Memorial Day Weekend

We had a lot of fun enjoying the beautiful weather this past weekend. We spent time with both families and celebrated Levi's 2nd birthday. He loved his construction cake at The Koopmans party and even has had to sleep with the cake toppers, which are trucks, "digger" and "dozer", the past couple of nights. At The Roedema party, he had a donut with frosting and a candle which he decieded to try to eat with his new sand toys a rake,"fork" and shovel,"spoon". We had fun at Half Moon Lake, seeing our new niece, going to the Walker parade and just being together as a family and not working.


Katelyn, Alexa and Levi visiting on Memorial Day


Eating his Birthday Donut




Opening Presents, Levi loved his safety goggles and nail gun.


Playing in the sprinklers at Half Moon Lake



Staying Cool in the Lake with Mama





Construction Cake with Levi's Favorite Toys



Playing in the sand and water

A New Family Member

My sister Kristin and her husband, Keith welcomed a baby girl, Alexa Grace into the world on May 26. She is a cute little peanut weighing in a 6lbs 4oz. What another blessing. Levi is happy to have another cousin, although when we went to visit them at the hospital he thought it was "my sister". Does he know what he is in for at the end of August..? :)

How Does Your Garden Grow?

A few weeks ago in the Home and Garden section of the Sunday edition of The Grand Rapids Press, an article about gardening perked my interest. I started reading sections of the article out loud to Ryan(by the way, one of his pet peeves) and he too seemed interested in trying out the concept of square foot gardening.
I checked this website out www.squarefootgardening.com also here is the article from the Press:
http://www.mlive.com/homeandgarden/index.ssf/2010/05/square_foot_gardening_produces.html

I have never had or tried to garden before so this is all a learning process. But hopefully, a worthwhile one. I have always thought it would be nice to be able to have a garden and pick the veggies from your backyard and not the store. So, Ryan, Levi and I all went to Home Depot to get our supplies and seeds. We actually did a 2x8 foot garden and I picked out the veggies to try for each square. Ryan built the box in our backyard and I planted. We will not see anything for a month or so but Levi and I will keep watering and watching for our plants to grow.We will have to see. I will post some pictures later this summer with hopefully a more mature and ready to harvest garden.

Tulip Time

This past week Grandma Roedema took Levi, Allison and Katelyn and I to Tulip Time. We had a fun morning at Dutch Village. We went on the slide, carousel and swings. We also saw goats and bunnies in the petting barn that they had there. We watched some Dutch dancing and Levi and Katelyn also Dutch danced and became Honorable Dutch dancers for a day with stickers. Of course, we enjoyed looking at all the pretty tulips too. After a busy morning, we ate some lunch by the pond and watched and fed the ducks and headed home.

Hair Cuts by Daddy

We recently bought a set of hair clippers to save some money on hair cuts...Ryan wants me to cut his hair too, but I am not at that point yet. I think that the only style that I would be able to pull off would be the full out buzz cut which is just too short. The other afternoon Levi randomly asked if he could get a "hair cut, Mama". His hair was not too long but could use a trim. Ryan set up outside and Levi sat very still for the majority of the 10 minutes of the cut. I have to say that Ryan did a good job...he kept saying..then the lady,(who cut Levi's hair at the salon) did this and he copied what she did. Not so bad for a first attempt. I think Levi's favorite part was "wetting" down his hair at the end with the sprayer.

20 week Ultrasound

We had our 20 week ultrasound appointment today. Baby Koopmans was not very interested in letting us have a sneak peek. It is hard to believe the next time we get to "see" the baby will be when it is born! The ultrasound tech said that the baby was either very stubborn, shy or naughty, can that be at this age? The tech said the baby was in a position where it would be like us lying on our stomach. It makes sense then that she was not able to get the pictures that she needed. However, she was able to get some of the measurements and pictures that she needed but not all. She said that even if we wanted to know the sex of the baby there would be no way to tell what it is with how the baby is positioned with its legs. She made me walk around two separate times to see if the baby would shift positions but no luck. It was a long appointment since we were there for over 2 hours trying to get the right pictures and waiting in between. Thankfully, everything that she did see looks fine. We did have to reschedule another appointment so that they can get more accurate pictures of the heart. Here are the only good pictures from the ultrasound in 4-D...kinda alien like.:)

Spring break with Levi has been quite fun for me. He is always wanting to go bye-bye and knows where he is going before we get there. He has been to Chippy's house on multiple occasions and even wanted to "check books" two days in a row at the library. On this day, mamma was "workin" so we went to the critter barn. Levi liked all the little animals, like the ducks and the kittens, but didnt really want to be near the goats or horses. We watched this man give the sheep a hair cut. Levi kept saying "blankie on" because that what happens when he gets his hair cut. When we were looking at the horse, Levi kept saying, dada ride it. Eat burger. i wasnt sure what he meant by eat burger, but we went to Burger king on the way home and he was all excited, and then ate nothing.