We are very excited to say that Luke is almost 1 year old. Though not exactly his b-day, we celebrated his first birthday this afternoon with all of our FL friends, family and relatives. We soon plan to spend another birthday-day in MO with all of my family. Jenn spent many hours testing icing, making trial cakes to finally decide to build this masterpiece. I guess you can see the theme was more centered around Mickey Mouse, who is by far, Luke's hero, mentor and best friend. *oh toodles!:)
Luke received many nice gifts. We got a really cool swing from Will, Julie and Aiden that daddy will install on our backyard tree. Lots of toys and books from the Haney family. New Strideright shoes from Angie, Ben and Baron just to name a few. And of course, many different Mickey Mouse items. Daddy even got Luke 2 new books from Bass Pro Shops teaching luke about the animals in the forest and a story about a fawn lost in the woods.
Luke and Baron, of course, are up to their old tricks with the most exciting part of today being ice cubes in a 5 gallon bucket. Seriously why do companies even make toys when true excitement comes from cardboard boxes, balloons, ice cubes and dirt?
Our party today was just as nice as the weather. We had a hot dog bar with chilli, cheese, cole slaw and the other traditional extras. BUT, all the excitement wore the birthday boy out. He did manage enough energy to tear into his birthday cake and boy did he realize how much he now loves cake! Pure joy watching this little guy get his cake.
April has already started out with a bang. Easter came fast for us this year. We enjoyed a great day with Jenn's entire family and our brother-in-law's parents as well, at Mark and Jeanne's house. There was no shortage of good food, as usual, with the Raulie and Renberg chef's doing there thing and Mark's superb ham! We also stole a great new recipe for a broccoli salad from Ben's dad.
Of course, Easter time isn't without coloring eggs. Jenn found probably the best recipe I have seen for creating very good looking eggs. Here is Luke helping out.
Baron and Luke hunted easter eggs, fed the ducks and played well all day. Grandma's house is such a playroom now. The boys know where the toys are stored and do there part pulling them all out during each visit. Such good little troopers, yet Luke still insists on talking louder and louder during prayer at church:)
We have really had some nice cooler and breezy weather for this time of year. Though last week we had torrential rains, 65mph wind and many tornado's in FL. The good thing is that all this rain is bringing back our frost-bitten yard that didn't fair so well during the "FL Winter".
We have also delivered 6 of 7 puppies to their new owners during this past week. We received many compliments from the new owners on how well each puppy is doing thus far. It was good to see them go to so many good homes. I don't think we were heartbroken at all. They were beginning to become quite a handful for Jenn while I have been traveling so much. We have Evan's puppy, Kimber, until next Friday when we will meet him in MO at the Pantleo farm.
Zach attempted his first take at Jury Duty in Clay Co. Florida last week. His straighforward common-sense answers were enough to get him booted out of the courtroom by 2pm. From his comments the attorney's wanted the jury to be more forgiving and understanding. All he told them, when questioned, was that people need to be responsible for their own actions and learn to be defensive drivers. Sometimes the truth isn't what the attorney's want I guess. Zach also celebrated his birthday this week with Jenn's family at the Longhorn Steakhouse. Zach stated that he has heard that 30 is the new 29? Jury is still out on this:)
We are anxiously awaiting our trip we will be taking to MO,KS, NE, IA & MN at the end of next week. We hope to see you all soon.
