year has just flown by.

So my next goal is to rearrange closets, throw away whatever we can and just try to organize more to make room for the new baby and all the baby stuff I have to haul out. I did this before Ben, but I have a feeling it will take more time now since I tend to have a lot of extra help with my tasks now. The hardest part is getting into a closet without getting the door shut on me.

It is nice to be home again. We have these big tree-type things that grow from under our deck that I usually trim once a week in the summer. They had gotten a few feet high, so Jon spent time trimming them and pulling tree-type things out of our garden. I think we dusted every surface in the house also. It's kind of interesting to see what 3 months of dormancy brings you.

Jon has his first day of classes today and I am back to 7:00 wake-up. We will get into a routine and life will settle down just in time for us to have another baby and disrupt it:) But life would be boring otherwise, right?

Our Last Day

Well, here we are, the last day in Sunnyside. We had a wonderful potluck dinner after church and a lovely farewell. We received a frame with some beautiful scenic pictures of the area. We are also taking home a quilt for us and a quilt for Ben that were hand made by some ladies in church that we have been using all summer.

Yesterday was spent cleaning the house and doing laundry. I got Ben and myself mostly packed up along with a bunch of odds and ends. We have one more service tonight and then will probably scramble to get everything else together. Despite any worries, it always seems to come together when it needs to.

So off we go into the sunrise tomorrow.

Pictures

Looking for shells
















The road less traveled









Ben's first Twins game

I Beg To Differ

So I noticed the little baby monitor thing to the right here says that the baby will mostly sleep this week. I beg to differ. This one is already competing with Ben for activity. I think I may have my hands full with these two...

Our Trip

I realize it's been 2 weeks, yet here I sit with an AWOL camera cord, thus no pictures to post for you even though I'm finally finding time. I thought I should put something up anyway. We took 3 days with Jon's parents and brother and toured Washington. We spent August 4 driving the Columbia Gorge and up to Mt. St. Helens. We stayed on the shore that night and took a leisurely walk on the beach in the morning. We spent August 5 going through Olympic National Park and a road less traveled, i.e., a bridge with 2 steel beams to get across. (We didn't actually cross it, but don't always trust your GPS.) We spent that night on the north shore of the Olympic Peninsula and took a ferry in to Seattle on August 6 for a Twins/Mariners game. We walked many streets of Seattle and through Pike Place Market, where you can buy fresh fish, fresh produce, jewelry, and pretty much anything else you can think of. The Twins pulled off a win to make it a very good day. Ben enjoyed his first cotton candy, the first bite of which he promptly wiped on his grandpa before he figured out it was for eating. We had plenty of room, so he got his own seat and made the most of that. He seemed to have a lot of fun. This was all much more exciting than it sounds, made better with pictures. Hopefully I'll get some up in the next few days.

We are in our final week here in Sunnyside and are preparing to leave next Monday. I'm not sure where the days have gone this summer, but we seem to have filled them up one way or another. So we have another 3-day trip ahead of us. We will be going through the Tetons and Yellowstone on our way home. We're both looking forward to one more nice long trip before we get back to GR and settle back in for a few months. Ben has been such a good traveler this summer and has made our many trips so easy. Just one more to go...

Stairs

Ben has figured out he can actually get up the stairs. Usually when one of us goes up, he will hang around at the bottom and go up one step but won't try to go any farther. Maybe we scared him last time he started up. The other day I went halfway down and sat and coaxed him to come up to me, which he did with absolutely no problem. So yesterday I went up and pretty soon here he was, cruising up the steps. He did it later when Jon and I were both downstairs. The gate promptly went up. I'm happy he can do steps, but he doesn't know how to get down yet, and that's what worries me.

Just for an update, I did finally get my puzzle done yesterday. It's nice when daddy's home during the day.

Puzzles

So I started the Mt. Rainier puzzle a couple of days ago. I got it out and Ben decided he needed to help. So he sat on my lap and tried to eat 2 pieces. Once he figured out that wasn't going to fly, he found a fun game of drop 2 pieces on the floor, pick them up and put them on the table, and get back up to mom's lap. This was a fun, exciting game for him and it went on quite a while. I had a sore back and very slow progress. Once I started getting chunks of the outside together, Ben decided he had to pull them apart. As any good mom would do, I finally gave him a couple of inside pieces and started throwing them a bit farther from the table so it would take him longer. At one point he tried to run away with them. That was enough of that. Yesterday I went back to the puzzle while he was otherwise occupied, but he again found me and had to help. By now I had started on a section inside. This time he had to help by putting the pieces back into the box-the exact ones I was working with. I tried to give him others but he somehow knew exactly which ones I wanted out. When he tried dumping the box, it was time to quit. Needless to say, puzzles just aren't the same with children around.

Mt. Rainier Part 2

Friday was our big day out last week. I got done unspeakably early with work, and as we sat around debating about a movie, Jon proposed we go back to Mt. Rainier. It was a beautiful day. We packed a lunch and drove. What an amazing difference compared to a month ago! There was still snow, but so much had melted and flowers were growing. The only obstacle we had to contend with was a bit of road construction in the park. It was nice and cool up there. We drove along with the windows down. We had lunch in a nice little picnic area and stopped at Paradise to see the view, which is very close to the mountain. We also bought a panoramic puzzle of Mt. Rainier, a tradition we started way back as a somewhat useful souvenir of our trips. We figure we won't stash it in a drawer and never look at it again. Below, Ben's not sure what to think of snowballs.

What Does He Know?

As I observed Ben this morning in his innocently destructive behavior, I had another wondering of what goes on in his little baby mind. He sat here shredding a section of newspaper, as he often has. He also will rip pages out of a magazine and tear them to little pieces. He's even ripped the covers off our logic book and crosswords. But earlier he found one of daddy's books and just sat calmly paging through. He does not rip pages out of books. He just flips through. Does he somehow know he'd be in huge trouble if he ripped daddy's books? What keeps him from doing it?

Now if he'd only stop going for the power button on the computer...

Holy Cow, Are You Here Again?

I have lately found my mind wandering back home to a magnet on my fridge. I received this magnet from a lady when I worked as a CNA in college. She made these for a lot of people, mind you, not just me. This magnet is a little red cow with the words Holy Cow, Are You Here Again? (I also received a rooster, but that's irrelevant to the story.) This magnet, of course, is made for you to put on your fridge and look at it every time you want to open the door. It has really only deterred me once or twice. Being pregnant, I feel like I am either eating or hungry all the time. I have noticed this more lately because a certain little boy will stand against my legs and beg or reach for what I have. He definitely has an eye for food. I wonder if he's picking up bad habits right now, even at 10 months of age? He seems content when there is not food around and will come after me when he's hungry. I suppose that's why we buy healthy food, right? I guess we can't have that baseball team or my kids will think I never stop eating:)

Who Needs Toys?

Yet another week and I really have nothing to write about, but I thought I would at least let you know since I'm sure everyone is on the edge of their seat just waiting to see what great adventure we've had this week. Sorry to disappoint. But I would like to show you Ben's fascination with the dishwasher. The first picture I'm unloading and he's going in and out with the rack and clapping. The second one I'm not positive what he's trying to accomplish. I always have a hard time getting the door closed when he's around. He also likes to pull out the silverware. Unfortunately, we won't have this "toy" back in Michigan.

We went to a little market on Saturday and got some fruit, including a little bucket of yummy strawberries. We also got some corn on the cob, so we'll have to try that this week. We were told it's very good. One thing I've missed is going out every summer and picking corn out of the field and having it that very night for supper. We broke down and bought some last summer from the grocery store, but it's just not the same.

I will spare you more reminiscing. Have a good week and I'll try to think of more exciting things to write about.

Another Weekend Past

Here we are on another Monday with another eventful weekend past. This time we headed back to Minnesota for my brother's wedding. We drove up to Seattle Wednesday evening and flew out at 12:40 to arrive in Minneapolis around 6:00 a.m. We spent Thursday and most of Friday preparing for the wedding, which was Friday evening outside. It was a beautiful day and a very nice wedding. Ben got lots of attention from both sides of the family. He also learned to clap. We got to spend time with friends and family and didn't get a lot of sleep all weekend. We flew out Saturday evening, arriving back in Seattle around 7:00 and finally getting home about 10:30. This was Ben's first airplane ride and he did well overall. The planes were packed so there was little wiggle room for him. This is the second summer in a row where I've flown pregnant, and I hope to not make that a tradition.

We went Sunday to worship with the Sea to Sea cyclists in a nice shady park. Ben got to try out his clapping in a real-world situation. It was a good service and we actually met a rider originally from our home church. What a Dutch world we live in! The first week has been a lot of work for them in the mountains, so hopefully the next few are a little less straining.

We are now trying to catch up on sleep, which I've heard is actually impossible to do.

I meant to post more pictures of our Columbia River trip, but I was having troubles last week. If you don't see any in the next couple of days, they aren't coming.

Columbia River trip

It's hard to know where to start. We have a ton of beautiful pictures, so it's hard to know what to post. We left Friday afternoon and crossed the river into Oregon and drove the interstate right along the Columbia River, taking a couple of scenic detours along the way. One took us up to some beautiful views. Another took us right along a bunch of waterfalls, one of which you see behind us here. Ben was very scared at the first one. You get very close to these and they are very loud. You can also feel the spray from them. He relaxed as we went. Latourell falls was great. It was a short walk and there was nobody else there. See Jon's picture below. (You might want to click on the picture for a better view.)
We spent the night in Beaverton. We tried Ben in the big pool. It was a little cold and he wasn't altogether excited about it, but he did pretty well. (It's foggy because there was also a hot tub in there.) We had some ice cream to end the night.

Saturday we headed toward the Oregon coast and drove up the coast. We stopped At Ecola State Park, which is where they did some filming of The Goonies. They had a beach there and we walked a bit in the 55-degree water. The sand was hard and full of bugs, so we didn't let Ben crawl around at all.

We drove up the coast to Astoria, where we got a picture of The Goonies house, and drove back across the Columbia to the Washington side. We headed up to Mount St. Helens but the road was still closed. We drove back home along the Columbia River on the Washington side.

We just got back from the Columbia Gorge. I will let Keri post more details soon. But here are some pics of Ben's trip to the Gorge and to the Pacific Ocean. Otherwise, we saw a lot of trees, water, and beautiful waterfalls

America's Next Top Pastor

A Few Firsts

Ben had his first pool experience on Friday (just a little kiddie pool). He was less than thrilled about the whole experience. He cried for a bit and then took a nose dive out of the pool. I then sat him back down and sat right next to him outside the pool. He soon became contented when he found some rubbery fun thing to suck on, but he refused to sit down. I have no happy pictures of this event. We'll try again on Friday.

Ben has now found the joy of going up stairs. Just 4 of them, and he hasn't tried it again. The stairs in our house are not really on his way to anywhere so it's not a big temptation for him. As little as a month ago, I was okay with him just crawling. I have decided in the last few days that he needs to start walking very soon. Towards the end of my pregnancy with Ben, I got winded very easily. Thankfully that was after our Indonesia trip where I climbed countless numbers of steps. I am finding that it's already happening this pregnancy, especially while carrying Ben up the stairs. I suppose this could be alerting me to something more seriously wrong with me, but that's for another day. So I have decided it would be in my best interest to have him walking quite soon. I'm sure he would enjoy it, too.

I finally made it to the library Friday. I am allowed 2 books at a time as I am not a citizen of Washington state, but I was going nuts without a book to read. (It's tough when a trip to town is a major event in your week.) I can only do so many logic puzzles that I don't actually have the logic for. I read my first book on Saturday as we did basically nothing all day. It was quite enjoyable.

We are doing an all-day trip Saturday to random spots Jon has chosen, one of them being the Columbia Gorge. He has Sunday off, so he will be able to relax a bit this weekend. Hopefully we will have some good pictures to post next week. These trips are rather fun for me. He plans it, tells me where we're going, and I get myself and the boy ready to go.

It's unfortunate Ben is not old enough to enjoy the things we are seeing this summer. Hopefully some day we will be able to come back and enjoy them with all of our children.

Nothing

I just want to say, I hate coming up with titles to things. I always thought it was stupid to put titles on my papers in school. I put my name on, you read it, we're done. Topic sentences are bad enough, but then I have to sum the whole thing up in a few words? Hence the title of today's post, because my original intent was to just put up a couple pictures and tell you the greatest irony I have found here in Sunnyside: Every day at 4:00 I can turn my TV on to Little House on the Prairie, a beloved show of my youth. The ironic part is that it's on the Fox network out here. Never saw that one coming. Anyway, below are a few pictures.

Ben was getting into Mommy's cupboards and started pulling stuff out. Ben helped Daddy mow at Grandpa and Grandma's. We put a hat on him and he zonked out.

Here are a few more from Mt. Rainier National Park