Judah's first steps and first birthday, Joel's first rides, & Mommy and Daddy's 2nd Get a way!

I must begin this post with a rather exciting announcement... There will be 2 more Penton Grankids in April 2012, and no, we are not having twins! Check it out in this video:


Judah officially took his first steps on Sept 4th with the help of Rachel Spath in Van Wert, however, he was in no rush to start walking.  When Joel took his first steps we were able to easily motivate him by asking him to "walk to Mommy!" or "walk to Daddy!"  But that didn't motivate Judah.  He would take a few steps ONLY if we held an exciting toy in front of him.  Eventually we just gave up on pushing it, because it was obvious that he would walk when he wanted to.

We were able to take a family trip to Kings Island soon after that.

Judah loved Kings Island too!

We were anxious to see how Joel 3 would like the rides.  He is pretty scared of a lot of things: dogs, vacuum cleaners, loud trucks, etc. So we weren't sure how he would react.  Joel was 37" so he was just above the line for most of the kid rides.  Mommy and Daddy were kind of silly to take him on an adult ride first.. but it ended up being ok.  Here's a video of "The Monster" afterwards.



The next ride was some sort of "Tree Drop" and Joel just LOVED it. He got his own seat and looked as small as a bug next to his Daddy.  At one point we weren't sure if Joel 3 was going to be big enough, and we weren't sure if Joel 2 was small enough! Watch the video to see:



The last one I just have to mention is the bumper cars, Joel did such a fantastic job driving and even though he dangled his foot outside of the car (eek!) and almost got out too early (oh man!) and also got stuck.. he never got frustrated or cried at all. AND .. he didn't get injured! Mommy was a little nervous to leave him in a car all by himself but he did a super job.

The Groskopf Grankids minus Judah and Justin here, all had a blast at "Dino Alive" with Gamma and Papa

Judah had 3 small Birthday parties.  The first one was at Chick-fil-a with my Uncle Mike and Aunt Lindsey.  They both thoroughly enjoyed their cupcakes and toys!

The next party was at the Holliday's house with a super yummy homemade cake (Emily made it... did you think it was me? ha.)



Judah had fun running away from his presents, here's a video of that:


And finally... here's a glimpse of the 3rd party in Cincinnati.  He probably got the most toys and the most sugar at this one.. since Mommy and Daddy were gone!


Judah quickly weaned after his first birthday which allowed Joel and I to get away together on an FCA retreat to Kalahari resort in Sandusky, OH.

Judah enjoying his new found drink - milk!

Alone with no kids! What do we do with ourselves?

We quickly decided that Joel and Judah would be jealous of us if they knew all the fun we were having.

Oh my! Joel would just LOVE this Rhino! We gotta take a pic!

But seriously, it was such a great time for us to be together and focus on Christ. We had some good conversations and we had a decent amount of time to step back from our lives and 'take inventory' per say.  I found in my own life that I had most of my priorities straight and dedicated a good amount of time to each except for the areas of Bible reading and reading to our children.  Both of which I think are extremely important but I clearly was not spending enough time each day doing either of them.  I love time like this to check myself and get back on track.  We were so grateful for this opportunity!