Lazy Mornings

These are some of my favorite days.  Lazy mornings with kids in our bed!  

Dad's Birthday

July 26th my dear husband celebrated his 32nd birthday.  We had a party for him the following weekend with parents, grandparents, and even Will's aunt and uncle came up from southern Iowa.  It's always a good time celebrating with family, especially when there is a Dairy Queen cake involved!  

First Ponytail!

Emily's hair is finally growing!  She has had some curls in the back for some time but finally the hair on top and the sides are filling in.  I always try and play with her hair and she is NOT a fan.  Give her a hat and she will wear it all day.  Put something in her hair and she immediately pulls it out.

The other day I was able to put in a ponytail.  Isn't she adorable?

As soon as I took this picture she yanked it out. 








The ponytail lasted about 2 minutes.  At least I got her picture before it was gone!

2012 Annual Skeet Shooting and Venison Feast

Each year we gather at one of Will's cousins houses for dinner and skeet shooting.  We typically have venison as well as some other meats for those of us who are not fans of deer meat.  The boys always have a good time shooting guns and over the years have become quite good at it. 

Daddy was always right by their side helping the younger boys.

We made the kids all wear ear protection and Drew sported the ear muffs pretty well.  







This year Jake brought a friend along with him.  They didn't need any help and were really good at hitting those little targets.  They looked so big and bad with their shotguns!  Or at least they thought they did.




Emily had fun watching the boys from a distance, playing with the dog, checking out the chickens and fell in love with all the kittens that were roaming around.







 



She feel in love so much that we brought one of the kitties home with us that night.  Someone thought it would be a good idea to add another member to our house (not mentioning any names!)  Meet Milo. And yes, she is holding him by  his neck.


Now that Milo has been around for a few months and grown much bigger she no longer holds him by his neck.  She does pretty good with him and they have become quit the buddies.

After all that play Emily finally collapsed and slept in Grandma's arms for a bit.  It wasn't long before she was up and playing again though.

Raspberry Girl

 Will took these pictures of Emmy back in July.  She loves raspberries.  She doesn't care if they are ripe or that the canes have spikes.  She doesn't mind.  She would visit the raspberry bushes multiple times a day and would  pick whatever she could find.

She still goes over to them every time she is outside.  I don't think she realizes yet that raspberry season is over.

4th of July

So I am backing up a little to post all of my pictures and events from the last 4 months that I missed.  Will never go this long again!  I have so many photos to share!

The fourth of July was spent up in Colo at Will's parents house.  We had made a trip to Missouri a couple weeks before for a wedding and we couldn't pass up all the firework stores by the border!  I had never been to one and it was truly overwhelming!  So many cool things to purchase!

We started off the night with a hotdog roast over the fire outside.  We always have lots of good food when we are up there.  Here are a couple desserts that I made to share.

Fun fruit kabobs with red, white and blue marshmallow stars and Jello poke cake.  Mmmmm.










At dusk we tried out a few of the smoke bombs we had gotten.  We also got some smoke grenades that the kids thought were really cool.  We got some colored smoke and the blue was my favorite.











Here is a picture of Jake and his girlfriend Rachel.  Aren't they just so cute?

Once the sun went down we started in on the fireworks, I mean the other items we bought at the store.  We also had to do some sparklers.  Brodie had fun trying to write his name in the dark.  He was only able to do one letter at a time of course.  Here is his D.
While at the store we let each of the kids pick out a car so that they could have a battle to see who's car could stand the most damage.  The kids would face off 2 at a time.  Who ever won at the end would go into the final challenge.  Here is all the kids and their cars that they picked out.

  
 Even Rachel played along.  She is such a good sport!










Here is what the battles looked like.

Summer Buzz Cuts

 The nice thing about having boys is we can do our own haircuts.  Thankfully all the boys allow us to buzz their hair.  They all look really good with short hair too so that is a bonus. 

So proud of all my boys.  Aren't they handsome? 

4 Months

Wowzers.  Almost 4 months since my last blog post.  I have LOTS of catching up to do.  Life has been busy.  All the boys started school over 2 months ago.  Some time I must have thought that I might get a little "bored" just having Emily home during the days with me.  I am used to having to entertain Drew and with him starting Kindergarten I thought I would have large gaps of my day open.

I was wrong.  My days are busier than ever.  And not just because I am chasing a very rambunctious, precocious, curious, independent, busy, almost 2 but going on 6 little girl around all day.  Emily is a full time job for sure!  But when I thought I might be "bored" with the kids going back to school I apparently signed up for all sorts of school related tasks.

Will and I are on the Junior After Prom committee.  Yes, Jake is a Junior which is extremely hard to believe.  We have been attending monthly meetings and helping organize and work fundraisers.  I am also the treasurer so I keep track of all the money and write checks. 

I got a call from the elementary school principle saying my name had been mentioned as a good candidate to have on the SIAC.  SIAC stands for School Improvement Advisory Committee.  Meetings are held only 3-4 times a year and topics include student enrollment, budget, program studies, and school improvement goals.I have yet to attend a meeting but it should be interesting. 

2 weeks ago I got a letter home from Drew's class giving a list of the homeroom parent and parent helpers.  I was surprised to see that my name was listed as the homeroom parent.  Apparently I forgot that I must have offered to do that when I signed the kids up for school.  So now I am planning all the school parties and teacher appreciation week.  

The first couple months of school have been busy with sports and band.  Jake played on both the JV and varsity team for football.  This meant games every week on both Monday and Friday nights.  Tony joined marching band and this required very early morning practices and some evenings.  His Saturdays have been filled with traveling to different schools for competitions. 

Brodie and Drew played 2 weeks of flag football.  Will signed up as a helper which turned into him being the head coach and planning all the practices.  Practice was held on Tuesday and Thursday nights with one scrimmage on a Saturday morning. 

All that is over now.  Jake played his last football game last night and marching band is over for Tony.  Next up is basketball for Jake.  He gets a week off before practice begins for that.  Tony will still have band practice but no early morning marching band (yay for a little more sleep!)  Brodie and Drew have the winter off and will start baseball in March.

So, there you have it.  A quick recap of just some of what has been going on.  I'll save my gardening, birthdays and all that other fun stuff for another post. 

Oh what?  You wanted a picture?  Ok, here ya go.  Our little cowgirl.

First Annual Smoke-A-Thon

We had a great weekend.  Will took Thursday and Friday off and it was great having him home.  Thursday he spent the day smoking meat.  He was preparing for the big event that was held on Saturday.  He wanted to try out some new recipes and test them on us.  I didn't mind!

Saturday we spent the day at the Bob Shetler Shelter at Saylorville hosting the first annual Smoke-a-thon!  It was a success despite the 100+ degree heat index.  

While the meat cooked we played games, the kids fished, played at the playground, played in the sand and just had a good time being out in the outdoors.  With the hot weather there was frequent water and ice breaks. 

The food was awesome.  There was 4 guys smoking different types of meat.  Brisket, pork butt, sausage, chicken, ribs and turkey.  Mmmm.  If only you could bottle that smell.  It was divine!

By evening we had a good turnout.  Lots of people from Will's work showed up.  It was nice to connect with all the wives and meet some new people.  Everyone brought side dishes to share.  There was certainly no shortage of food.


We had alot of fun and plan on making this an annual if not semi-annual event.  Next time however we will hopefully pick a day when it isn't so hot!  Thanks to all who came out!