He is Risen!

He is Risen Indeed! We hope you have all had as blessed of an Easter weekend as we have had. We are so thankful that we live in a country where we can openly participate in services that recall the sacrifice our Savior made on the cross and His resurrection.

Yesterday we took the kids to a local park for an egg hunt. I know these pictures aren't the best, but they were the only ones I managed to take during the hunt, which lasted less only a couple minutes.


This video is proof of the chaos. Tyson and Jori were in the section that had been roped off for 1-4 year olds. There was a lot more gathering than hunting going on, so I am not sure why they called in an egg hunt. Oh well. It was fast, which was kind of nice.

Today we had a wonderful Easter service. Tyson sang in front of church with the Wonder Years kids. Darin was in the back doing lights and Tyson spent most of his time on stage waving at Darin instead of doing the motions. He looked so handsome up there. We stayed for the beginning of the second service so that he could sing again. This time he managed to say "Hi" into a microphone. He was very proud of himself. I actually missed it because I had a very wiggly Jori with me the second time around.

This afternoon we had a lunch of left over pizza. Then we headed to the zoo. It was great to have Darin along with us as it is usually just me and the kids. Their favorite parts of the zoo were the snakes, little crocodiles, and the Komodo Dragon. We stayed to let them run around on the playground for a while and they both loved showing off for their daddy.

Now it is bedtime. Tyson heads back to preschool tomorrow, Grandma Karen will be arriving sometime tomorrow and then I am heading out for Oregon on Tuesday to see my sisters and mom.

Christmas in Sioux Falls

We hope you all had a blessed Christmas. We've heard that those of you in the Northwest are having some weather difficulties. My parents church in Lynden didn't even have a Christmas service today because of all the crazy snow. We enjoyed a wonderful service in Edgerton, once again hearing the story of Jesus' birth.

It is about 9 pm right now, and Darin and I are in Sioux Falls. This is the first time in 7 years we have gone "away" for our anniversary. It has been great so far and we know grandma and grandpa are enjoying their time with the kids too. We went to a movie around 5, called "7 Pounds" with Will Smith. I would definitely recommend it, even to my parents! It was so good, and of course I cried. I think I will watch it again on DVD someday so that I can really get all the tears out. Sobbing in a movie theater is not so great, but I always love watching a "weeper" in the comfort of my own home!

Tomorrow we are heading to Sioux Center, Iowa for some family pictures. We'll hang out at LaShawn and Kyle's for most of the day and might even head to the pool. Saturday we have a Christmas party around noon, and then we are planning on leaving around 4 or 5 and driving for about 7 hours, then finishing the drive on Sunday. So far, it looks as though the weather will cooperate and we should have a smooth drive home. We'll see...

Happy Birthday, Jesus

It is almost 11 pm on Christmas Eve. I should have gone to bed a long time ago, but I didn't. We have been having a wonderful time in Edgerton. We celebrated Christmas with Darin's family last night. It was so much fun to see the kids get so excited. Tyson is the proud owner of a big kid bike (with a kickstand!) lots of new "doctor" stuff and all sorts of other fun things. Jori has already been busy setting up her new dollhouse and will have lots of fun with her new purse, books, tea set and more.

This morning we had cinnamon rolls. Tyson, Jori and Israel all got to blow out a candle for baby Jesus. I am eager to see how much Tyson pays attention tomorrow during church. We have been talking a lot about Joseph, Mary, the shepherds and all the other characters in the wonderful story of Christmas. We drove by Grandpa and Grandma Fey's church this afternoon and Jori kept saying "I want to go to the nursery". Hopefully she is still so eager when we drop her off there tomorrow morning.

We hope you are all enjoying time with family and friends and celebrating the birth of our Savior. Merry Christmas!

Rules of the Road

For those of you who don't know, we are in Edgerton, Minnesota right now. We left Friday around 5 pm and after stopping in Madison, WI for the night, we got here around 2:30 pm on Saturday. It was NOT a fun ride. We kept calling Darin's family to see how the weather was by them, and they kept telling us "As long as it doesn't get any worse, you should be able to make it". It got worse. We still made it, but it is not a trip I want to repeat.

Today all the churches in the area were cancelled. We were under a blizzard warning for most of the afternoon. For some reason, we decided it would be ok to head to Darin's sister who lives about 20 minutes away. There is a reason they tell people to stay off the road during this kind of weather, which we soon found out. As soon as we were out of town, we had a hard time seeing the road. It was so windy and there were drifts in both lanes of traffic and the snow was blowing so much that all of a sudden we'd be in a white out. We kept going.

We were about 5 miles away from Daci's place when Darin had to find a driveway to turn into. Our power steering had gone out and the lights were starting to go out as well. It turns out a belt had come loose, probably from all the snow that was packed under the van from the drifts we went over yesterday. Darin and his dad braved the cold and ended up taking the belt off. The van started up, so we decided to keep driving. NOT a good idea. About a half mile down the road, the van crapped out. We were able to coast down a hill for a little bit, then we just stopped. So, now we were sitting half on and half off of the road. We couldn't get all the way off because we would have ended up in a snow filled ditch. We had NO heat and it got cold fast. We were all a bit concerned about the low visibility because if a car had come up behind us, they probably would have crashed into our van. Thankfully, Daci's husband, Justin, was able to come and pull us back to their house with his truck. We just had to wait for him to finish pulling a calf!

Darin and Justin were able to get the belt back on, but we are going to have to take the van in as the heat isn't working. Not ideal in this weather. So, if you are heading out on the road, make sure you listen to all those "worry warts" and have a blanket, water, food, flashlight, and whatever else you might need in case you get stuck somewhere. Better yet, just stay home!

Our weekend

Just so no one feels bad for us eating turkey brats on Thanksgiving, I thought I'd tell you about the rest of our weekend. On Friday, Darin went into work for 5 hours. The kids and I hung out at home, colored, played, made books and did some other fun stuff. Darin came home and took Tyson out to run a few errands while Jori was sleeping. Around 5, some of our small group came over with their kids to just hang out and eat pizza. It was a lot of fun being able to talk more with them about our time in Africa and catch up on things we missed out on and the kids had a great time running around with their friends. We missed you, Hazards and Walters!


On Saturday we had a lazy morning. In the afternoon, Darin and Tyson went to Innotec to fill the vending machines. Tyson woke up on Saturday morning saying he couldn't walk. He was having trouble straightening one of his legs and was limping all around the house. We thought he was kidding, but after watching his leg give out a couple times we were convinced! He had been crawling around when he first got up, so he was pretty excited that he could walk again (slowly) and go help daddy "do the vending".


Around 4:30, we met Jason and Liz Cook, who stayed with us in our Africa house for 2 weeks, at McDonald's. The kids had fun playing in the play land and we had fun catching them up on people and places they became familiar with during their time in South Africa. Tyson and Jori were excited to see Jason and Liz again and on the way home Jori kept saying "where Jason 'n Liz at?".


We went to church this morning. I was in nursery for both services, but still managed to hear some of the awesome worship music. We have both really enjoyed being back at Evergreen as it was one of the things we missed the most while we were in South Africa.


All in all, we had a great Thanksgiving and a fantastic weekend. Now we are getting a ton of snow, which doesn't thrill me. I am really hoping that Tyson will have school tomorrow and that the plows will come through to clear the roads. My snow driving skills, while much improved from my first year of driving in Michigan, are nothing to brag about. So if you see me out on the road, consider yourself warned!

Thanksgiving with the Feys

It is 4 pm right now. So far we have had a wonderful Thanksgiving. We went to church this morning (Tyson sat through the whole service, Jori made it about 2/3 of the way through), had lunch, put Jori down for a nap, and have been enjoying a very quiet day of newspaper reading and football watching.

Since preschool on Monday, Tyson has been asking where we were going on Thanksgiving. When we told him we were staying at our house he said "But my teacher said we get to go somewhere!" We did have several invites to join different friends at their Thanksgiving feasts, but we decided to stay home and celebrate with just the four of us. Our meal was a bit unconventional, but we tried to make it as traditional as possible. Here's the turkey part of our meal

They were actually pretty good. Darin even said he would be willing to eat the turkey version from now on. We didn't have green bean casserole, but we did have some canned green beans. Here's our family sitting down to eat our Thanksgiving feast

*please take special note of Tyson's indian headband and the beautiful turkey centerpiece that he made at church.

While Jori was sleeping, Tyson and I made brownies. I am guessing that at least half the pan will be gone by the time we go to bed, if not more. Right now the kids are playing outside. Here are some pics for your viewing pleasure

I felt that Jori's outfit really deserves a close up

Thanks Auntie Rachel for the beautiful snowsuit!

We hope that you are all having a blessed Thanksgiving day.