fishing vacation

Normally in June we head up to Minnesota for a week with my family. A week filled with fishing, eating, playing outside, playing in the lake and just having fun as a family. With our plans to go to Florida we originally thought we would not be able to spend any time up north. However, determined not miss out on some fishing and relaxing we decided to spend a few days with my family and jam pack in as much as we could. So we were up early Thursday morning and were back home Saturday night.

Sadly the weather was a little chilly so we all had on pants, not your typical June weather that is for sure!

The girls of course love vacation because they love spending time with their mama and papa.

 It was Kelly's first vacation! Next year she will have far more fun with the big kids, this year, well they were just kind of loud!

 Of course Bill and Jennifer tried to cram in as much fishing as they could. There was lots of time in the boat in just three days.

 Cooking breakfast with mama on Friday morning.

 This is the first year that Mikayla wanted to go out in the boat. She is starting to realize that she is missing out on stuff! So she got to spend a little time in the boat with daddy and papa too.

 Jennifer caught a big fish! She was very excited about it.

 Kelly getting up close with her first fish.

 Friday afternoon my brother and his family arrived. Of course the kids were off and playing. Even though it was chilly out they were determined to get into the water. So after a while we just gave in. Of course they didn't care that the water was cold, they had a ton of fun!

 While everyone else was in the water, Mikayla found a spot in the sand to play. This girl loves to play in the sand!

 Much to our surprise Mikayla did decide to give the water a try. It didn't last long but at least she ventured out!

The big kids checking out Kelly.

 Saturday morning Bill and Jennifer needed to get a little more fishing in before we left.

 Having some on the bikes.

 Bill showing off 2 more fish before we go.

 Of course each year we have to take a family picture.

 And one with just mama, papa and the grandkids. I just have to say that the three in the back do not make this an easy task that is for sure!

We had a fun three days with our family, it was sad leaving knowing the rest of them would get to continue on for a week. The only up side was that we knew we were heading to sun, warmth and the ocean!

We're Back!

June has been a little bit wild around here. It is crazy to think the month is almost over and we are just trying to get into a routine of summer vacation. We left our house Thursday morning, the 6th, and headed up to Minnesota to spend a few days with my family. We got home Saturday evening, were home for about 18 hours, repacked the van and headed for Florida. And there we stayed until last Thursday afternoon. We finally pulled into our driveway Friday afternoon, the 21st. It was kind of hard to leave the sun and warmth of Florida and of course going to the beach everyday was pretty hard to leave too. But after being gone for two weeks, it was kind of nice to get back home.

Here we are ready to head to the cabin for some fishing and fun.

 And here we are all packed and ready to make the long trip to Florida. As you can tell every last inch of the van was filled for this trip. Being gone for almost two weeks takes a lot of stuff! 

 Ready to head down the road, an extra bonus for the Florida trip was that Grammie went with us. 

 I of course have lots of pictures from both trips that I will be sharing in the days to come.
What a blessing it was to be gone for a few weeks and not have to worry about anything. After the craziness of April and May it was nice to get away from everything for a while and just spend some time together as a family. Jennifer said today that dad couldn't go to work because we were going on family vacation. I think that girl loved being away too, she does like quality time with her family. However I guess it is sadly back to normal life for us.

4 years old!!

Today Mikayla Jo turned 4 years old. Early this morning I looked at her and told her happy birthday. Her response, with a big smile on her face, was "ME!", while she pointed to herself. She was pretty excited, or so I would like to think.

Papa Jim and Mama Sue came up to spend the day with the girls. They help us celebrate Mikayla's birthday, took Jennifer shopping for her birthday and of course loved on Kelly a little bit too. (Mikayla was wanting no part of this picture, she had already opened her presents by this point and did not want to stop playing for a picture!)

Opening a few presents from mama and papa.

 Mikayla loved her presents! A cake that sings "Happy Birthday" and a microwave with food. 

After a fun supper out to eat it was time for presents from mom and dad. 

A new pair of shoes! She looks thrilled, doesn't she? Mikayla has a serious issue with shoes right now. She is not a fan of them. There are about two pairs of shoes that she will wear, one of them is a pair of cat rain boots. We are hoping maybe these will become a new favorite pair, we will see.

 A "Fresh Beat Band" video. Mikayla loves that show right now. 

 Our Kayla girl is not much of a sweets eater. In fact she does not like cake or cupcakes. But she does like ice cream, so her candles went into ice cream this year! She loved it.

 Bill and I have commented often in the past few months what a blessing Mikayla is to our family. She is slowly starting to come out of her shell and lets her voice be heard! Mikayla has also grown in so many ways this year. It continues to be a joy to watch this sweet little girl grow and change.

Happy Birthday to our Kayla Jo!!

Last Day!!

Today was the last day of 1st grade! While I do have to say it is hard to believe that 1st grade is over, I do admit that I am ready for summer break!!

I think Jennifer is ready for summer break as well. She was excited for the last day of school. I think she was so excited because her class was going on a picnic so she got to take a sack lunch. Jennifer took her lunch a lot through out the year but this was an actual sack lunch, with a juice box!

 After today we will have a 2nd Grader!

 Of course Mikayla wanted her picture taken with Jennifer. (Ignore the pj's and messy hair!)

 In case you didn't know she was excited about taking her lunch today, one last picture with it!

Jennifer had a great year in 1st grade. It really was fun to watch and see her learn so much! She has grown in many areas. But now it has come to an end. We are looking forward to warmer days ahead filled with lots of playing outside, going to the pool and just well just having a fun summer.
Now that school is officially over we can being the count down until vacation!

a new button

So many people have observed lately that Miss Kelly girl has been missing her fashionable tube and backpack that seemed to be with her all the time. Well here is the deal, Kelly still uses her feeding tube. In fact she is hooked up about ten each night and is feed through her feeding tube all night long. We turn it off in the morning and then bottle feed her through out the day. Kelly is doing well at taking the bottle but hooking up to the pump at night is our way of making sure she is getting enough formula in a twenty-four hour time span. It is kind of our safety net for now. This is sort of our plan until after Kelly's heart surgery in August. Kelly will be sporting her G-button until she is at least two, even if we are not using it, which of course is our ultimate goal.

Speaking of her G-button, yesterday we traveled up to Mayo to get a new one. They usually change out the button after about six weeks. So Kelly got a new button, this particular button is actually different than her first one. It is slightly smaller in size, which I kind of like. And they also showed Bill and I how to change out her button. The doctor told us it was really easy, I was a little skeptical at first, but she was right. It will be a lot easier than I thought. So if Kelly's button were to come out for some reason (let's just say a big sister happens to pull it out or Kelly gets a hold of it for some reason) we can now put it back in.

 Mikayla went with us yesterday and so she kind of missed out on a nap and then the girls went to bed a little later than normal. So this morning Mikayla was a little tired. I asked her if she wanted to take a bath and her response was "no". A few minutes later, it may have been more like seconds later, she was laying on the floor, asleep.

 I knew she was tired because she laid down while watching one of her music videos. Usually she is up signing and dancing along to the songs, not this morning.

 Later in the day while we were waiting for our adoption social worker to come for a visit, Mikayla was wanting to take pictures. So we took a few self portraits.

 And a picture of Kelly was in order as well. She really is a cute, cute baby!

rainy day

So it seems rain has kind of become the norm around here. So what do we do when there is no school today and it is of course raining?

Well to start the morning off our girls thought we needed to put together the large foam letter mat that Mikayla had gotten from mama and papa for her birthday. They proceeded to have a little party on it!

 Showing off their "moves". 

 The girls then went down the basement to "play" for a few minutes. You never really know what is going to happen when they go downstairs without supervision. This is what Jennifer came upstairs looking like. Who can blame her really? We did after all just put all this stuff away a few weeks ago!

 After bundling up, for a snowstorm, Jennifer thought it would be fun to go play in the rain. It is hard to see but she is on the red horse swing. This didn't last long though.

I would have voted to sleep in on a rainy day off. But as you can see my girls were not have any of that. I suppose maybe, just maybe, this was a little more fun than sleeping in.

Oops!

This morning we were getting ready for a visit from Mama and Papa and so we were making brownies to have after lunch. We decided to put a few chocolate chips into the batter for an extra treat. Well a few more than we expected ended up in the batter.

If you look closely you can see the empty chocolate chip bag in Mikayla's hand and she is trying to look sad, not very convincing. 

 Bill and I both turned away to put stuff in the sink and Mikayla decided that we should put the whole bag in the batter! We couldn't really scold her because we were both laughing so hard!

 Chocolate chips anyone?!

 Bill then tried to scoop out the excess chips into a bowl and Mikayla proceeded to dump them back in, twice, before Bill wised up and moved the bowl away from her!

Our girls do love to help in the kitchen, this particular day Mikayla was just extra helpful! The brownies were still good, they just had a few more chocolate chips than first expected!