from our soccer star and golfer guy

Oh boy! I can’t even begin to believe you are 18 months old already!
Seems like just yesterday (I know, so cliché, but so true!) we welcomed you into this world, by your birth mom’s side, and saw you for the first time.

You are so adorable, we get stopped all.the.time when we’re in public by people telling us how cute you are! We thank them and say, “we think so too!”

You are saying 30+ words, but only talk when YOU want to! Some words we hear most often; ball, uh-oh, whoa!, doggie, dada, mom, hot, yum, outside, shoe

You love shoes, but constantly take them off in the car! Stinker!
You take a morning nap if we’re home, but on days you sleep in, or when Gray has school, you stick with just the afternoon nap!
You sleep about 11 hours at night.
You are a great eater, there’s not much you don’t eat. A few favorites include; yogurt, oatmeal, carrots and hummus, ketchup :), hot dogs, marshmallows, grapes, tomatoes, applesauce, apples, chicken, deli meat, bananas, and prunes make you giddy!
You wear 12-18 month clothes and size 4 diapers.
You have your pedi. appt next Friday, so I’ll fill in growth stats after that, but I’m sure you’re still a little thing!
You LOVE water; washing your hands, baths, swimming, showers, you even get excited when it rains!
 
You LOVE your paci! Usually need to sleep with 2!
You love to play with anything your brother plays with, you don’t like when he takes toys away from you!
Sadler, you have quite the little temper! You’ve been getting time outs lately for that!
You are working on your 4 ‘i’ teeth to complete your set of chompers {until the 2 year molars}
You are so busy and so…lets say adventurous! You have such determination and strong will, I pray the Lord uses that in you for BIG things one day!


Sadler, we ADORE you. I can’t image our family without you in it!

We are so blessed that God chose US to be your family!

Psalm 126:2
"Then our mouth was filled with laughter, and our tongue with shouts of joy; then they said among the nations, “The Lord has done great things for them.”

We had been looking forward to last weekend for awhile now! We had such a good time on our trip to Chicago!
We headed out Friday morning shortly after 9,
 
we stopped at the bank, filled up the gas tank and headed to Michigan City. We spent a short time shopping at the outlet mall before we grabbed lunch at McD’s (which ended up being a bad choice, b/c there was a McD’s right next to our hotel in Chicago that we went to 2 other times!) and then headed to the train station!
This was the boys’ first train ride! They were both so excited!
 






About an hour and 40 minutes later, we arrived at our stop in Chicago!
We took a bus to our hotel, the Hyatt @ McCormick Place, thanks hot.wire for the great deal!

We settled in our room for a bit and then walked to a nearby pizza place.
When we got back to our hotel the boys went swimming, and then Robb walked over the McD’s to get us some dessert, oh how I love those rolo McFlurrys!
We all went to bed early and woke up around 8 Saturday morning!
Again, we hit up the McDonald’s for breakfast! Convince is key when traveling with kids, right?
Then we took the boys’ first taxi ride to Shedd’s Aquarium!

We got there a few minutes before they opened, which we were so glad we got there when we did, when we left around 1 there was a HUGE line to get in.



There just so happened to be a 4D Ice Age movie playing at the aquarium and I was stoked to take Grayden to see, he’s obsessed with Ice Age! He loved it!

Sadler was in awe of all the fish!

We had lunch at the aquarium and then headed back to the train station on another taxi.
We had such a great time there, the boys did great but they were exhausted!
They both slept the entire ride home on the train!

We arrived back in Michigan City around 4 and drove back home to Holland.
It was an awesome trip and I’m already looking forward to doing it again someday, maybe we’ll check out the zoo next time!

Sunday was super relaxing, just what we needed!

this is so so delish

sweet boy

you know, just sitting in a drawer...

fun at play group Monday morning

I thought I had a uti, which to remind you, I was hospitalized for last February, after having a sore back for a few days so I went to get it checked out. I ended up being just a sore back, phew! Better safe than sorry!  I often injury myself without knowing what I did!

Gray was the ‘beary special helper’ in his class on Tuesday!

this boy is so silly:

it was a gorgeous day on Wednesday, we went to the pumpkin patch

and we went to the ‘stuff and save’ sale at Old Navy, I got Robb 6 new uniform shirts for work ranging in price from $3.90 to $9.31 making a total of $36 for 6 button down shirts. One shirt regular price was alone $30! Woot!

super cute toilet paper pumpkins we made at mops on Thursday!

I love mops! this is my 4th year!

I posted a picture of our empty casserole dish one night after dinner on Instagram and a few of you requested the recipe so here it goes…

We had a similar dish made for us by Robb’s cousins after Sadler was born and I loved it so much I had to attempt to recreate it! So thanks, Stacey for the inspiration!

I’ve made a coupe different variations of the dish, with or without chicken if you’re looking for a meatless option.

I started adding it now b/c it makes the dish go a little further since my guys love it to much! And you can use plain cheese or spinach cheese tortellini, or both, whatever you prefer or can find at your grocery store! I find this in the refrigerated section at Aldi.

Here’s the cast:

grilled chicken strips, these were pre-cooked from the frozen section, you could cook your own chicken too and cut it into strips.

olive oil

fresh mushrooms, sliced

pesto sauce, store bought or homemade

a medium onion, diced

and a package of tortellini

Almost forgot him:

If you’re chicken strips are frozen, throw those into a hot skillet with a couple tablespoons of olive oil, after a couple minutes add the onion and mushroom. Once those cook to your liking *I like the onion to be pretty tender, so maybe about 5 minutes*, stir in a tablespoon of the minced garlic.

Meanwhile, cook the tortellini according to the package directions.

Once everything is cooked, combine it all into your casserole dish and stir in a couple tablespoons of pesto

My guys add parmesan cheese to the top, but that’s of course optional :)

Its a big hit here!

hope you like it!

Today is National Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day. In honor of our firstborn son, Brenham, we will light a candle in his memory at 7pm as part of the "worldwide wave of light". If you, or someone you know has experienced the loss of a child, please join me in prayer for them today.
Psalms 139:16 "..all the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be."

Friday night we made last minute plans to do some family pictures, a friend of mine and I decided to trade our amateur photography skills and take pictures for each other! You might be thinking “didn’t they just have pictures taken?”, if so , then you would be correct! We had photos taken for our church directory, and while they did turn out nice, they wouldn’t something I would order and just aren’t ‘us’!

So we ventured out to an old building I found in Zeeland and spent sometime snapping some pictures!

Heidi has an adorable family! I just love this one!

Ours our under lock and key until I decide which one(s) I’m using for Christmas cards, I like it to be a surprise!

But here’s an idea on how Gray handled the photo shoot:

Such a stinker!

After pictures we had dinner at pizza hut and rented October Baby, it was so good! I highly recommend it if you’re looking for a good movie to watch!

We had a lazy, and relaxing Saturday morning! We stayed in all day and just vegged.

At night Robb and I went out to dinner to celebrate our Anniversary. The boys had fun playing with Aunt Mindy and Uncle Kyle and the girls!

Sunday was our 7th wedding anniversary, we went to church and Sunday school in the morning. We came home, put the boys down for naps and Robb and I made lunch together.

After lunch I tried on my wedding dress, I was happy to find out it still fits again!

Grayden was still awake so I had to pop into his room to show him, he had a huge smile, his eyes just lit up and said my dress was so pretty! It made me melt, thinking of him looking at his own bride like that someday! Tear!

Later in the afternoon we had MORE pictures taken, this time of the extended Lubbers family. We went to church right afterwards and then had dinner by Robb’s parents!

Hope you all had nice weekends too!