June/July 2010

Wow, I can't believe that the summer is half over already and I think the second half is going to go just as fast. We have been keeping very busy and it's only going to get busier...we love it. :) The kids have been doing a lot of swimming and just got done with their first week of lessons. They are all doing great and loving every minute of it. We just got back from our first weekend camping trip (see pictures below) and have 2 more camping trips (one to Michigan and one to Des Moines) plus a trip to the Ozarks scheduled yet between now and labor day. It's a little tiring just thinking about it, but all of it will be so fun and we are really looking forward to everything we have scheduled.

We had some of the cousins spend the night a couple of weeks ago. Luke, Reagan, Drew & Lauren cam while their dad worked and mom had to take a class. The kids had so much fun playing together and not a lot of sleep was done that night for some of the kids. Thankfully they didn't disturb Kurtis & me. They did some swimming, playing outside, playing Wii (boys), playing house (girls) and having a pizza/movie night. Jaren reading everyone a few bedtime stories.

The boys playing Wii. Notice Luke is still in his pajamas.
Playing in the sandbox. I love how they are all playing in one little corner of our big sandbox.

Swimming!!! It wasn't overly warm in the pool, but they didn't seem to mind one bit. Reagan would have stayed in the pool the entire time she was here even though she was freezing.

This past weekend we have a family camp out with my mom's side of the family. We had a ton of fun and hope to possibly make this an annual event...hint, hint. :) Bethany loving the great outdoors. They couldn't wait to finally go camping.

Everyone enjoying our dessert extravaganza on Friday night.

Erica loved the chocolate chip pancakes Becky made for breakfast Saturday morning. Sunday morning found us losing half our camping group due to the wind knocking down tents during the night. There was a LOT of monkey bread for those of us still there and we are proud/not proud to say we finished all three pans. :)

The kids had a water fight to cool down. The adults stayed in the safe zone so we didn't become targets...except for Kurtis who got sprayed coming out of our camper by Aunt Helen. He tried to spray her earlier but got Aunt Ruth instead so this was pay back.

We played some really fun Minute to Win It games in which we divided into 4 teams and competed.

Ryan got first place in the shoot out...yeah for my team! :)

Jennifer attempting to catch ping pong balls during Buckethead.

Tic Tac Pong

Stick the landing...very hard. Try to toss a water bottle onto a table and get it to stay there upright.

Our final competition was trying to get 4 noodles slid onto a piece of spaghetti without breaking the spaghetti noodle or dropping the other pieces.

Next it was the kids' turn for the competition.

Bethany rolling the marbles to see how many she could stick to the duck tape in 30 seconds.

Jaren bouncing ping pong balls to stick to the peanut butter sandwiches. He did it in record time...1.7 seconds.

The kids also loved playing at the playground.

This picture was to sweet to leave out. Bethany, Reagan, Erica and Drew holding hands and running back from the playground. Pure joy!

Roasting yummy campfire treats.

Happy 40th Anniversary

On June 26, we celebrated Keith & Gloria's 40th Anniversary by taking a family photo, going out for supper and then going back to their place for a surprise party. It's really hard throwing a surprise party at the house of the ones you are trying to surprise, but we some help we were able to pull it off. It was a very fun evening.

Both girls modeling Grandma's going away dress.

Three of the four granddaughters modeling their matching dresses.

Weekend away in the Dells

This past Thursday, Kurtis & I celebrated our 10 year anniversary. I feel very blessed to be married to Kurtis...he is such a wonderful husband, father and best friend.

For our anniversary we decided to get away for a long weekend just to spend time together without the interruptions of our wonderful children. We went to the Wisconsin Dells, my first time and Kurtis' 3rd or 1st however you'd like to look at it. He doesn't remember the first two times. :)

We thought we'd review the different places we visited while there.

We stayed at the Rhapsody Resort...HIGHLY RECOMMENDED! They have some really neat theme rooms (and also family sized condos) such as London Bridge, Spa Retreat, Italian Renaissance and Asian Flair just to name a few. Our room was appropriately named Hog Alley...not after all the pigs that Kurtis gets to deal with on a daily basis. If you have a Harley fan in the house this would be the room for him/her. Check out http://rhapsodyresort.com/themes/theme-suites.html to see the room for yourself. The floor looked like black asphalt with the yellow lines painted on it. The walls were black with an orange stripe going around the room. The best part of the room for any male would be the giant orange garage door that had to be cranked down with a chain that served as the curtain. Made us feel like we were in a fancy garage. :) It did have a whirlpool tub that I took advantage of daily. Lake Delton was just feet from our patio and there always seemed to be someone fishing off the dock. It was a very relaxing atmosphere.

RESTAURANTS:

Moosejaw Pizza: Highly recommended! It has a log cabin atmosphere, wonderful pizza (bbq meat lovers was awesome) and dessert (I'm sure the other food is delicious also) and they brew their own beer and rootbeer which is way better than A&W's.

Paul Bunyan's Cook Shanty: I think the name says it all. We tried their family style breakfast which is all you can eat homemade doughnuts, pancakes, eggs, ham, sausage, potatos, and biscuits and gravy. You will not need to eat lunch that day if you eat here. :) Kurtis loved this place and would highly recommend trying it out just for the atmosphere if nothing else...the food was good also. Obviously the meal sample below is not the amount they served for just the two of us, but would be more for 6. :)

Mr. Pancake: We also tried this restaurant for breakfast. It looked like a big paddle boat on the outside. I had the blueberry pancakes which were delicious, but I seriously don't know of anyone who could eat 5 very heavy, thick pancakes and not have to be rolled out of there. Kurtis' meal was very good also and the portion was a lot more managable. :) It was very busy and very loud in there so if you're not a morning person and don't like to deal with that first thing in the morning you might was to skip this place, but otherwise it's not a bad place to go.

Ishnala's: We went to one "fancier" restaurant over the weekend and decided that we just don't fit in at places like this. :) We choose this one because there was a beautiful view of Mirror Lake to you could see while dining. We got there before 5:30 and they had no window seats left so our view was extremely limited. They bring you cheese & crackers, fresh baked bread and salad to start your meal with. Kurtis choose a steak and it was very delicious. I ordered Chicken Marsala and ended up getting served Veal Oscar which had shredded crab on top. I almost lost my cheese & crackers at that point since I can NOT stand seafood. Kurtis thought they had brought a dead carcass to the table and was smelling his steak with caution. The smell lingered the rest of our meal. We sent that meal back and waited forever for my real meal to show up. I made Kurtis eat his steak while it was hot. The meal was disappointing for the price that they charge, but the dessert was absolutely delicious! :) Not some place we would recommend unless you like over priced food.

SIGHT SEEING:

Dells Boat Tour - Upper Dells: This was a very relaxing and recommended tour. The guides were very good at their job and seemed to actually be enjoying themselves also. The scenery was beautiful and we could just sit back and relax. There were two stops where you could do a little walking...Witches Gulch was very cool to walk through. Highly recommended.

Lost Canyon Tour: This was a horse and wagon 30 minute tour through the sandstone cliffs. If you need something a little less expensive to do this would be a good tour to take. We had some very funny little kids on the tour that kept us laughing.

Miniature Golf: No vacation would be complete without at least one round of mini golf. There is not a shortage of courses to choose from; we picked Pirate's Cove. The course we choose wasn't as challenging as we thought, but we both still came in over par. Oh, and just for the record...I WON!!! :)

Canoeing: We went canoeing for an hour on Saturday morning. It was so peaceful out on the lake and a wonderful way to spend time together. I thought I actually did a fairly good job helping stay on course.

The House on the Rocks: We did this tour on our way home. It's very impressive but you will have sensory overload by the time you are done. It took us all of 3+ hours and is not recommended for younger kids. We would highly recommend going here at least once just for the experience.

The whole weekend was so enjoyable and relaxing. The kids had a great time with Farm Grandpa & Grandma and were not ready for us to come home. They would like us to go away again for our anniversary...I told them maybe in 5 years. :)

We will definitely be taking our kids up this way in the next few years and then we'll enjoy the water & theme parks that seem to be in over abundance.

Since it's been over a month since my last post, I thought I should take the 2+ hours that it will take me to update our blog. We're having serious computer problems so getting pictures is quite the chore, but hopefully will be worth all the troubles. We have been very busy this past month. Here's a bunch of pictures that shows what we've been up to.

Jaren's is getting ready to wrap up another baseball season. They have not been overly successful when it comes to winning, but I have seen major improvements for the whole team. This is the first year that the players do the pitching the second half. It has slowed the games way down, but it's a great way for the players to learn. You'll have to wait until another blog for pictures since those didn't get transferred for some reason.

We were also excited to find out that we'll be welcoming baby girl #3 to our family. If you ask Jaren what he thinks about having another sister, he will reply, "I can't wait to go to college." :) I told him that God would never give him 3 little sisters if he didn't think he was a good big brother. This summer will involve switching the kids' rooms around since Jaren has a much bigger room than the girls do. The kids are trying to figure out how they want their new rooms decorated.

Our delicious DQ Ice Cream Cake...decorated just for a girl.

Kurtis has been very busy on the farm with spraying, trucking and clearing trees just to name a few things. They had a large tub grinder come and shred about 1-1/2 acres of trees that they had cut/knocked down. It was quite impressive and Jaren has now decided he'd really like his own miniature version for little sticks.

Our hard working man!

The impressive tub grinder

The girls and I had to wait awhile for the next semi to come in so we had fun climbing on the logs and taking pictures.

The kids have been busy staying cool by swimming in the pool and even had the chance to go down the slip-n-slide with their cousins. They were even able to talk dad into swimming with them and found it to be a lot more fun than when mom decides to get in. :)

Jaren is by far the rowdiest in the pool and burns tons of energy.
Erica loves wearing her floaties and hugging tight to Morgan the Monkey.
Bethany loves swimming and lounging in the tube to get a sun tan.
Some fun on the slip-n-slide.

Hopefully it won't take me quite as long to update next time, but I make no promises. :)

Picture Update

Yes, I know that it has been over a month since my last update. Instead of bore you with lots of words, I'll just let the pictures show you some of what we've been up to.

Bethany's class with to a Russell Wildlife and Kurtis was able to go along. Bethany had a great time until the live skunk came out to play - stinker removed. :)

Kurtis had the kids come along a couple Saturdays ago to help summarize his livestock trailer and to burn all the seed corn bags that accumulated in the barn.

Our 3 Little Pigs

Jaren got to drive the 4-wheeler by himself for the first time.

All the bags that they carried out of the barn...sorry no pictures of the actual fire.

Jaren & Bethany had their spring program at school a couple weeks ago. This was Bethany's first program and she did an awesome job, along with Jaren who is the experienced pro. :)

Our lives have definitely not slowed down. Kurtis has been extremely busy between spraying, planting, and trucking that the time we do have with him is very valuable.

My pregnancy has been going very well for the most part. Of course I have the common pregnancy "troubles", but I am very blessed with how quickly it is going. We'll be finding out at the end of May whether we'll be adding a precious baby girl or boy to our family. We are all very anxious to know.

Hopefully I'll be able to update a little more frequently in the coming weeks since May seems to be filling up fast with class trips, baseball, and of course...Tulip Time. :)

Sneak Peak

I thought it would be fun to give everyone a little sneak peak at our new bundle. It's amazing how much love you can have for someone so small - 2" long. :) God is really an amazing God and here is more than enough proof. We are very excited to meet this new little one right before bean cutting time. :)