Joshua Is 7 Now

My biggest boy is 7 years old already (as of June 25th). Sometimes it's hard for us to imagine that we have a 2nd grader now, but we do! And he is such an incredible 2nd grader at that. It's hard to know where to even start to describe my Joshua. First of all, talking to him is like talking to a little adult. People always comment on his verbosity and ability to carry on a conversation. Even here in a foreign country he'll monologue to people who have no clue what he is saying. It can be humorous at times. :-) Joshua is very smart and can solve incredible math problems that 7 year old's are not supposed to be able to figure out. He's always had a bent toward math, so that's fun for me since I was a math major in college. He's been reading well for a while now, but lately he's been reading more and more by himself. For a long time he would only read out loud if he was actually reading a book (as opposed to just looking at the pictures and skimming familiar words), but now I can tell he's actually reading everything and he's spending more time with books in his hands regularly. He was most excited to receive his new "real" Bible, the first real Bible he's ever owned, for his birthday. He's totally into looking up verses and stories and reading them for himself. What's In the Bible is a series of DVD's put out by Phil Vischer (of Veggie Tales) that the boy's love. Joshua can pretty much quote an incredible amount of information that he's learned from these DVD's. It's awesome, really. I'm still amazed at what Joshua remembers and can recall with incredible clarity. Lately he's been into making recordings of things whether it's quoting information about the Bible or recording one of his rescue missions. He loves leading his brothers (or anyone else who will follow him) on rescue missions to save people from the volcano, hurricane, earthquake, etc. Rescue Heroes was his theme for his birthday and it was perfect for him right now. We gave him the Rescue Heroes Movie just for the occasion and he has literally watched it every day for at least 2 weeks. Saying he loves the movie would be a major understatement. When he takes a break from rescuing the world, he also loves drawing things, especially in his doodling book. No matter what Joshua is doing, whenever he is doing it he is totally focused and intensely into it. He is not to be deterred when he has his mind set on something. He is our intelligent, silly, intense, fun-loving, imaginative 7 year old and we love him so very much.

Birthday donuts!

The day of Joshua's birthday was a fun day. We went to a new local "fun place" that turned out to be really cool. The boys played in an indoor play place for over an hour then Joshua and Luke climbed up this tower thing. Then Joshua got in the bungy strap and jumped on this giant trampoline. He went up really high, but was very brave. He seemed to really like it! After that Joshua wanted to eat Dairy Queen hot dogs for lunch. That night we had taco jiaozi (dumpling wrappers stuffed with taco meat and cheese then fried) for supper. We had four friends who have been here just for the summer who came to join us for the yummy supper.


About 10 days before Joshua's actual birthday, we had a party with all of his friends. We had it early because all of the friends were leaving for the U.S. before his birthday. It was really important to Joshua to have everyone on his "list" to come to his birthday party, so we decided to have the party early for him. His awesome Grandmother sent some great things for the party, and the four summer friends helped make it a great party. They helped decorate (including making the "fire" for the cake to be set on) and helped with the game ideas as well.

These are the sticker badges that Grandmother sent for everyone to wear to the party. She also sent fireman hats for all the kids.

The kids had a great time playing rescue hero games like using flashlights to search for the hidden stuffed animals in the dark room. Then they formed teams to follow the clues to find the man trapped in the burning building. See below for a picture of one of the teams reading their clues. The last game was to assist the Rescue Hero astronaut, Roger Houston, in protecting the earth from the meteor shower by keeping the balloons from touching the floor. What ensued was 8 children under the age of 7 having the time of their lives together in my living room. It really was a fun party.

I spent most of the day making the fire truck cake for this party. It was my first time to use fondant and I don't know if I'll ever use it again! It was not easy, but I was very pleased with the final product. Here is Aunt Stacey assisting me via Skype when I was afraid all was lost and the cake was falling apart. :-) Thanks, Stac, for helping me and building my confidence in my cake decorating skills!

This is the fire that the four summer friends decorated for us. It really made the cake look cool. The figures around the cake are actually all Billy Blazes, the Rescue Heroes fireman.

Happy Birthday, my terrific Joshua. I'm so glad that you were born and that God has blessed our family with you!

Luke Turned 5!

My sweet Luke turned 5 on May 12th. I know I will probably say this about all the kids’ birthdays, but I can’t believe that Luke is already 5. He is so totally pumped about starting kindergarten in the fall; he is so ready. He’s changed so much and seems to have grown up a lot over the last year. Though he still has more physical energy and activity than the other boys, he can now actually sit down for longer periods of time to do school work or other things that he’s interested in. And somehow in the last few months he’s started to read! I have been doing preschool stuff with him this whole past year, but I have not focused on teaching him how to read at all. I just figured we’d do that in kindergarten. But he’s obviously ready because he’s reading quite a bit now and wants to read more. It was most evident when he got his new Beginner’s Bible for his birthday and he started reading the stories out loud. Daddy and I are always shocked how much he knows how to read already. I don’t know why we’re so surprised; Luke has always been one to figure things out quickly. He’s just always been quite intuitive. Something else that really marks Lukey is his sensitivity and gentleness. I’ve said this before, but it seems almost like a contradiction in terms. At times he is super hyper and going psycho. Then he can be the most gentle and sweet kid in the very next moment. He’s my go-to-guy when I need help with Mercy. He seems to be able to understand best how to care for little ones, and he loves to make babies laugh. I have often heard him say to Mercy that he will always be there to protect her – so sweet! He also seems to be quite sensitive to spiritual things lately. His understanding of the Gospel seems to go deep and he has that sweet childlike faith. His prayers often seem more heartfelt than rote. We love watching this develop in him. Actually, when I asked what theme he wanted for his birthday, he said he wanted to have a “Bible” birthday. So, everyone who came to his party dressed up like a Bible character and we made a scroll cake because that’s what he wanted. I’ll post some pictures below. The things that Luke is really into right now are reading his new Bible, playing Rescue Heroes with his brothers, watching What’s In the Bible DVD’s, and playing soccer. He is an active, intelligent, silly, funny, sweet 5 year old boy and we love him so much! Here are the pictures from his birthday celebration...

We started out the day with his first gift, which was his Beginner's Bible from Grandma and Grandpa. He LOVED it! Then for birthday breakfast we had birthday donuts with breakfast burritos.

We spent his birthday opening up presents throughout the day and taking the kids to a big indoor kid's play place at a nearby mall. We had KFC and Dairy Queen for lunch as per Luke's request. :-) Then for dinner we had one of Luke's favorites - chicken and dumplings. It was a fun family day. We had Luke's actual birthday party a few days later when all of Luke's friends could come. The party was a big hit and lots of fun. Many friends dressed up, and the party games were a fun for the kids. We played pin the rock to Goliath's head and Bible charades. The kids actually did a great job acting out the different Bible characters. Everyone had a good time.

Luke was Jonah, Joshua was Joshua, and Micah was Micah. :-)

We're so glad God gave us our wonderful Luke 5 years ago!

Belated Easter Pics

Trying desperately to catch everyone up! Here are the pics from Easter...

This is our Easter garden that we make every year. There's a tomb on one side with a rock that we put in front of it on Friday night. Then on Sunday morning when the boys get up the rock has been moved and Jesus' body isn't there! He is risen indeed!

Here we are making our fun Easter crafts... We dyed eggs sometime that week, too, but in the craziness somehow I missed taking any pictures! Sorry about that.

On Sunday afternoon we had a fun egg hunt with our friends from church.
It was such a pretty day!

Here are our Easter cuties! (Note the little white figure that Micah is holding.
It's Jesus, one of Micah's favorite toys to carry around.)

Passover Seder Meal

When I was a kid, I remember taking an "authentic" seder meal at church one time, and I thought it was really neat. I have wanted to do something like that with my kids, so this year we tried. They have known the passover story for a long time now, but we thought that taking the seder meal might help them understand a little better about how the Jewish people celebrated every year. Now, we are not Jewish, and probably left off lots of important details, since we were doing the "Wideman little boy" version of the meal. But it was enough for the boys to get the idea of what the passover meal was like every year. We basically gathered ideas from several websites, then adapted it to a preschool version as we told the passover story again and ate the different foods, trying to explain the significance. The best part (and maybe what they will remember the most!) was when they had to eat the bitter herbs. This was to represent the years of Jewish slavery. I got great pictures of the boys bravely trying the bitter herbs. Classic. Anyway, just wanted to share one of our family experiences with you.

Catch Up Time

Okay, I know I have lots to catch up on, so here goes...

First thing to catch up on is St. Patrick's Day - always a fun day at the Wideman home. Sorry it's almost June and I'm just now getting around to posting March pictures, but at least I'm getting them out there!

We had green oatmeal for breakfast that day - yum!

And for lunch, we had green eggs and pancakes. Micah, whose favorite color is green, thought this was all just for him.

And now on to some Mercy catching up. She's already 10 1/2 months old, so we've got a few months worth of cuteness to display here. Don't worry, this is not all. There is more to come in future (hopefully near future) posts.

Thought you wouldn't mind a little big brother super hero action here...

This was taken on Palm Sunday. Easter pics to come soon!