TWO COUNTRIES~ONE FAMILY: April 2009

Maria competed for the MMTA contest in the Cities March 15th and won. Her friend also won so it will be a great time in the Cities at the Honors concert the end of May. Her judges wrote so many great things about her talent. She loves the piano and it shows. We are very proud of you Maria!!

Christina decided she wanted to picture taken with her Big Sister before her competition.

We went to the Mall of America to see how much it has changed in 5 years. They had an American Girl store. Maria doesn't have one but she chose Josephina as her favorite. She is reading her stories for the Internet. They are adding new version of American girls but I still prefer the old fashion ones.

We had a baby shower for Baby Cael March 21st. It was the Callens' Aunts with Jessie and Great Grandmother Charlene. We had a great time holding Cael and visiting. It seems we never get together anymore with our daily lives taking over. Cael is such a beautiful baby and Jessie is so happy being a Mom. Congratulations Jessie:)

Anthony turned 16 on the 26th. He is 6'1 and so grown up. We catch ourselves talking with him like an adult all the the time and then realize he is only 16. He enjoys hunting and has been training his hunting dog Dakota to fetch. For his "16th Birthday" we let him pick the restaurant then Joe and I took him all by himself. He loved it and we decided to keep this a tradition when when a child turns 16 it will be there day to eat with Mom and Dad alone. He took his written test for driving on April 1st and passed. I don't know if that was his April Fools joke to us since our vehicle insurance will go up or not. I can't believe he will graduate in two years. What will I do without him. Love you Anthony and Happy Birthday!!

Grandma and Grandpa took all of us out to the Country House for Anthony's 16th Birthday. The Country House made Anthony a cake for his birthday. Mom also had a cake made by Florene, an excellent cake decorator in our area, who made a cake with a car running into a tree with Drivers Education on the car. I hope it isn't of what is to come:O I don't have a picture on my camera but Mom does and I will post it later.

Michael, Maria and Anthony are learning Spanish. It's slow going but improving everyday. We have a Spanish teacher teaching our homeschool group. They definitely know more than I at this stage. I had better start studying again.

Maria had her last dance lesson of the year on the last Friday in March. She loves it and it has helped her legs straighten more as well.

We took Christina to the U of M Pediatric Opthamology department the 24th of March. She has 20/360 vision in one eye and 20/90 in the other. Normal is 20/20 with 20/30 getting worse so she hasn't been seeing in the one eye and blurry in the other. The Doctor stated she has probably had this since birth due to lack of prenatal care. We will be picking out glasses on Monday so watch for our next post to show the big brown eyes behind glasses. I wonder if she will take one look at us clearly for the first time and run the other way since we are pretty scarey...LOL I am excited to be able to read a book to her. She has always had to have the book up so close I couldn't read the words to her.

We had the Callens' family Easter two weeks early to accommodate everyone's schedule. We still had a few families missing due to the distance but we had fun.

Andrea had a great meal with an Easter egg hunt for the kids.

Christina was only interested in finding the one egg and eating the candy then she proceeded to take other people's eggs to eat more candy. Hopefully she will get more into the hunting instead of the eating next year.

The kids and the uncles played Wii together. It was fun watching the grown up men playing a video game with the kids.

Uncle Jimmy with Christina, "Who's your favorite uncle?"