Sofia and Lilian's 8th Birthday

We love celebrating the girls' birthday because:
1st) It was definitely the most special day in our lives to have these 2 special ladies finally arrive after a LONG wait (and a 38 hr delivery)!
2nd) We often have lots of family in town during this time of year, and we love spending time with family
3rd) this year my parents were here too, to celebrate
4th) we love celebrating anything with the girls
5th) we often get to celebrate several times: on their birthday, a party for friends adn a party for family
6th) This year they are also getting baptized on their birthday, what a special day!!!!

In short, we think they are pretty special! :)
We rented a water slide this year (Living social deal!!) and had many kids invited adn come to celebrate with them. We made a huge pan of hotdogs, had chips, ice cream, cake .... what else could they possibly think of? And it sure paid off, all of them were racing up and down, to get as many rides/slides down the slide, it was so fun to see them have sucha  good time together. I wish I could have gone on the slide too, but .... oh well. :)
We were blessed that the rain and thunder storm waited until the very end (we seem to have had rain/thunderstorms every year on their birthday), during which we played pictionary with chalk on the garage floor, and freeze dance ofcourse!

What a happy birthday party, yeah!

Pictures to come

Beautiful Pictures of Sofia and Lilian

My friend Brandy Floyd is an amazing photographer, that I was lucky to have taking pictures of the girls for their baptismal invitations. We loved so many of them! Thank you so much Brandy. We used one for the invitation, for the Thank you card, and many for a special baptism memory book. The memory book idea was not born until the day before, when we went to see their friends Lana and McKaylin be baptized: their families had made those girls' baptismal day as special as a wedding day, including a guest/picture/memory book of those girls. It was such a wonderful idea, that I took all of Brandy's pictures of my ladies,a nd ran to Target about 3 minutes before closing, and printed them out, to make a special 'scrapbook for both Sofia and Lilian that night. I am so happy for that example, as the book turned out to be beautiful and full of written memories!

Washington DC

We were blessed to be able to go to Washington DC this summer as a family. I had a conference to (partially) attend: ESV, while also trying to meet with my professors from Holland and Sweden, to see if we can somehow work together.
Anyway, after the meetings, during which Jsoh took all 4 children on the tram into the city, I joined them all at the Smithsonian Air and space museum. I loved how DC has so many museums that are ALL FREE! Yeah, there is not much better for a Dutch girl than free stuff!!!! :) We took a double decker bus around the city, where you could get off at any location to visit any of the memorials or museums, and took a boat tour as well. SO many things to see and learn, the girls loved it, and so did we. I actually started getting interested in (some) history!

In Petersburg

Beautiful Fietje

What a sweet face! Knorrie!

Boefje en Sofia in Petersburg

Zzzzzzzzzz!

More Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz!

The Wright Brothers' first airplane. Mini Boefje thinks it is VERY interesting! :)

Sofia en Lilian in front of Amelia Earhardt's plane

Lilian on the double decker somewhere in DC

And Fietje too

I believe this is in front of the Jefferson Monumnet, but my memory may serve me (usually) wrong.

My most special people!

IN front of the Lincoln memorial (again memory is not my strong suit)

With the girls at the World War II Memorial, Washington Monument in the background

Monument for the Nurses during WWII

WW II Memorial

A moment of reflection

In front of the White House

Natural History Museum, girls are about to be eaten by a shark!

At the train station after a long, but very exciting/satisfying/day of family fun and learning!

Who is who? They all look alike!

Cousins Camp

Following the family reunion, Josh' sister Jessica, and her husband Dave, organized 'cousins camp'. They had a a very tight schedule, and when I first saw it a few months ago, I closed the program quickly thinking 'oh no, not even more to add to my 'to-do-list'. As I knew everyone put their best effort into making this successful, I tried my best for my very small assignments. Well, I am ready to have cousins camp at our house next year. Wow! I have never seen anything more special for a family, what a way to develop thiose family relationships, to leave a legacy of the Jewkes and Heninger family, to create a sense of pride in the kids to be related to the parents of mom and dad, and to strengthen the will of all the kids to be the best they can be, so they can be an eternal family with their cousins and ancestors.

There were delicious breakfasts, lunches and dinners; exciting and innovative crafts and snacks, like making T-shirts, icecream in a ziplock bag, creating and blasting off rockets, creating beautiful personal journals (and encouragement to write i them), fun and creative treasure hunts, exciting and a huge variety of exciting games, races, relays, soccer games, water balloon games....... and many many more activities, particularly swimming. And best of all, there were many mini-devotionals, where the children heard special spiritually uplifting stories from mom/dad or their parents on values and principles that the Jewkes stand for: obedience, listening to the Spirit, importance of family and children, service..... My girls still remember many of the stories and the good feelings they felt, and the excitement of trying to be better. Finally, I absolutely loved how each child got some recognition for some special trait they showed during the day, and that they were reminded of how that trait resembled what one of the great-grandparents stood for. Each child would receive a button woith a picture of one of those great grandparents whom they had tried to emulate that day, which each one wore with pride!!!  Dave adn Jessica, I can not even begin to express the gratitude I felt for the two of you to put this program up. 1000,000x thank you.

Pictures to come

Cousins Camp

Following the family reunion, the