Go Play Outside Now

We love this place! It's called Go Play Outside Now and we had so much fun! We went with a group of good friends and had a blast! 

They have a beach area with pools of water and tons of water guns and barriers for fun water gun battles. They have 2 big slides and they hook one of the slides up with water and make an incredibly fun water slide!

Rosalie wouldn't go down the waterside, but she had fun going down the slide without the water.

The chickens came begging for some lunch.

They also have a huge area set up for laser tag. They had so much fun playing laser tag! 

If you haven't had the chance to visit this great place. You'll have to make your way down there. We were there for more than 5 hours and my children still didn't want to leave when it was time to go!

Spring Band Concert

Martin performed with the beginning band at the Spring Band Concert in May. I was incredibly impressed with the amazing performance that the beginning band gave! At the beginning of the school year the children had hardly even held their instrument before and by the end they were playing some very impressive music! I love Capital Christian Homeschool Bands! The instructors are outstanding musicians and educators. I am so thankful that homeschooled children have opportunities such as this one!  Martin had a great year and is looking forward to being a member of the Concert Band next school year!

At this concert, the Concert Choir made their debut performance. I began teaching the Concert Choir in February. I am excited to say that it was a wonderful experience. I am so thankful to be working with the CCHBands as their Choral Director. After many years of not teaching and conducting choral groups, I am so excited to be doing it again! When we started in February, the organization was running it as a pilot program to see if it would be successful. I am happy to say that I will be teaching it again this coming school year. 

Martin is 11!!

Somehow, my newborn baby turned ...

11 years old. NOT POSSIBLE!
His birthday was super special!

We have a strict NO SCHOOL on birthday policy at the Holland Homeschool.  I made a GLUTEN FREE Chocolate cake and chocolate icing with a peanut butter filling. He went out to Applebees with Rich for lunch...and ordered a MAN burger! He came home and went to his band practice. Later that night we had cake and ice cream.
It was a great day! He's super excited that his age now surpasses the number of fingers on his hand. He's in the big leagues now!

Martin's First Band Concert

Martin began playing the trumpet with Capital Christian Homeschool Bands, in September. He is really enjoying it! He had his first band concert in December and we were all so excited to hear his band play!

I am so glad that we decided to sign Martin up with this organization. I am impressed with the organizations as well as the instructors that work with the students. It's been a great experience and I look forward to many more years of working with CCHbands!

Martin's Testimony

As promised, I am going to share Martin's Testimony. These are his words straight from his mouth. I only did the typing.

It started 3 years ago when I told my Mama and my Daddy that I wanted to be like Jesus. Everyday since then, I've been struggling with whether God existed or not. I wanted to believe it for myself and not because Mama and Daddy told me to believe it. I told Mama that if God would show me a miracle I would believe. 

On Wednesday, November 14, 2012, we were listening to the song Power of the Cross, in the car on the way to the church building. While we were listening to the song, I heard a voice in my head saying, "Believe it now, Believe it now!!!"I told Mama about it and she stopped the car and we prayed together. During those 3 years, I had no peace because I was struggling. Now that I have become a Christian, I finally have peace.

Mama told me later that day - that the day before I became a Christian, she had spent time praying over the song, Power of the Cross. She prayed that God would use it to move me and speak to me, so that I would become a believer. That's when I realized that God had given me my miracle.

Intellect vs. Heart Part Three

I mentioned that Martin said that he just knew that he could believe that God existed if God would give him a shout. I told him that in my experience, God has always spoken to me through His Word and through gentle whispers. He still insisted that he needed a shout. I am so thankful that we serve a God who is not limited to my experience. It wasn't but a couple days later that God gave me a shout.

The worship pastor at our church called me one Saturday night to ask me if I would sing lead on a song the next day in church to fill in for someone who was sick. I said that I'd be happy to do that. So, I put the children to bed and went to my room to practice the song. I sang through the song one time and then began to have a quiet time of prayer. I prayed that when I helped lead in worship the next day that it would be all about Him and not about me. I prayed that God would increase and that I would decrease. I finished my time of prayer and then began to practice the song for the next day. 2 minutes later, I was completely unable to sing a single note. My singing voice was gone. Strangely enough, I could still talk ... I just couldn't sing. Of course, my first thought was ... THAT'S NOT WHAT I MEANT!! Clearly, though, God was trying to teach me something, so I calmly drank an entire glass of water and went to bed. At that point, I just needed to trust that God would restore my voice by the time that I needed it. (especially considering that I was already the back-up!)

The next morning my voice was still all out of sorts, but by the time I needed to sing in the first service my voice was fully restored. 

Was that God's way of sending Martin a shout? I shared the whole story with Martin and while he thought it was absolutely amazing ... his reply was, "That is pretty amazing, but I really want the shout to happen to me ... and that happened to you!"

Okay. I will not be discouraged!! God is faithful and will see us both through this process. I was humbled to see God's mighty hand working in my own life in the area of trusting Him. I knew that He was busy working on Martin's heart!

A few days later, I got all the music for the Thanksgiving service at our church and was listening to it and learning the songs that I didn't already know. The one new song in the set that I didn't know was called The Power of the Cross by Shelley Johnson. The song deals with the contrast of being in Christ and being without Christ. ("Once in darkness, now in light. Once bound, now free, once a sinner now a saint... That's the Power of the cross ... see the chains fall")

I read through the words one time and immediately started praying over the song. I prayed that God would use that song to move Martin ... that He would reveal Martin's great need for the Power of the Cross!

The very next day as we were driving down the road, I played the song for the children for the first time. We got about half way through the song when Martin said, "Mama, Mama I have voices in my head saying, BELIEVE NOW, BELIEVE NOW!!!"

I said, "Are you serious, Martin, because if you are serious, I will pull over right now!!"

He said, "Yes, I am serious!!"

So, I pulled over, put on my hazard lights, got Martin out of the van and we kneeled down on our knees in the Lowes Foods Parking Lot and he prayed that God would save him.

I am humbled. I am grateful. I am amazed at the AWESOME God that we serve. 

God wasn't only SHOUTING into Martin's life. He was SHOUTING into my life. Tomorrow, I will share Martin's testimony. He wrote it last week and the words are all his and from his perspective. His words are precious! 

All glory to God for his hand in our lives. He cares about the details of our lives. He doesn't always work in ways that are predictable. He can do far more than we can imagine. Martin has struggled for a long time, but now he is at perfect peace. He told me a couple days later that he finally has peace. 

God won Martin over for His kingdom and now I am praying that Martin will be an instrument in His hands.

Intellect vs. Heart Part Two

So, what now?

It started with subtle comments here and there from Martin. He would say things like, "Is there such a thing as someone who doesn't  believe in anything at all?" or "I just don't understand how God has no beginning." Philosophical questions challenging all that we have ever taught him started surfacing every single day. At first, I wondered if it was just an emotional reaction from him. Perhaps he was just trying to hurt me because he knows how deeply I desire to follow God and walk in His ways. There were times that I definitely think his mood was driving the rash and hurtful things he said. It didn't take long for me to realize, though, that he really was digging for deeper philosophical answers to the hard questions that I am not so sure that I've even taken the time to consider. 

I am not the deep philosophical thinker that my husband is. I accepted the truth of the gospel the very first time I heard it. I followed with a child-like faith and that child-like faith has remained intact until this very day. 

Martin has approached this entire issue with a desire to explore those deep philosophical questions and come up with some concrete answers that will satisfy the intellectual needs that he has. 

He has been frustrated to the point of tears over it. We had been having pretty deep conversations about it almost on a daily basis. There was a crazy battle going on inside of him. It was a battle between his intellectual desire for answers and his heart. He would tell me that there is a key to all of it and he just needed to find the key. He has also said that he just wished that God would send him a SHOUTING sign that He is really there. (I've had the opportunity to share with Martin many examples in my own life of God making himself known to me ... and that it never happened in a shouting way ... in my experience it almost always came as more of a whisper)

Rich and I are still stood by our guiding principle to not coerce him. He is a very intelligent boy. Every time he wanted to talk about it, we talked. I prayed for him constantly. Martin had a deep desire to see something concrete that would prove to him that there is a loving God out there somewhere, so my prayers for him were that God would reveal himself to Martin.

So, what did I do with a 10 year old child, who had been home schooled his entire life, that I have poured myself into, taught scriptures every day of his life, prayed for him every day since he was conceived ... when he started to question everything I'd ever taught him?

I REJOICED! I WEEPED! I PRAYED! And I GAVE THANKS that I had a child on my hands who thought so deeply and independently about such important issues. I RESTED in knowing that God had His hand on Martin. I ANTICIPATED the day when Martin would have worked out his salvation and have complete confidence that he is saved ... and he wouldn't have to rely on my memory of him being saved. 

I'd much rather he work these things out in a satisfactory way right now as a 10 year old in my home than as a 20 year old living away from me. As hard as this road was to walk at times, I hope that all of my children ask these hard questions, work them out in a way that brings them to a greater knowledge of who God is,  a deeper faith, and a stronger desire to follow and be obedient to a loving God.

To be continued...

My Political Boy

I didn't realize until just recently that when Martin sits with us each morning while we watch the news he actually watches and listens. He has been incredibly interested in this political election season ... and especially in who will be our next president.
A few days ago, he decided to make some posters for his candidate of choice...and then pass them out around the neighborhood. I am not surprised that a child of my husband's is already thinking about politics and government. Martin has also insisted that we record all the debates ... and he has watched them in their entirety the next day. I often wonder how much of the rhetoric he understands and I am amazed that he cares so much about it. I do hope that as he grows up he will continue to care, be thankful that we live in the USA, and be a passionate voter in the election process.

Practicing

Martin has finally grown into the air rifle we got him a couple years ago. He is LOVING target practice! 

He has been wanting to get his air rifle back out for a long time now ... we finally pulled it out and he can practice completely unassisted now. He'll be shootin' deer before we know it!

Painting with Watercolors ... a finished work

Yesterday, I shared that Martin is learning how to paint using watercolors. This is the finished product for this week! I am amazed at the wonderful paintings that he is producing each week. He is already getting better and better at it!

This school year, we are studying the poetry of Robert Frost. The painting is always related to the poem of the week that he studies. He writes a small portion of the poem each week to paste to his painting.

Pressing on

Martin is learning how to paint using watercolors as a part of his 5th grade curriculum. It's a learning process for both of us. I have very little experience with painting, so we are learning together. He really enjoys it, though, and I can understand why! It's so relaxing and somewhat therapeutic. It's really a good fit for him this year. With each new school year, we add more and more work to his schedule which is a normal progression as he ages. However, it seems like each year, he struggles more and more with working through all the distractions. It is a huge and very difficult issue for him. There are days that it takes him an entire day to do what should only take him 4 hours. It causes quite a bit of tension between us because I feel as though I am constantly nagging him to get his work done. It makes me feel as though I am arguing with him all day.
Phillipians 2:14
Do all things without complaining or disputing.

One day last week at about 5:30 AM, I was up packing a lunch, making coffee and breakfast for Rich, so that he could leave by 6AM to get to work. Martin came downstairs and said that he woke up and couldn't get back to sleep. So, I told him to go to the school room and do some reading. I jumped in the shower, and it hit me that I should take advantage of the fact that Martin is awake and no other children were! So, I ran upstairs and we started our school day ... in complete silence and were able to work for an entire hour before anyone else woke up! He was able to get so much done AND he was DONE before lunch time!! He was a very happy boy that day! Distraction is a real struggle for him. He doesn't want to spend all day doing his school work. He really does want to get done in a timely manner. So, I asked him if he wanted to keep getting up early to do school work ... and he really wanted to keep getting up early. So, my alarm clock is now set for 6 AM, and I quietly make my way upstairs, gently rub his arm, and I am rewarded with a smile before he even opens his eyes. We work together diligently for an hour to an hour and a half before the other awaken and the breakfast madness begins. (if the others wake up before I am ready to be done with Martin, I send them downstairs to wait for me) I ask Martin each night before he goes to bed if he still wants to get up early ... he never hesitates to say YES! He rather enjoys being done at the same time as the others. Most of the time he only has painting and/or reading to do after lunch. I don't love getting up at 6 every morning, but it is absolutely worth it to see such excellent results from Martin. His attitude has changed, his countenance is more joyful, and he has a sense of accomplishment and success in what he is doing each day. His self esteem was really being affected by not being able to stay focused. I am so thankful for this minor change that we made that has had such a major affect on our day!

 I also added a high quality krill oil supplement to his daily regimen. Jury is still out to whether or not that is helping him or going to help him with his distraction and focus issues. He already is on a whole foods diet void of food coloring, high fructose corn syrup, and other preservatives, so I don't feel the need to modify his diet too much. My child was struggling and we made some minor changes to try and improve his situation. I have been praying for him diligently and seeking answers to how I can help him, and I believe that God has given me the answer that I was seeking.

Psalm 146:1-2
Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord, O my soul! While I live I will praise the Lord; I wills ing praises to my God while I have my being.

Martin is learning to play the Trumpet

I recently signed Martin up for a year of band. When we were in Virginia, I took Martin to a local band director so that I could see him on each instrument and especially check to see if he had any natural abilities on a specific instrument. (and to get the professional opinion of the band director) The band director was my student way back in the day when I was a high school choral director. (Before the days of babies, diapers, lack of sleep, exhaustion, joy like I've never known it, and gray hair)
When I was teaching high school chorus, I got the bright idea to try and recruit some boys from the band to join the choir. How much better could it get than to find some instrumentalists who could also sing? I found quite a few ... put them in my advanced a capella chamber choir ... and it was one of the best things I ever did!
Steven is one of the ones that I recruited. He went on to get a college degree in Music Education. He is now a band director in Virginia. He sat down with Martin and put several instruments to his lips and we figured out that trumpet would probably be the best choice. (trumpet was Martin's first choice ... so it worked out really well!)

I started playing flute in the band when I was 10 years old, and I'm so glad Martin will have the chance as well!

I have signed him up with the Capital Christian Homeschool Band that meets not too far down the road. He will go twice a week and also be required to practice using the digital practice software, Smart Music. (wow, things are so much different today!)
I am so excited that Martin has this opportunity. Aaron is disappointed that he has to wait another couple years to join!

Creation to Christ - curriculum choices for Martin - 5th grade

Martin is doing 5th grade this year. It is so hard to believe that I have a 5th grader on my hands! He will be doing Creation to Christ from Heart of Dakota. (HOD) The picture above is Martin's curriculum guide. I was very blessed to receive the curriculum including almost every single book that I needed for Martin's 5th grade year from my sister. (my sister used it with her daughter a few years ago and saved it for me) The curriculum guide was in very used condition ... and some of the pages were falling out, so I took the book completely apart, put each page in a plastic page protector, and put all of the pages in a large binder. I LOVE having the guide in this format. It's super big and bulky - but it is really nice having each page protected by plastic!

I also put dividers in the back to make it easy to flip back to the appendix where the poetry selections, math schedule, and dictation passages are located. Martin will be studying the poetry of Robert Frost this year. Along with learning the poetry of Frost, he will be learning the art of Watercolor painting. Each week he will draw a specific painting (related to the poem) using watercolors. He's already loving it!
Bible - is woven all throughout the curriculum in every subject. However, for a more intense study, we will be studying the book of Philippians this year and memorizing the 2nd chapter.
Music - Martin will be playing the trumpet this year with the local homeschool band organization. I'll post more about that later.

I made 3 main notebooks for Martin this year  - 2 for notebooking (science and history) and 1 for  his daily checklists, vocabulary, and English worksheets. HOD provides BEAUTIFUL history notebooking pages once you get to the CTC guide! They are on cardstock with very nice graphics. By the end of the year, Martin will have a wonderful keepsake of what he learned in History this year!

For English this year, Martin will be using Rod and Staff English 5 and Write with the Best, Vol. 1. I always order the English sets directly from Rod and Staff because I enjoy the worksheet and tests that are provided in the sets. The worksheets contain similar activities to what you would see in the textbook. I use the tests on the days that are scheduled for chapter review in the guide. 
This is my first year using Write with the Best, so I have no reviews for it yet. Rod and Staff does teach writing, so Martin has had some exposure to writing, but he's not had it in great detail as this curriculum will provide. Interestingly enough, even though Martin hasn't had much instruction in writing, he tested on an early 8th grade level for writing this past March. I am convinced that a steady flow of exposure to excellent literature as well as the practice of oral and written narration has helped his writing skills tremendously!

For History this year, Martin will be covering in great detail the time period between Creation through  the life of Christ. We will read The History of the Ancient World, Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, A Child's Geography, and Genesis: Finding Our Roots. He will listen to the 6 CD set called What in the World, and he will use Draw And Write Through History for history notebooking. Martin loves history! We are really excited about diving deeper into this time period.

Martin also loves Science. He will be reading  Exploring Creation with Zoology 3: Land Animals of the Sixth Day, Birds of the Air, Plant Life in Field and Garden, The History of Medicine, An Illustrated Adventure of Human Anatomy, and Galen and the Gateway to Medicine. I was able to download a set of fantastic Science notebooking pages from the HOD yahoo group! They have fun graphics on them and should make his notebooking assignments a little more exciting for him. 

We selected the History Read A-loud option for the story time portion of the curriculum. He will read  Dinosaurs of Eden, The Golden Bull, Boy of the Pyramids, Jashub's Journal, God King: A Story in the Days of King Hezekiah, Archimedes and the Door of Science, Cleopatra, City: A Story of Roman Planning and Construction, Traveling the Way, and The Accidental Voyage. 

Martin has been doing Singapore Math since 2nd grade. It is a good fit for him. He has established excellent mental math skills.  (however, sometimes he doesn't write problems down that he should and that can get him into trouble!) He is still finishing up 4B right now, but in a few weeks he'll be headed into Singapore Primary Mathematics 5A and 5B. 

We are using Drawn into the Heart of Reading for our reading/literature curriculum. The books above are the books that Martin will be reading. I am so thankful that both of my older boys love to read. Martin has always been a strong reader and enjoys it. He doesn't enjoy the analysis part. It has always made DITHOR frustrating for me and for him. Last year, I actually put the curriculum away mid-year and only had him do oral narration with his reading books.  I am so thankful and happy to report that we have really turned a corner this year with this program. I don't know if something developmental has occurred or if the years of oral and written narration are finally paying off, but I am thrilled that the literature analysis is going very well for him this year!

DITHOR provides pre-reading activities, vocabulary lessons, guided literature discussions as well as a focus the godly character traits of faith, fear of the Lord, responsibility, brotherly love, loyalty, virtue, obedience, joy, and integrity.

If you managed to get through this entire post, thanks for sticking with me! I use Heart of Dakota not only for the rigorous academic Charlotte Mason style curriculum that it is, but also because of how it so carefully weaves Christ through each and every aspect of study. It provides a means for intentional heart to heart conversations about important life situations in a way that isn't artificial! I will post about what I am using for Jonathan's Kindergarten next!  I am so excited about the 2012-2013 school year!

A Job Well Done!

We finally pulled the large tub of CD's from Rich's office to upload them.  We have a lot of CD's! I have a huge classical CD collection from my music teaching days, plus all of our other music that we have collected over the years! The picture above shows some of the CD's, but not all of them!

One of the reasons that we've not done this before now is that neither Rich nor I had time to do it. So, we enlisted the help of our computer savvy 10 year old son. It took him about 2 hours a day for about  a week and he had all of our CD's uploaded and now easily accessible on our iPods and phones.

I am so thankful that the job is done and that Martin was able to do it for us!

We are DONE!

Martin finished 4th grade on Thursday. There was a pretty big leap in the amount of work required this year. The books we read were incredibly rich, exciting, and interesting. I enjoyed reading them as much as Martin did.
Preparing Hearts for His Glory has been my favorite Heart of Dakota program so far! We struggled a bit through Bigger, last year ... mainly because it is such a HUGE skill building year that was very teacher intensive. I don't regret a minute of that vital training year, because I am convinced that going through the Bigger Hearts guide with the great care that we did - is what made Martin ready for Preparing ... and made the Preparing year so rich and rewarding!  I love that we did a basic overview of World History for an entire year before we dig in to the deeper details that are coming over the next 3 years. This coming year we will be studying just a portion of the overview we did this year, so we will be able to look more closely at the details of each time period that we cover. Preparing Hearts covers a complete overview of World History from Creation to current times.
The next 3 guides; Creation to Christ, Resurrection to Reformation, and Revival to Revolution will give a more detailed coverage of each individual time period leading up to the American Revolution.
I have always loved history, and the Heart of Dakota approach to history has made me love it even more.
Preparing Hearts is a transitional year in many ways because it gently trains the child to become more independent. Martin was quite opposed to the independence of it at first, but by the end of the year he was able to complete most of his day without my help. (other than the English and Math lessons that I  needed to teach him ... as well as the history readings ... because I couldn't bare to have him do those without me!)
Martin has grown the most this year in his ability to write. We spend a great deal of time doing oral narrations. The oral narrating that begins all the way back in Kindergarten begins to transition to written narration. The very first written narration that Martin did this year was downright painful. By the end of the year, the required 3-5 sentence narration became an 8 sentence narration without any difficulty at all.
We have already received our books for the new school year and while everyone is excited about having a month off, they are also excited about starting a fresh  new year with lots and lots of new and exciting books to read.
If you homeschool, and haven't found a good curriculum "fit" for your family, I encourage you to check out Heart of Dakota. We have found the Charlotte Mason approach to education to be rich and rewarding and has developed such a desire and love for learning in my children.
If you are not a homeschooler, but are looking for excellent books for your children to read, I encourage you to check out HOD's book packages. (I linked you to the level 2/3 package, but you can find links to the upper level packages on that same page)

Runner's Camp

We are all going to Runner's Camp this week! Martin and Aaron are with 10 year old boys and 7 year old boys respectively. Jonathan and Rosalie are going to the mini-camp.
I am helping and doing some teaching in the 4 and 5 year old group at the mini-camp.
It was a great day for all of us. Jonathan and Rosalie loved the mini-camp and were so happy to learn that they get to go back tomorrow!
Martin and Aaron got t-shirts and a special runner's camp bag and Bible. We got a special lunch box for Jonathan and Rosalie ... and you would have thought it was the best gift they had ever received! They loved taking their lunch with them to mini-camp!
I'll come back later with a picture of all of them in their t-shirts. J & R got their own runner camp t-shirts  to wear the rest of the week! 

The Black Pearl Lego Set

Martin loves Legos. He has been interested in the Pirates of the Caribbean lately. (although he's never seen any of the movies!) He has been wanting the Black Pearl Pirate ship for months!

Can you even imagine how excited he was to open up this birthday gift and find The Black Pearl?? It is a set with over 800 pieces!

He opened it late one night ... and was up very early the next morning building. He started building it at about 7 AM and was completely finished with it at about 9:30 AM. He's a pretty fast builder. (I did make him stop at one point and eat his breakfast!)

Frog Eggs ... Here we go again!

The day we came home from Virginia, the ditches were full of water ... so Martin checked out the ditches and found frog eggs. Rich told him to collect some of them and bring them inside so we could watch them grow. One of the things that frustrated us about our previous experience with tadpoles is that we never knew whether they were frogs or toads. This time, however, we knew without a doubt that they were frog eggs. Frogs lay their eggs in clusters ... and toads lay their eggs in long lines. The picture above and below is a picture of our ditch with BOTH frog eggs and toad eggs. The day after we collected the frog eggs, we saw that a toad had laid eggs the evening before.

You may be able to see the clusters of eggs and lines of eggs better in this picture ... the toads eggs are almost black in color(in the long chain of eggs) ... and the frog eggs are much lighter in color and floating in clusters. 

This picture above show the eggs in our plastic container ... as you can see some of the eggs are now tadpoles ... but at the time I took the picture had not hatched yet.
Since I took the above picture, they have all hatched and are swimming around. It will be very interesting to find out what kind of frogs they are. We have been trying to identify the frog sounds that we hear at night outside our house ... and we've definitely heard the Fowler's Toad call, the Cope's Gray Tree Frog, and Spring Peepers.
So ... here we go again!

Martin's Birthday

We started off the day by taking the birthday boy (and siblings) to a place they had never been before ... Krispy Kreme! It's true ... Martin had a Krispy Kreme Donut for the very first time on his 10th birthday. It was a very FUN treat! They got the royal treatment with hats and balloons all around!

Next, we went to play at the park. Martin got to choose the park we went to ... and he chose the park near our old house.

A little bit later in the day, he opened a few of his gifts ... can't go wrong with LEGOS!

He also got several books from the Viking Quest book series that he has been reading. Excellent books ... and I know because I get to read them too! (I read the first one in the series out loud to him for history read aloud ... the rest of them I am reading on my own ... by choice ... because they are just that good!)

This card he is reading is a gift from Daddy. Rich is taking Martin to Busch Gardens for the day this weekend. Rich's birthday tradition for all of the children is that he takes them out to lunch for a special birthday lunch ... they choose the restaurant. For Martin's very special 10th birthday, they will be spending the entire day together ... eating lunch at Busch Gardens. He is super excited about it! He can't wait to spend the day riding roller coasters!

For his birthday dinner ... he chose to have Chicken and Bowtie pasta in an Italian Red Pepper Cream Sauce. YUM! I'll post the recipe later. 

It's getting harder and harder each year to blow out those candles! It took a couple of blows to get all 10 of them out!

His cake this year was so good! It is a 4 layer chocolate cake with alternating layers of a fluffy peanut butter frosting and chocolate frosting. It was RIDICULOUSLY good. It may just become Rich's traditional birthday cake too. Martin is pretty sure that this is the cake he wants every year from now on too! I will post a recipe for this special cake later - it's worth the time and effort!
It was such a fun day from start to finish!