Wonderful Days of May

We had some fun times the beginning of this month. I managed to capture most of it in pictures for once too! Hooray for using the camera!

Tante Melissa graduated from Dordt! hooray!
The Riezebos siblings

After watching Melissa complete her four years of hard work, we headed to Pella for Tulip Time with Garry's parents so that they could experience the wonderful world of Dutch traditions here in little ol' Iowa.
Watching the night parade at Tulip Time!

Posing by the Tulips!

Family Picture!

More pretty tulips and a pretty girl!

Visiting Uncle Jordan and Aunt Andrea in Brookings, South Dakota!

Parental Musings of the Easter Season

Having a child is amazing; amazing simply because as a parent, that child is yours. As a parent, I get to love, cherish, guide, and discipline my beautiful daughter that I carried for nine months and then went through labor in order to bring into the world. Absolutely amazing.
Since this is my first year as a parent through the week of Christ's death and resurrection, I seem to be feeling things differently. The idea of God the Father watching his son endure pain and torment on the cross takes on a whole new meaning. As a parent, I hate it, absolutely despise it, when Anika is in pain. The pain can be as little as a slight bump of her head or more extreme like getting her finger pinched by her carset buckle. To see her face look up at me, tears forming in her eyes, beginning to cry as if to beg me, "Make the pain stop, Mommy. I am hurt and I need you to help me," makes me ache for her. Of course I wish that at my touch, the pain would be instantly gone and she would immediately smile and be ready to play again, the feeling of pain a forgotten experience. All I can do is hold her, rub her back, murmur sweet expressions of my love for her and how everything will be okay in a moment, that the pain will not last.
How tragic a day was the cross for our Father God to watch his son, his only son, go through the physical agony of crucifixion and the spiritual agony of hell. For God to choose to do nothing to help his son, to decide not to send any sort of comforting words, to remain silent when Jesus looked up into heaven, searching for his Father's face and cry, "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?" Jesus knew that at any moment the Father could have ended his son's pain, make it instantly vanish.
How could God have done it? How could he forsake his own son and put him through that pain?
God turned his face away from his son and looked upon his daughter: Joelle Dawn Riezebos. He looked away from one child in order to save millions of his children, including me, from crying out from eternal pain and suffering apart from Him.
God must have focused on me, and the glory that awaited Jesus after enduring all this pain, or how else could a Father watch his child suffer? I am forever grateful that God is my father, for the sake of the son, and that he did allow his son to die for me so that I might be with Him.
Hallelujah!

No, We Haven't Fallen Off the Face of the Earth...

I am a terrible blogger. LAZY is my only word to describe why I have not updated pictures or news of our little family lately. Not that I have been lazy in life, just lazy when it comes to opening up blogger, starting to type, finding some pictures...
So here are the highlights of the Riezebos household over the past couple months:

March 19th Garry, Anika and I drove down to Lincoln, NE to visit Anika's newest friend in the world, second cousin Evelyn Joanna. Anika was very interested in the baby. We were very excited to celebrate God's gracious gift to Amy and Marcus with a safe, fairly smooth delivery and a beautiful, healthy baby girl.


March 21st marked Anika's turning SIX MONTHS OLD! She is a mover and loves to explore by scooching and army crawling all over the house. I cannot leave anything on the ground that she should not have because she will be by the forbidden item in two seconds. Here's some pretty six month pictures!





Anika loves Jake



March 25th, I woke up in the morning, looked out the window, and saw...



April came with my baby growing more and more adorable every day. Here are some pictures from early in the month.







Anika is now capable of sitting up all by herself, but she rarely sits still as she would prefer to move around and grab toys and explore.
And here she is, in all her SEVEN MONTH majesty! I cannot believe how fast this is going. Everyone says time flies, but I never imagined it would go by this quickly. And I hear it gets worse...



In other news, I am painting our house (finally) and getting rid of the colors I didn't like. So here are all the before pictures. I'll hopefully post the afters SOON! Although painting a house with a baby is quite a challenge. I have to wait until this weather gets warmer so that I can open the windows to vent the paint smell without it getting 55 degrees in the house...

Springing into Spring

Changes are happening everywhere: outside the snow is melted away, inside my daughter is growing at an alarming rate, and inside my creative bug took over and I followed some urge to decorate for spring.
We had a difficult first that we just got through: a sick baby with a massive headcold. No fun at all. But Anika is a little trooper and even managed a few smiles in between her bouts of coughing and struggling to breathe. Poor little girl. And poor mommy who had to sleep on the couch and get up every couple hours to battle that mucous build-up. That's the job of a mom though. We are pretty amazing creatures when it comes to caring for our babies. I didn't know I could handle that little of sleep and still function. Although my eye started to twitch a bit after a few days of not a lot of sleep at night...she is doing much better now though, and is back to sleeping about 7-8 hours at a time. Praise God!
On a happier note, Anika has started eating solid food! We have started her on green beans, which I believe taste MUCH different than what she's used to eating, so she doesn't really EAT them as much as swishes them around in her mouth and makes faces. She eats them better in the morning and for lunchtime. At night she is not as willing to try.
Anika is also growing like the cutest little weed you've ever seen. She is now starting to babble as well, which is super fun to hear all those different consonants after just giggles and shrieks. I'm hoping that she can get the "m" consonant down to start saying "mommy", but so far the "d" is more prominent in her vocabulary, so we might have a daddy's girl on our hands!
Here are some catch-up pictures in no particular order...

Precious Lord, Take My Hand

The last few weeks have been a hectic time for our family. On January 29, Garry's Grandma Strikwerda was admitted to the hospital. On February 5th, Garry's mom called us as told us that Grandma was not doing well, and that she might possibly be near the end of her time here on earth with us. On February 6th, Garry's sister Melissa, Garry, Anika and I all flew to California. We were able to spend the next few days visitng Grandma in the hospital, first in ICU, and then in another room. Garry was only able to stay through February 9 because of the stresses of the busy accounting season, but he was able to see Grandma when she was still able to respond to us. On Friday evening, February 11, Grandma Jane was called home to be with Jesus. I decided to stay in California for another week to be available to help with anything, and for Anika to be a happy distraction in a sad time.
Grandma was blessed with 82 years, although they were not easy years to live through. However, she is a wonderful example to our family of how to remain firmly rooted in God and his promises to us, no matter what struggles this sinful world has for us. She lived through World War II in The Netherlands, lost a spouse at a young age, and dealt with numerous health problems throughout her life. Whenever I would visit and ask how she was doing she would say, "Oh, pretty good." Even after losing her independence and living in a nursing home, she would still find reasons to smile. We are so thankful that God allowed Grandma to meet Anika before she passed away, and we remain confident that she is with her Savior and will get to see us all whenever we join her in heaven.

Where, oh where, does the time go?

Four months ago God blessed us beyond what we deserve with a beautiful baby girl. We named her Anika Grace, and we constantly pray that she will know God's grace early, and that we can be models of that grace in everything we do and say around her.
I am constantly amazed how healthy and happy she has been so far. I am trying not to take one moment for granted of her health and well-being. She is developing well. We have a checkup on Tuesday which will give us more specific statistics on her growth, but she sits up (with assistance) and holds herself up well during tummy time, can bring toys to her mouth, and can squeal the highest note I've ever heard when she is happy.
Here are some four month pictures of my sweet baby.


pretty much everything goes in her mouth right now!

Merry Christmas!

Yes, I know that Christmas was WEEKS ago. Better late than never, right?
One of the joys/burdens of living away from both sides of our family is that the holiday season is FULL of traveling. As this was Anika's first Christmas, that meant it was the first time we have had to travel with a baby. On the whole, Anika did amazing, and Garry and I were not too shabby ourselves.

The Christmas season started off early with a trip up to Luverne, MN, to visit my parents and siblings. Since Dad is a pastor, traveling around Christmas is not really an option for them as he needs to sermonize more often, which means a road trip for us. The drive to brisk MN only takes about 3.5 hours, so Anika does well on that trip. My brother Jordan and his wife Andrea came down from Brookings, SD for the family festivities, and Nathan was home from Dordt for break. I was looking forward to getting a family photo this Christmas...but I completely forgot to take one. Boo me. My poor sister Nicole had just had surgery on her mouth, so the poor dear could barely eat our Christmas meal and did not want to pose for many photos, so I guess she didn't mind not having to smile (or act like it) for a Christmas picture.
I got some great gifts from my fam such as How to Train Your Dragon, an apron, Jars of Clay's Christmas CD.


Family Quiddler

Anika in the Christmas Spirit

Posing with Aunt Nicole!

After much excitement and frivolity, we headed to California for more of the same.
Anika did very well for her first plane ride. She only screamed her head off for a few seconds on the way home. I now know to be sympathetic and will never harbor ill feelings against a baby on a plane again. Poor parents cannot help it that the baby is out of his/her normal routine.
We had a nice two-week visit with the Riezebos and Strikwerda relations. Since Garry gets two extra vacation weeks for paternity leave, he took the longer vacation for the holidays to spend time with family. Anika had fun meeting cousins and great grandmas and great aunts and uncles.
Garry's family got a Wii for the family Christmas, along with a Wii Fit. Wow is that motivating when your little character's waist expands to match your own. Eeeh.

Sibling pic on Christmas Morning

Four Generations of Strikwerda/Riezebos
Anika also got to meet her future friend Jane Dorrit Edmonds who came for a visit! Jane was born a month after Anika, but as you can see, Anika is still a little girl.


Extra pretty in a Christmas present shirt!

Strikwerda-side cousin picture