Happy Birthday Sammy

March 15th 2011 - The Youngest Axelson Turns 3 !!!!

(The rest of us are all cheering him on- you see, it was said a while back that when the youngest Axelson turns 4 we can have a pet; so far that hasn't ever happened... but now we've only got a year to go!) :)

Sammy with his new trucks.


This is Sam's cake. Pretty neat, huh? Mom made the cake, frosting and all, dairy-free so the poor little guy could actually eat his own birthday dessert. It actually wasn't supposed to be that long, we kind of had some pan trouble, but we made it work and we all think it turned out even better than it would have, had everything gone smoothly.



We spent the morning at the Rec. Center - Sam got to ride around on little cars with his buddies in the gym while the rest of us played wally-ball. Afterwards we ate lunch down on the boat with some friends. While we were there I was asking Sam about everything he got do that day, and he enthusiastically told me: "This is the BEST Birthday EVER!" :)

For dinner we had some good friends over and that night 3-year-old Sam went to bed will a full day of fun under his belt.
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Happy Birthday Sammy!

Okay, so Joanna has been officially diagnosed by her siblings with having the "too busy to blog" syndrome. Working at the dentist office, teaching piano, playing basketball and trying to keep up with school at the same time makes it pretty hard to sqeeze in additional social networking much less the other components of her packed schedule. So, (like most hand-me-down things so common to a second oldest) I guess I've inherted the blog-keeping-uping as well. :)

Valentines Day was quite a while ago, but here are some pictures from the party:

We blew up a bunch of balloons before everybody showed up. It looks like there's some sort of competition going on here, but really I think they're just posing.

We played games, ate lunch and did all the other things you do at Valentine's parties. At the end of the day we played a big game of draw-&-guess Pictionary, then some of us went for a walk in the grey, rainy, beautiful Alaskan weather.

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Emma started playing indoor soccer a couple weeks ago. We all enjoy watching her games and love cheering her and her team on. I'm not sure who gets more excerise- Emma on the soccer court or all of us on the bleachers.

Emma, being an awsome goalie. (I'm not quite sure if she's throwing the ball, or makeing a smooth move in anticipation of catching it...)

I'm not exactly sure what she's doing here either... I wonder if it has anything to do with the ball, or if it is just another random act of Emma'ness.

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In case you were wondering; it is still snowy here. It did rain the other day, but that didn't really make things any better. We got in a couple of good days outside before everything turned to slush and ice though.

This is our snow mountain, or was our snow mountain. We descided to build a hugely monsterous pile of snow hoping that sooner or later it might turn itself into an igloo. It never really did. The thing is, we all got so tired hauling all the snow over to one spot that we just deided to skip hollowing it out. Now, after the rain, it remains a lumpy, melting, sloppy white hill that will probably still be there a month from now. :)



In the midst of all the snow in our lovely little town, a missionary family came up to visit with us a bunch of other families and share with us an update on their work in Peru. It was amazing to hear again, the power that God's Word has to change lives. We got to spend a lot of time with them, at church, at our house, and out in the snow (they even helped us build our snow mountain, and made it into some of the pictures) :)



This is Emma and I playing Scattergories with three of the missionary kids.



So, that's what's been going on around here lately (and not so lately).
February flew by and March is already slipping away.

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Joanna and I are going on a short-term missions trip at the end of the month. I would be so thankful if you all prayed for us and this trip. Pray that God with have His hand of protection on us and our group, that He would keep our hearts humble and willing to serve Him, and that through us, God would impact, for His glory, the lives of the people we are going down there to serve.


I will add, before I sign off that you'd better have appreciated this post; not for the post's sake, I must say, but because this is the third time I've attempted to create it - the first two times I accidentatly deleated the complete entry just as I had finished the last word. -since then I've had sufficient time to get aquainted with this program and have commited to memory this complete section. :) -So, here it is.


...no wonder Joanna didn't seem to mind when I offered to relieve her position...
:)

A Little Catching Up

I've been informed that I am a terrible blogger-keeper-upper. :) ...Life has been so crazy lately... So I've got some catching up to do.

We had a good freeze about a couple weeks ago and spent lots of time out on the ice!

Ward Lake never quite froze completely, but we still skated at Frog Pond.

Carrie got a new camera lens for Christmas. She captured this ice crystal pretty well (and no, she said she didn't edit it either).

I don't have any pictures of the next event I'll mention. :) Sam had surgery last Monday to fix a hernia. Yep, the third kid of the family to get cut open within a year. We are getting well acquainted with our surgeon... :) Sam's recovery was amazing! His surgery was in the morning and by the afternoon he was off the couch, throwing balls and riding his "motorcycle" around the house. The next day as Mom was changing his clothes he was suprised to see a bandage and asked Mom what it was for. She told him it was from the surgery and it upset him as he started to remember. But as soon as he was dressed, he forgot all about it and was just fine. :)

Last Saturday we spent the beauitful afternoon hiking over on Gravina.

We could tell how much we were welcomed by all the friendly signs we came upon along the way.

We were actually looking at a little piece of property that is (kind of, sort of, may be) for sale. :)