Been Busy

• For all of you out there who are wondering why there are no new posts, well, I've been busy. F.Y.I. the white is primer the rust colour is the new colour.
  
• I have 2 new BFF's as seen below: a roller and a paintbrush.

• I'm painting the trim on our house, here are some photos. I'm hoping to be done sometime in 2009(j/k). Actually I hope to be done by the end of next week.
• God has been gracious and the weather has been beautiful.

• See you in a couple of weeks.
• Check out the Rehoboth link on the web page for the New Rehoboth Gym opening. It is awesome. A little shout out to my man Jas, who has worked really hard on this and unfortunately has not been able to help me paint the house. Talk about getting your priorities out of order!
• T.T.F.N. Sian
  

a weekend away

Dirk and Yohannes trying to dam up the river.



This is Kiera and Jason. Kiera loved the ATV as did Dayna and Dirk. Mom was not so sure.....

We were invited up to Colorado with the Bremer-Bennetts. We enjoyed the hospitality of Theo's parents. i took my first ATV ride and the kids really enjoyed playing together. Dirk and Johannes were on the same soccer team and have become good friends.

soccer

Soccer season is over and I think this year was the first year Dirk really enjoyed playing. He was definately one of the bigger kids out there and it seems he has inherited what I call "the brick wall effect", from his Dad. The "brick wall effect", is when kids run into Dirk to try and get the ball from him and they just fall over. I've heard that it happens to Jas at early morning basketball :) (It's like running into a brick wall.)
Below is a link to a you tube video of Dirk playing soccer. I apologize for the bad video,( very bad) of Dirk playing soccer. It was my first time using the video camera and editing a video. I did not realize that I could not edit it once I closed the file. So when you see the ref wave all the kids off the field you might want to stop watching unless you enjoy motion sickness! Just copy the address and paste it into your search bar.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwUGnax-gvE

church retreat

We had a great time at the church retreat last weekend. We learned a lot and played hard. Here is the slide show.

Labour Day

With fear and trepidation we made our way back up to Sig creek near Durango, CO for labour day, 2007. In 2004 We made the trip with Steve and Janet Weeda and Fam and we froze our butts off. Unfortunately I don't have any pictures of that miserable experience but it snowed and froze and scared us away from camping for a while. So, I am happy to report that this year we only had hail and the temp never got below 35 degrees F. We enjoyed being back up there again in the mountains.
Dayna showing her rock climbing skills at the Durango pool.
"The girlfriends," Audria, Kiera, Daya, ours is the tall one in the middle.
New tent. Room for all of our stuff, looks bigger in real life.
This is my mountain man. Building a fire, breaking wood with a knee. 'Nuff said...
The kids loved playing in the stream. Kiera, of course, fell off this log into the freezing water.

This is Dayna coming down the alpine slide. I think she caused a traffic jam!

Our summer

We had a great time in Michigan and Illinois. Here is a brief overview.

Check out my Slide Show!

Field day

To mark the end of the school year and the beginning of summer schools across the world have field days! Rehoboth's field day this year was very special because we actually had a field to have field day on. I might add that this field is just one of the many things that Jas has been working on. It is awesome to see plans come to fruition. The field is astro=turf not quite real grass but our water kills things. The track will be installed this week. but right now we have wind gusts of 70mph and sustained winds of 35mph. photos on that tomorrow.





Here is a pic of Dirk doing the tug o war thing.





Dayna playing cat and mouse






Kiera with her preschool posse

End of an Era/A New Era

Our youngest, Kiera just turned 4. We are now officially out of the daiper, sippy cup, nap, nursery, stroller, backpack, potty training stage. There are some benefits. We can now leave the house to take the dog for a walk and leave our children behind for short periods of time (15 mins) and leave Dayna in charge. I no longer have to carry endless supplies of stuff with me wherever I go. My kids put themselves in the car and buckle themselves in, they brush their own teeth and pretty much are able to get themselves up at night and go to the bathroom on their own. It is also fun to be able to read with them and play board games with them. They can help out with chores and the two oldest can shower themselves. It's also really fun to have discussions with them especially about what they learned in church. Life is good.

Cam

We have another new cousin! Dirk is so excited to have another boy cousin. He feels really jipped only having 2 sisters and no brothers. Now he has 3 boy cousins and is very happy about that. Congratulations to the Leys'!

Kiera

Kiera will be 4 on Saturday, Here is a picture of her in her usual get up. She has just learned how to push the pedals on her bike with training wheels. She loves dress up and friends and pre-school. She keeps me on my toes but she is a lot of fun. She likes to make her own eggs in the microwave and believes that she can do everything herself. This has its good points and bad points. The good points are she dresses herself puts her own shoes and seatbelt on. Bad points cracking eggs and emptying an entire bottle of kids shampoo on her head to wash her own hair.

new cuz. The Brodster

We are happy to add a boy to the Z clan. Dirk is happy and is looking forward to teaching his new cousin how to mountain bike.

Buddy Bear

Here is a picture of buddy bear in front of the big aquarium.

This is buddy bear and his 108 friends.


Dirk, who is 6, attends Rehoboth Christian School Kindergarten. Sometime during the second semester each one of the kindergartners gets to be V.I.P. For a week. They are the line leader, one of their parents reads a book to the class sometime during the week and they get to take buddy bear home with them for a weekend and write in the journal about the things they did together. This past weekend was Dirks turn to be V.I.P. and Buddy bear was lucky enough to go to Albuquerque with us and we went to the aquarium.

Rehoboth

Jason works at Rehoboth Christian School which Dayna and Dirk also attend. Over the past 5 years the campus had added a number of buildings, the most recent being a new gym. Jason is responsible for overseeing these projects. In the next picture you can get a sense of this and I will also include a link to the Rehoboth web cam website so you can check it out for yourselves. The little kids in the picture are from our Friday morning Mom's group.

http://www.rcsnm.org/webcam.php

the musical zylstra

Dayna is the musically talented one in our family. She recently finished her first piano book and played all 20 songs at her first big recital. She has also sung in church a number of times and is pictured here singing a duet with her friend Moriah in our Family night kids production of "Psalty". (I always tell people that Dayna passed me up in Piano when she started playing with two hands!)

march

Here we are the local Phoenix casino. We took a little boat ride and really enjoyed our trip down to the sun!








Dayna and Dirk enjoyed brushing the goats at the petting Zoo.








Here is a picture of Jason and Dirk looking at the Sting rays at the Phoenix zoo. You could put your hands in and touch them. Dayna wouldn't do it and Kiera said they felt like wet mushrooms.















We have had a great month with lots of activities and visitors. We had Derek and Angie Strickler and their three beautiful girls stay with us, as well as Mom and Dad Woolley, Corrie and Cees Meijer, and Mom and Dad Zylstra. What fun! We went down to
Phoenix for a couple of days and enjoyed a Phoenix Suns basketball game and the Zoo.

fun with a bike

Over Christmas we went to Phoenix and the kids wanted to rent a bike and ride around a lake, so that is what we did.