We Passed!

Nate got his amateur radio license a few months ago and challenged Toby that if he studied hard he could take the Technician test and get a license too. Nate helped Tobias understand frequency, wavelength, calculating voltage/resistance/current, safety, text-taking skills, FCC rules and a lot of new vocabulary.

There are 350 questions to study for the Technician level exam; some are calculations and some are simply memorizing various rules and terms. They studied a different topic each night like FCC rules or Ohm's law.

With the test date approaching quickly, I helped Tobias review some things during the day. I even took a practice test and nearly passed. So Friday night I decided that I would take the test with him on Sunday.

Sunday afternoon, we had our number 2 pencils and calculators ready to go, filled out all the paperwork, and began the 35-question test. I finished and passed, and then Toby finished up his text. The text administrators counted up his wrong answers and I could see they wanted him to pass. They got up to 9 wrong answers (the maximum you are allowed), and then checked the last column of questions, which had NO mistakes! Whew! We both passed. The test administrator said they had never seen someone so young pass before.

Now we wait for our call signs to appear in the FCC database, and then we are allowed to be on the air.

I'm so proud of the hard work Tobias put in and all the things he now knows about electronics, waves, and more. He has a small radio on the way to use.

T: 5 years!

Five years ago we were very excited to meet Tobias! It would have been hard then to imagine him as a helping, hiking, reading, building, joking 5 year old. It's fun to be able to hear all his ideas and questions about the world and I'm excited to see how much he learns and grows this year.

Some of his current favorite things:

• Book: Voyage of the Dawn Treader (to listen to), Marvin K. Mooney will you Please Go Now (to read himself)
• Food: pizza (for me to cook), sausages (to cook himself)
• Thing to do outside: play on playground with ECHO preschool friends
• Thing to do with Dad: Snap Circuits or go for a walk
• Thing to do with Malachi: build trains or Duplos
• Thing to do with Avery: pat his head
• Thing to do with Mom: help clean the kitchen floor
• Thing to do in the car: look out the window at trains and mountains
• Movie: The Iron Giant

Things he thinks he will do while he is 5:

• learn to cook at ECHO
• finish the Narnia books with Dad
• hold Avery

Hij blijft trouw aan alle generaties

My grandma says she started playing organ in church around age 14. She is certainly talented and I sneaked a little video of her playing the piano a few days ago on her 82nd birthday that I will post later.

My dad took this "Koraal" (Chorale) of Psalm 100 from Grandma's falling-apart psalm book and framed it with music notes made from piano hammers. It will have a special place in my music room.

A Few Memories

First food, 6th anniversary, 3rd birthday, first time in the swimming pool, the last mile of an 18-hour-drive road trip...life is filled with milestones and accomplishments. Sometimes they fly by at an alarming rate, but they're great opportunities to celebrate and remember. Remember how Tobias didn't want to blow out his 2nd candle last year but this year he knew just what to do? Remember two hundred people singing "praise Him above you heavenly hosts" at our wedding reception? 

I wonder if Tobias will remember our recent trip. Will he remember riding in the "granola" (gondola) and looking at the mountains? Making nutella and marshmallow animals? Throwing rocks in the lake with Uncle Jon? I hope he'll at least have fun looking at the pictures and hearing stories as he gets older! Maybe Malachi won't remember anything specific, but he knows that his Grandpas and Grandmas and Aunts and Uncles love him a lot!

Father's Day

A belated Happy Father's Day to the D-A-D that is just right for our kids.

Love you!

Theological Education

So much to learn! Tobias is soaking up Catechism questions and asking "what letter does that start with" dozens of times per day. Malachi is scootching, sliding, and drifting away from where I set him on the floor. Nate is business-ing and programming and I'm sure he's learning things that I do not even understand. Hannah is sewing and making patterns (hat tutorial coming soon when I work out the last quirks), planning for mega-freezer-cooking day next week, and scheming ways to keep the quail out of the garden. It might be a stretch to say the chickens are learning anything new, but they are enjoying the moveable coop, they get fresh grass every day or two.

Vos Reunion 2011

We had a great time at Estes Park and Rocky Mountain National Park, at a Vos family reunion. At the last reunion, Nate and I were not engaged yet, so a lot has changed for us, and it was good to get to see others too and catch up with them. Tobias enjoyed being teased by his great-great-uncles and going hiking. We did have one trail injury; Tobias tripped on our very first stop and cut his forehead, and then the next day got it bleeding again by running into a rock. Thankfully it wasn't more severe and it seems to be healing well.

A highlight for me was our hike to Nymph Lake, Dream Lake, and Emerald Lake. I thought it was neat how each lake was different: Nymph Lake had lots of lily pads and baby ducks, Dream Lake was very clear and reminded me of the book Hatchet, and the highest, Emerald Lake, was secluded and surrounded by steep rocky sides. I was carrying 25 weeks worth of baby on me and felt tired by the end, but Nate had 25 pounds of Tobias on him for most of the hike.

Emerald Lake

Julie, Doug, Rebecca, Ryan, Lois, Nate, Tobias (in backpack, asleep), Hannah + baby

click here to see more of Doug's reunion pictures