Winter Becomes Us

Travel Wisconsin is a website that advertises interesting places and leisure activities that our state has to offer. Right now they have a Winter campaign going on, called Winter Becomes You. In various places around the city there are billboards advertising fun Winter sports. Here is an example of one of the billboards that I see everyday...

I'm not sure if many previous attempts have been made advertise Wisconsin's Winter weather as being an appealing experience, but I do know that they could not have chosen a more aptly titled campaign to describe the kind of Winter we're having this season.

I feel like we have had plenty of opportunity to become one with the cold this year. Every time I step out into a parking lot the cold seems to wrap it's arms around me and it doesn't let go, even after I have returned to my car and turned the heat on full blast. For the most part, the girls have enjoyed it and Rebekah is determined to go ice skating 100 times this year, so we'll see.

All of the photos below were taken in January, but as I sit here typing there is a great flurry of white flying by my window.





No, Emma! Don't eat it!!

Ugh, she ate it. I can't blame her, it's as close as she'll get to a Hawaiian shaved ice around here. But watch out for the yellow snow, Emma!



Nearly knee deep snow for the tiny one.

Snow fort fun.

Ice skating on a day when we were the only ones crazy enough to be out there.

No matter how cold it is, we can't leave Red Arrow without the girls wanting to play on the red arrow.

We went back with some friends the next day when it was only slightly warmer and the place was packed.

Trying ice fishing for the first time.

And a little bit of hockey too, another first.

Don't let that bright sunshine fool you, it was very cold on this afternoon. We were at an urban ecology center event and I overheard a man saying, "The colder it is, the happier I am." Well, he ought to have been good and happy that day because my fingers felt like they were about to freeze off as I took these pictures.






Rosy cheeks tells me it's time for some hot cocoa!

I may complain a little bit about the cold, but I can't imagine living somewhere where we wouldn't have at least a couple of good snows each Winter. It's fun to play in {if only for a short while} and there is nothing more peaceful than looking out to a quiet, white, fresh blanket of snow covering everything outside and knowing we can stay inside to bake cookies and watch movies. I guess it would be the places to go and things that need to be done in the snow that are the most challenging part.

I took some pictures of our snowy backyard that aren't actually that great of photos, but Alyssa was having fun putting sepia and soft focus filters on them. She said she wanted to make her own "snow post." I'll definitely share it if she gets the chance to finish it. Here's to hoping that Spring is hiding just around the corner...

Sometimes I put lots of pictures together and call it a blog post...

February already! How did that happen?

Even if no one else noticed our quiet start to 2014, I know all the grandparents would like see some new pictures up here. I can't exactly count these as "new," but here are a bunch of photos that I have meant to be more timely in posting...

This is Rebekah at the end of her Pee Wee Bible Quiz season. I remember when Alyssa was in Pee Wee and I would chase little toddler Rebekah around at the quiz meets trying to keep her quiet in the hallways while the quizzing was going on. It doesn't even seem possible that Rebekah has now completed three years of her own quizzing! I am so thankful for their teachers and all the time the girls have spent learning the Bible in their years of Bible Quiz, it's a wonderful program!

Super Hero dress up day at gymnastics. Can you guess who her favorite super hero is?

Winter weather in all of it's cold glory has pretty much been the story of our lives here since mid-December. We have not had a shortage of the white stuff this year.

At the annual Trim the Tree party at the Rep.

Family picture night at A Christmas Carol. All the great pictures Dave took this evening really deserve a post of their own. I hope to get to it soon. Alyssa is so completely in her element when she's performing at the Rep, she absolutely loves it.

A few pictures of our house under construction, these were all taken back in early December...

The area that used to be a small kitchenette and bathroom.

The framing for Alyssa's new room.

Future bathroom and the pipes in the floor underneath it.

Now that the upstairs is pretty well put together again, I hardly remember the days when this is what it looked like :-)

Dave working hard. He had just finished putting in a bunch of insulation, that's why he has the mask on. If you've never worked with fiberglass insulation before, it's pretty nasty stuff that you would not want to breathe in.


This is probably one of the last photos taken with that door in place. We closed up the exit since we rarely used it anyway.

About a week after the photos above were taken, and after a lot of hard work hanging drywall by my Uncle Ray and Uncle Ted this is what the same area looked like:

The top left is a sitting room area and there will be a desk that runs along the length of the back wall. The top right and bottom left are views of Alyssa's room, the middle is right at the top of the steps. The bottom right is the area I just mentioned above where there used to be a door. Uncle Ted and Uncle Ray also did an awesome job of painting this whole space seen above. I can't wait to share those photos next!

Christmas craft day, or basteltag, in Rebekah's classroom. She was so proud of this little skier she made. She gave it to Dave for Christmas telling him that it was him on some blue glitter skis.

Emma's classroom Christmas party was the same day and was less about crafts and more about filling the kids with a crazy amount of sweets and singing silly songs in front of the class.

The Kingdom Kid's Choir Christmas Musical, We Three Spies...

Rebekah loved all the songs and dance moves for this musical! She had a little cameo two-line speaking part as "Kid #1." So proud of this once very quiet little munchkin.

Emma played the role of Ms. King. Ms. King was a fun, sassy and excessively fancy character, that honestly was a bit of a stretch for Emma to pull off. To quote Ms. King, "I feel a song coming on..."

I was very happy and excited for her. Emma has tried out for a drama role in Kingdom Kid's Choir for every musical from 1st grade to 5th, and she has often ended up with a singing solo, but she had never been cast in drama before this play. In the end, she put her own little Emma twist on the character and I thought she did it perfectly.

Getting to ride across the stage on a bike that she is much too big for may very well have been her favorite part.

Post show, celebratory photos with friends.

For the first time ever, we didn't put up a Christmas tree this year. There just wasn't any space for one with all the remodeling. I think I took photos of the girls in front of any public Christmas tree we could find to make up for the lack of one in our home.



I hope you had a wonderful Christmas season and a sweet start to 2014! I hope to be back with a January photo re-cap later this week!

In the meantime, please allow Emma to recommend a fun site. Start with episode 1, if you like. Emma showed me this website last night {as things usually go, we may be the very last people to know about it, and it may not be anything new to you}. She had fun following the directions and seeing what would happen next and she thought her cousins might like it too :-)

Happy Thanksgiving

I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving! Ours was nice. Emma learned how to make origami turkeys at school on the day before Thanksgiving so she stayed busy crafting away so everyone could have one at their place setting. Rebekah made the cute turkey card.



Alyssa and Rebekah were happily playing dress up with items from my mom's closet. Recently Alyssa's favorite thing to wear is my mom's prom dress from when she was in high school. You can't see it all in this picture, but it looks pretty on her.

In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.

1 Thessalonians 5:18 (King James Bible)

Happy Thanksgiving!

Flying By Fall

Fall flew by so fast this year. I know we aren't quite to Winter yet, but Thanksgiving is getting so close and it has already snowed here so it feels like Autumn is gone. Here's a bunch of photos from October and November...



Picking out pumpkins at Stein's.

Yummy pumpkin pizza.

The two older girls and I ran in a 5K donut dash at my parent's house. Any race that serves donuts at the finish line is Emma's kind of fun for sure!!

Our gym hosted a meet near the end of October and we had different "team spirit dress up days" throughout the week. All the gymnasts loved it!! This photo was taken on beach day. I wish I would have done a better job taking pics throughout the week, the kids had some pretty crazy attire going on.

And the meet itself...it was Rebekah's first meet ever, she was competing just for the fun of it. She decided Thursday night that she would compete Saturday. She talked to me throughout her entire beam routine, {something a competitor is not supposed to do and something I have never really witnessed in a meet before.} She is so sweet. Our optionals treated this home meet as a practice competition. It went well.

Way too much Halloween candy, most of which is still in our living room.

We love to help rake :-)

And of course, playing in the leaves is just as much fun!!

We had a pretty decent snowfall on November 11th to let us know that Winter is on it's way. The girls can't wait.

This was the first day of tech rehearsal, when among other things Alyssa found out how they would style her hair for each performance of A Christmas Carol. She LOVES it!!

My Three Cleopatras

Earlier in the month we went to the public museum for their trick or treat night...


Learning sign language during an animal presentation.


In the Streets of Old Milwaukee exhibit there are a lot of old buildings and homes decorated for the time period and culture that they represent. The girls love running through there and playing make believe games as they speak in many foreign accents. Many of the windows have at least somewhat realistic looking figures inside {the woman peeking back out the window at them}...Rebekah only gets so close, I think they scare her a little.

In Japan.

Fancy posing Cleopatras.


This room with all the pretty shells is one of the girls favorite places in the museum. The lighting is kind of strange in there and I haven't figured out what setting to put my camera on to get good photos. I had to add a lot of fill light here, and Rebekah's still wouldn't come out quite right.

Emma in Cleopatra's Dance of the Butterfly.


Happy Halloween

Scenes from a Lively Weekend

Two weekends ago we had a really busy weekend planned, when it suddenly got a lot busier as Emma invited four of her friends and teammates to sleepover the night before Rebekah's birthday party. I almost thought I was losing my mind when I agreed to it, but the girls had important things planned that I didn't want to stand in the way of. Emma's sleepover turned out to be a great time of team bonding. They made and decorated super girl capes out of an old bed sheet that Alyssa had already cut apart for a classroom project, and they woke up bright and early to run a 5K race hosted by our church that would benefit Speed The Light. Speed the Light is an awesome youth driven organization that helps support the needs of missionaries worldwide. One of their goals for this race was to raise funds towards the purchase of a vehicle for a missionary in Laos. So like I said, all very important, very fun stuff!

This was taken before the race as they filled out their registration forms. I enjoy watching these girls work together. On a daily basis I see them working hard together, encouraging one another, helping each other out and definitely making each other better.

A funny note about the race, and when I say funny, I am realistic that you may have needed to be there to find this as funny as I did...Just before the half way point of the race a group of 4 men who I knew to be running together just ahead of me came running back in my direction. Apparently we had missed a turn a block or so back. One of the guys, who has played Jesus multiple times in our church's musicals was running back to make the course correction enthusiastically shouting, "God allows U-Turns!!" The next morning during Sunday service our pastor {who did not see or hear this happen} said something very similar as he gave the message and Alyssa and I looked over to the man who said this the previous day and saw him smiling ear to ear with a hand raised heavenward in victory. It was great.

Alyssa and her singing teacher, Miss Alissa after the race. Alyssa planned to walk the race, but her competitive drive kicked in a bit when she saw others running. She did great, finishing at a way faster pace than I think even she expected. Emma was the first female finisher of the race, one of her teammates was the third and I was spurred on to a fourth place finish by the thought that Emma may have gotten lost back at our U-Turn. I saw Emma's teammate after that point and knew Anastasia was still on track, but all I knew was Emma was ahead of me and I never saw her during the second half of the race. She was following a teenage boy who had a map, resourceful girl :-)

After the race we headed to the gym for a three hour practice. The girls couldn't believe they had already run three miles before it was time for their practice to begin.

And then came Rebekah's long awaited for birthday party...

It was a little wild and crazy at moments, and we almost forgot to play "Pin the Trunk on the Elephant," but I am pretty sure she loved every minute of running around and playing with her friends.

Rebekah was very particular about the details of the party. None of her plans were anything super fancy or over the top difficult to pull off, but I loved how she knew exactly what she wanted from the piñata to making homemade ice cream and the games she wanted to play. We are always out of town on her actual birthday in August, so getting friends together for a party is often challenging. I hope {and I think it was} everything she wanted.

The kids loved the silly string, which I probably could have guessed beforehand that they would. Just a note to double our silly string purchase next time.

The paint that was meant for painting pumpkins was used to make a trail of handprints on the driveway. Two weeks and some rain later, they are as bright and colorful as ever. They did in fact get around to painting the pumpkins too, but I think these handprints will likely last longer.

Rebekah with many of her sweet friends.

By the time everyone went home, it had been well over 36 hours of non-stop activities and friends. It was fun, an exhausting kind of fun, but wonderful fun nonetheless.

A Pretty Awesome Life

Some photos from a recent trip to a family museum in Rockford, Illinois:

The museum was running a special travelling exhibit about pirates. The girls made their hats along with treasure maps, pirate flags and other fun things.


Train Conductor, Alyssa.

Veterinarian Duckie.

Multi-sport athlete, Emma.


Panning for "gold."

Alyssa and Rebekah were fascinated with the TV News channel they had set up there, they loved doing their version of the news. I think I see some future weather girls.

When they finally turned the studio over to Emma, I was expecting her to have a turn at some news stories. Instead, they put in this crazy background slide for her. Being her usual go-with-the-flow self, Emma giggled and pretended to bathe.

The longer we stayed there, the more absurd the news coverage became. Poor Alyssa here is trying to run a legitimate newscast and Rebekah just wants to smile and wave and throw kisses to the camera.



They had a really neat outdoor play area too.


Last week, I was proofreading a paper Emma had to write telling all about herself and I loved the first paragraph. It warmed my heart:

Hi, my name is Emma Sachs. I am 10 years old. I was born April 12, 2003. I live in -----, Wisconsin. If you don’t know where that is, it is south of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I live with my mom, dad and two sisters, in a very nice and peaceful neighborhood. I also have a gecko. My life is pretty awesome.

Such a sweetie. We think she's pretty awesome too :-).

And speaking of awesome, Rebekah is having a belated birthday party here at home on Saturday. Anyone who knows my husband knows that Saturdays in fall are College Football Saturdays. ALL.Day.Long. In planning for this party, we assumed Iowa would be playing an 11am game, possibly, but less likely, an evening game. Well it turns out, now that we have scheduled a party for 2-5pm, they play at 2:30 pm. Just in time for 12-15 little girls to be jumping with reckless abandon in the purple princess castle bouncy house we'll have. Dave was already on the fence as to how much princess bouncy house fun was just too much, and when he saw the schedule for the game he said, "I'll just have to leave my car on the street. And if I have to leave, I have to leave." Awesome. Be thinking about him during the game.

Where does the time go? An attempt at an update...

Hi, it has been such a while since I've posted that the format of flickr {where I upload my photos so I can get them posted here} has changed slightly. I kinda had to click here, click there to re-familiarize myself with what I was doing, and it was just a funny reminder of how quickly things change. I regret that I have gotten so far behind in writing anything here, but I can't say I regret having a mostly computer free summer. I am reluctant to give up on the 365 photos, but it seems that whenever I try to back track and share photos from weeks ago, is when I fall even further behind. So while I will likely share photos from over the summer at some point, I am not sure yet how detailed and thorough I will be with actually trying to "catch up" on summer.

We are two weeks into the school year, so some first day of school photos seem in order...

The girls were so proud of their new backpacks, thank you G&G! Ka'iulani found the perfect peacock feather pattern, and the baby had been talking about a Hello Kitty backpack for a couple of days when Grandma surprised her with one. The girls decorated them with pins from our summer vacation to Disney, so I would say they are complete!

I cannot believe she is in her final year of middle school! Alyssa recently found out she is cast again in A Christmas Carol at the Milwaukee Repertory Theater. We are so proud of her and gearing up for that busy season!

She spent the summer outgrowing every pair of shoes she owns, even skipping over entire sizes and she is just barely shorter than me now. We're talking like less than half an inch...I'm hanging on to my height advantage as long as I can, but I am afraid my days as the tallest lady in the house are numbered.

And this one is in her last year of elementary school...seriously, someone teach me how to slow down time. After spending most of last school year dreaming about her 5th grade year in which she was certain she would have {and love} the same 5th grade teacher Alyssa had, Emma ended up with a teacher that is brand new to our school this year. I don't think she has ever been so excited about a teacher before! Her new teacher is diabetic and she came home the first day of school a brand new expert on diabetes, telling me everything from her new teacher's health history to healthy glucose ranges to how he tests his blood sugar, his current blood sugar levels that day in class, what to do if something ever happened etc. I think it is going to be a great year for her, and I am thankful she ended up in the class she did.

This little one is off to a good start in second grade. She must be having a growth spurt too because she is finally looking at least a tiny bit bigger than the new K4 and K5 students who are just starting school. Rebekah has the same teacher Alyssa had when she was a fourth grader, and this is our first time having the same teacher for more than one of our girls. He was a wonderful teacher for Alyssa and we know Rebekah will learn a lot this year!

She turned 7 on August 16th, and her favorite thing to tell A and E now is, "I'm not six anymore, I am seven now, and I know stuff!"

A photo from the second day of school.

Waiting for their morning bus, which two weeks into the year is still at least 20 minutes late every morning.

Dave had to get a new car in June, and the old blue one stood parked in our driveway for most of the summer because he was having a hard time wanting to get rid of it. It was the first car he had ever bought, and we have driven all over various parts of the country with it, so even though it wasn't worth anything anymore, it still held sentimental value. It's gone now, but at one point Emma suggested we dig a hole in the yard and put the car half in the ground, half sticking out so we could enjoy it as a yard ornament forever. Thankfully, the idea didn't sound wonderful to Dave, or else I would have a picture of that to share.

Instead I have documentation of the first time I have ever worked a lawn mower ~ EVER! I wanted Dave to have time to attend an event for the girls' school this evening, and I figured I knew how to vacuum, so how much different could this be? It wasn't really as terrible a job as I have made it out to be all these years, but I am grateful that Dave does it every week instead of me :-).

And here are the girls last Friday morning, our first chilly morning of the school year. It was like fall suddenly came in and flipped the switch to cool. But it gave the girls an opportunity to wear their cute, new sweaters from Grandmommy and Granddaddy, thank you so much! They are from littlemissmatched, a store that Emma fell in love with at Downtown Disney {her first day of school outfit from the photos above is from there too. it's reversible which ranks high in her outfit selection criteria}.

I hope everyone is enjoying a good start to a new school year. And with this update I assure everyone who has asked me, that no, despite my last posts in July (that were about things that happened in May), I have not abandoned this little blog.