1st Grader of the Week!

We are the proud family of the 1st Grader of the Week at Calvin Christian School!



Every week in Eliyana's class, a different student gets to be first grade of the week. A name is chosen out of a hat on Friday's. Eliyana has been anxiously waiting to be picked all school year. This weekend she got to take home the class bear, Winston, every day she gets to bring in an item to share with the class, she is line leader for the week and probably the best part of all (to her) is she got to go out to lunch with her teacher, Miss M, today to Burger King and was allowed to chose anything from the menu. The glasses and crown were from her kid's meal! We have a very happy 1st grader this week!

The Kids Picture

I had the kids' picture taken before Christmas, but forgot to post it. Gideon wasn't too interested in it, so these are the only 2 where he was almost smiling.





It's been busy at the Van Ee home. We did some indoor house projects these past 2 Saturday's since it was cold and wet outside. We installed 2 ceiling fans and a central light in 3 of the bedrooms. The house didn't have any wiring for ceiling fans, but thankfully Josh has learned how to do electrical wiring.

Fun and Projects

Finally a moment to blog . . .
It's been a busy few weeks since we've been back from all our traveling. It's been good to get back into a routine again. Eliyana started piano lessons after we returned from Hawaii and so far she is doing very well and really enjoys them. On my days home, I've been trying to do some fun things with Caleb and Gideon. Last week we had very warm weather (70's and 80's) so one day we had a picnic at the park.


Last Saturday we enjoyed a morning at the Wild Animal Park. I skipped a year of membership there so the children were excited to go and it was Gideon's first since he was a couple months old. Gideon especially was facinated by the petting zoo and the ducks. We all enjoyed watching the lions get fed.


The last 2 weeks we worked on another project at the house. We have a retaining wall area and a steep slope on the one side of our backyard. With Gideon walking all around, it was time to put up a fence. So Josh and I put up the fencing over a weekend. I had the fun job of screwing in the pickets. We needed to paint it because of our irrigation sprinklers, rain and hot California sun. I started with a brush and after 2 hours of painting and only covering about 10 feet of fence, we decided to try the sprayer. It went so much better and we finished the rest of the painting in a few hours. So, one more project done.