Benjamin's Graduation!

The day finally arrived to graduate our first student from

ARROW ACADEMY!

Benjamin Lewis Sahlstrom

Here they are....Ben and Jacob.....friends since they were babies!

Ben performed his Senior Piano Recital and honored his piano teacher Anna Jeanne Flesner.

Gift of luggage from the Berge Grandparents. This will come in handy for all the trips he will be taking in the future!

Springtime in Minnesota '09!

Time for mowing lawns.....go Annika!

Time to get the motorcycle out.......go Sam!

Becca is in her glory with the new kittens!

College visits from cousin Nat and his friend from Crown!

More Prom Photos!

The "group" that shared a table for the dinner. Five of them are exchange students representing Austria, Germany, Thailand, Italy and Switzerland!

All four of the "siblings"! They will miss each other alot when time comes for them to head home.

I thought it was fun to see Annika's hair from the side view. Thanks to Stacy and Sheri Zeug, the made the girls look like princesses! Annika had to spend the morning at the shooting range to finish her Firearms Safety Training. She made it home with her hair done just 15 minutes before they all headed out the door for pictures at the park! She said at least she didn't spend the whole day getting ready like some people! (BOYS!) HA!

I thought this was a great shot of Bombay, Ben and Johannes. They look happy and carefree!

Tracy Prom 2009!

Well, our kids were all involved in prom this year, so here are a few pictures from the fun weekend. They had fun dressing up and being with friends for the day! It certainly was a whirlwind day, but the weather was gorgeous for it.




Alina and Ben
Poor Alina had to get up at 4:00am and drive home from Chicago that morning! She is an exchange student from Austria. Very sweet!

Annika and Aric
Aric is a friend from church, and he has been a great help with our AWANA program this year. He is great with kids and lots of fun!

Bombay and Megan
Notice Bombay's eye color? Well, he escorted Megan who is a very dear friend of our family and has an amazing singing voice!

Kathrin and Caleb
Caleb is another forever friend of Ben's who has been in our life forever. He is also homeschooled and had a great time teasing Kathrin!

Mall of America and Science Museum

We were finally able to take our extra "kids" to the Mall of America for a visit! We were at the Science Museum with our MACHEA home school group, so we pulled them out of school for the day so they could join us! After the museum we shopped for a few hours before heading home. Great day!

Here, Ben, Bombay, Kathrin, Annika and Charisma took a shot of their feet on the "home plate"!

Here we are coming down the musical Titanic staircase at the Science Museum. It sure was tempting to play on them all day, but the problem was that everyone else had the same idea, so the music was...well...not really music!

Aaron, Jason, Ben, Bombay and Annika pose as true Viking fans!

Another Nephew!

Here are a couple of shots of Ben and Mindy's newest addition. We were able to see him over Easter, and I could hardly get enough of him. What a little angel he is. Benjamin took these shots and I thought they were darling! We love you little Liam Caron!

More Memories

This is the view from our room. In the morning we walk out on our little patio and this is what we see. We really love it!

This is the view we get when we step out our front door. There is a Church right across the street, but it does get a little noisy sometimes from the traffic and sounds of motors, so we prefer the ocean side for sure!

We went shopping at Market 28 which is just crowded with sellers and tourists. This is an example of a family who is selling what they make. Bracelets and belts! Notice the little baby who is hanging on her mother's back, sound asleep. We were amazed by them.

This corner of the market interested me greatly. There were musicians and entertainers all along who would perform for you - for a tip of course. So, we had a group serenade us with a "romantica" song. It was beautiful!