Things at the Klingenmaier house have been good... busy, but good. I'm not going to try to catch up on everything that's happened in the past 8 (!) months, but I'll give you a few highlights... We had a nice Thanksgiving out in California with my sister and her family. It was fun to see the cousins play together and to have a week with the DeBoers.
Christmas was full of wonderful blessings as my dad received a lung transplant (after officially being on the transplant list for 9 days!). That changed our holiday plans a little bit, but we were glad to make those changes since it meant dad wouldn't need round-the-clock oxygen anymore. He is now 6 months post surgery and doing great! Praise the Lord! All of the reports from his doctors have been very positive and they are all very pleased with his progress thus far. We appreciate your prayers for him as he continues to recover. :)
In March, we hosted Easter dinner at our house, which was a big deal since this was the first time we had a place large enough to do that. We had 16 people here for dinner, and it was a wonderful time!
We also learned that we are going to be outnumbered come November! This came as a surprise to us, as we were still reeling from two miscarriages that happened in August of last year and January of this year. We didn't really think that we were done having kids, but I had kind of started to wonder if I would ever be able to get (and stay) pregnant again. But, God had other plans, and I am now 16 weeks pregnant and looking forward to meeting the newest member of the Klingenmaier crew in November. :) (and no, we won't be finding out what we're having... though if you want to know, ask Micah. He's convinced he knows what he's getting for a new sibling, and gives us the same answer every time we ask, no matter how we ask.) :)
In April, the boys participated in their first pine car derby at our church. They had fun making their cars with daddy (though daddy did most of the work, obviously). Micah's car placed 8th out of 43, which isn't bad for his first time and the fact that he's only 3! Caleb's car did pretty well too, and he even won a trophy for being the youngest participant! All in all, it was a fun event, and one I'm sure will become an annual thing for our family. :)
Other than those big things, life has been pretty uneventful around here. We've kept busy with (never ending) home improvement projects, including gardening, replacing the random trim the previous owners had up around the house, putting up a swing set for the boys to play on in the backyard, and other everyday tasks.
We celebrated Caleb's 2nd birthday at the end of May (even though his actual birthday wasn't until June 2), and had a combined party for both the boys since Micah's birthday is on New Year's Eve. It was a wonderful day of playing on the new swing set and visiting with family, neighbors and friends. This was also the first time we've been able to have one of our kids' birthday parties at our own house, and that was a huge deal for me. I remember telling someone at the party that I felt like this was my dream come true. I absolutely LOVED having our house full of people and kids playing and talking together. I feel like this was the reason we bought this house and I pray for more opportunities to have gatherings and parties like that! We got a few decent pictures of the party, but my favorite is the video of all the kids playing with the ride-on toys in the basement. I'm amazed that they didn't crash into each other or the many stationary objects down there! :)
I might have gone a little overboard with the cakes, but we found so many cute cake ideas that our "tractor" party kind of morphed into a "farm" party... hence the cow, pig, and sheep cakes.
All the kiddos playing on the new swing set ~
Friends, neighbors and family visiting outside ~
Thanks, Pops and Nee Nee, for the Buzz Lightyear scooter! The boys LOVE it! :)
Basement "traffic" ~
I know my parents got some good pictures from the party, so I'll have to get those from them and add a few more. :) But for now, I think that brings us up to date. My humblest apologies to those of you who actually check our blog from time to time... you've all probably given up on me after 8 months of no updates. I'm not promising that the frequency of updates will improve, especially with another baby on the way, but we'll see. Otherwise, I'll be back in 8 months with another recap! ;)
