May & June 2010

Shockingly there haven't been many updates for a while from deep inside the Roberts Portal. Emily finished up her semester strong but is now taking summer classes. If all goes according to plan, Emily should be graduating by December of 2011. Emily is going to make an incredible counselor and I can't wait for her to use her gifts to help other people. A lot has happened in the past 2 months including celebrating Mother's and Father's Days, saying goodbye to some of our closest friends, entertaining visitors, and celebrating Cole's 2nd birthday.

Here are just a few pictures of the fun and festivities. I'll post some more pictures on Facebook when I get a chance.

Emily got some great Mother's Day gifts from Cole & Gwen, including some new pjs for the summer!

Ryan had an incredible opportunity to fly to Clearwater for a couple of days to hang out with some of our former youth kids. Many of our kids are graduating seniors and so Ryan got to put on one final "youth group" for them before they head off to college. It was a great trip!

We have tried to get as much time as possible with some of our friends before they head off to bigger and better things after graduating. We have had to say many tough good-byes, but thus is the reality of seminary.

Emily's parents flew up for a visit over Memorial Day Weekend. Cole and Gwen loved the time they got to spend with Grandpa and Mimi.

While Al & Kris were in town we also had a dedication ceremony for Cole and Gwen. It was something that we kept putting off for various reasons but were finally able to carve out the right time and place for it. We asked our friend, Matt, to officiate over the 10-minute ceremony on-campus by the pond. We invited all of our friends and then had a bar-b-que afterwards. It was a very special day of commiting our children to the Lord and celebrating with our community of friends.

After 6 months of looking we finally bought a new(er) car! Yes, it's a minivan. And yes, that makes us super cool. Ryan is still rockin' the Explorer back and forth to work so that Emily and take the kids around in the Sienna. It will be nice to have all that room when we roadtrip it to Michigan this summer.
Cole turned 2 on June 11th. We had a huge party for him and the whole neighborhood showed up! It was a little crazy as the weather did not cooperate and he had to move the party into our breezeway/apartment. So amidst all the craziness to didn't snap too many pics of the party. So here is a picture of Cole playing with one of his favorite birthday presents --- a Slip 'n Slide!

I just love our little angel, Gwen. She is 8 months now and is sitting up like a champ, rolls all over the floor, and has 2 teeth! She loves being around Cole, except for when he accidentally kicks her and steps on her.

I like to give her a mohawk when mommy isn't around :)

Spring Has Sprung!

Just a quick update from us. Emily is about 2 weeks from being done with this semester and is doing great in her classes. We are starting to prep the garden to plant some good stuff in the next few weeks. We are enjoying the change in weather (even though it did snow again last week), as most days have been warm enough to head outside with the kids and soak up some sun. I am coming up on my 1-year anniversary of working at Chick-fil-A and things are going well there. We have too many good pictures to post here on the blog, so I posted them on Facebook and you can view them by clicking on this link:

Here are a couple of family pictures in case you don't feel like looking at all the pics on Facebook:

Life :)

Cole is definitely developing into a very loving and very opinionated young man. His "terrible twos" have been here since 18 months, but he is already showing signs (very small signs) of being obedient. On his good days he is so enjoyable to be around. He loves Elmo and all the other Sesame Street characters. He loves playing with his friends Samuel and Gami. His vocabulary is pretty extensive now, with his new favorite things to say being "I'm funny?" and "pemis" (penis). The Piehls were so nice to give us their double-jogging stroller! We've already taken the kids out for one run and now that the weather is improving we will be hitting the trails up more often.
Gwen is doing well as she approaches 6 months of life. Three of the past six nights she has slept for 8-9 hours straight, so mommy is starting to get a little more sleep these days, which couldn't have come at a better time as Emily has a huge paper due on Tuesday and then the end of the semester on the horizon. Gwen loves being outside (just like Cole), but when she's inside she enjoys posting onto her new blog.

Although I did say that the weather was "improving", we do live in Denver and so we could get significant snowfalls into May. At the end of March we got almost 2 feet of snow in 24 hours. Here is the aftermath.

I love this picture of my favorite girls!
More pictures (and maybe some videos) should be forthcoming in the next few days.....