Okay, okay, so I'm late again. I'm not sweating it though. It's summer, we've been busy. :)
Here are a few highlights of mostly June, but now into July....

Here we are having a little fun and bonfire at Grandma and Papa Reid's. Papa let us get out the four wheeler for a ride.

Sister fun

For Austin's birthday since it was leading into a REALLY busy weekend and week, we decided to just take a few friends and go to get slurpees and to the spray park for some fun. Here are the boys on top of a slide after dropping the parachute men off.

We took a quick trip to Grandpa & Grandma Herbert's house that week too to celebrate birthdays and spend time together. Fishing at Grandpa's always delivers. (as he has a small pond that the fish are always biting in)

On the way we stopped to have summer fun at the Midland spray park.

Now, for the biggest event of the summer....BAIR LAKE BIBLE CAMP!!

What fun we had....crazy...hectic...draining...but fun.
Here's the first day of camp...emotions ran high with excitment!
The last day was just as great, but a bit sad too because it was ending

Here are our seven little kids (my three plus Katie and Adam's three plus Austin's best buddy Caleb). They ranged in age from 7 to 2 years. They seem harmless...and they were, but the week didn't end up quite as restful and peaceful as I'd hoped. Although I did have some great time with Kara (she wasn't old enough to go yet) and with Katie (whom we gratefully stayed with) and was able to see my brother and his family (since they only live about an hour from there) and finally with a great friend that I don't get to see but once or twice a year. I even did get to have a few hours to myself one morning at a park (thanks Katie!!). So all in all it was a great week. When all seven kids were together it was a bit crazy (as they were excited and tired from great days at camp- with no down time to themselves), but it will be something we will all remember with great joy.

After camp they kids really had a great time catching fireflies, sleeping in tents, around the campfire, making smores and swimming in the lake.Lastly, we had a garage sale with another family in our church to raise money for an organization called "Feed My Starving Children". It's takes 19 cents to feed a child for a day. The kids had a lemonade stand and we (my friend Kim) did a garage sale. We had a great turnout and will be able to help feed about 1896 kids for one day. The kids (and quite frankly) and I were pretty darn excited.

Okay, so maybe this isn't appropriate, but we just thought it was so funny. See, Kara has found this new freedom to pee at Grandma and Papa's house (behind the shed by the wood pile- of course). So, she didn't quite make it all the way behind the wood pile and apparently Hailey had snatched the camera and followed her....she really is a pro at it. Hope this makes you smile. (you can even see her little stream).

Looking forward to a very relaxing rest of the summer....hope you're all enjoying each moment!

Summer's on the way

So, I'm a little late for May, only two days though :) I wasn't really thinking there was a lot to blog about, but then I started looking through some pictures...Hope you enjoy.


Here's our Hailey girl with all (almost all-literally) of her Grandma Rosey's jewelery on playing dress-up with her cousin Haddee on Mother's day.

Here's the kids at a good friend from church's wedding. They had sooo much fun dressing up (well the girls did) and dancing with their friends. It was a Friday night wedding so it started out late and went later. My kids are not used to this. By the end of the night Austin was asking if there was a place on the floor somewhere that he could just lay down for a few minutes. Hailey lost her voice and her eyes were bloodshot. And then there's Kara....she was like the energizer bunny. She couldn't stop moving and running and dancing. I think she knew if she did stop, she'd fall fast asleep. It was a beautiful night, but we were all tired the next day.No rest the next day, though as we were off to baseball first thing in the morning! Austin's actually playing t-ball, which is right for the age bracket they had, but he's been practicing and is a little more familiar with the game than some of the other kids (ranging from 4-6). The coach actually approached me to ask me if I'd call about moving him up to the older age group. He always has been pretty coordinated and athletic.

They have really enjoyed having him though, cause he can actually catch the balls that the kids throw him at first.

Uncle Dan and Aunt Martha were visiting this weekend due to the next part of the blog...

After t-ball, we went to his best buddy Caleb's b-day party at the park. It's amazing the bond God has given these two boys. Even though Caleb now lives 3 (long) hours away, they still love each other and have such a great time together.

We had a surprise 35th Anniversary party for Trevor's parents. Everyone could come and it was soooo nice. They loved it. We all had a great time talking and all the kids had a great time playing at home. What a blessed time to hear stories of their wedding and engagement, etc. It was simple, but beautiful and something we'll all remember.

Here are some great sprinkler pictures. This was kind of like the unofficial first day of summer for us. When we can get out the bathing suits and the sprinlker. What fun. It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon and Trevor and I just sat and watched the fun. The other kids in the pictures are our great neighbors the Gieglings. They are great friends from church that just moved in three houses away. What a blessing from the Lord! The kids love it!...and so do I.

Austin's long hair before we cut it. He had been wanting longer hair, so we let it grow. It had one kind of funny stage, but I thought it turned out very nice. We actually cut it right after the sprinkler fun because with the warmer weather, it was just too long. At least we know what it looks like now, and that if it gets long enough, it will actually lay down. :) (He didn't usually wear it all spiked up like that, although at times he wanted to)

Before the wet part.

Our last adventure for the month was for our 9th anniversary. We took the kids down to my brother's house (sadly I don't have any pictures from this) to stay and play their girls. Then we went to a bed and breakfast, rode bikes, watched a movie, read books, ate out for dinner and went canoeing on the Portage river. It was AWESOME. We've really been wanting to get outdoors for our anniversary and it's usually too cold and rainy. Well, we had an awesome weekend and we had a great time outdoors. Can't believe it's been 9 years. God is faithful.

April brings...

This has been an interesting and adventurous month! It started out with two short spring break trips. One to Alpena to visit some great friends (Austin's best buddy and one of my favorite friends too). On our way home started our van adventure. It quit (alternator) and we ended up staying in the Standish Motel for the night. God blessed us with a great guy to fix it cheap. So, we thought we were all set and headed to Rochester Hills at the end of the week to Trevor's brother's house. About 5 miles from there our transmission went out on our van. So, we left the van there in Rochester Hills and drove a rental car home. And the adventure to find a van began... We had been saving for this day because we knew it was coming, but when you are ready to drop that kind of cash, whew....it makes me hesitate. However, we were in a bit of a time crunch as the only car we had to work with was Trevor's work car which I'm not really supposed to drive. It wasn't terrible, but as the week went on and we were walking Austin to and from school in the rain and chill, I didn't really want to keep that up. So, we took off one afternoon to look at vans and came home with our new van. What an ordeal! Glad that's over.
Enjoy the other pictures too!

Fun at the Leavesley's in Alpena! Pile up!

Hailey and Beka

BFF's
So, Austin came home the other day and said, "Mom, do you know who my BFF is?" I just laughed! I said, "do you know what that means?" (I didn't think he'd ever heard that). He said, "yeah, do you?" It was Hilarious! Anyway, he said it was Caleb.

Easter beauties. Austin's kind of avoiding the camera lately...hard to get a picture sometimes!

More silly faces...

Bathing beauties

This is Hailey on the way home from Alpena. It had been a long trip :) The other two had amazingly great attitudes (including me), which made the whole adventure of one night in a motel kind of a fun family trip.

Ballet dancing with Aunt Martha. Hailey LOVES this.
She really wants to learn more and more. She just looks so cute in her little outfit.

March

Out comes the top tooth! With a little help from Kara's head. I think he looks so much older without his tooth. He has at least two more that are wiggly too...what a grown up.

St. Patrick's Day fun pictures.

Kara, and really Hailey and Austin too, are really into making funny faces lately...here are a few...

Awww, what the heck, I got in on it too :)

And a few pictures of the whole fam on these beautiful days.

And these next pictures are quite the story...to sum it up, Kara had been waiting until the end of the day to poop. She would go in our bedroom and bring some toys and do her business. Well, we'd been catching her and putting her back to bed or changing her diaper (which ever needed to be done). So, one night it had been pretty quiet back in the hallway and we thought all was well. So, I went to get into bed and could smell a...well smell. So, I searched around to see what I could find. Nothing. So, I figured that she pooped in our room and headed back to go to sleep. Went to look. Nothing, nowhere to be found. So, I came back into our room to do a better search. Finally something pink caught my eye from the closet. The doors were all pretty much closed, except for this crack with pink beaming out. There was Kara in the closet (with the door mostly closed) fast asleep on top of my shoes. Really she was OUT. I called Trevor in and we laughed and took pictures and she didn't budge. Then we changed her little red bottom and put her to bed. We laughed, but we knew that taking pictures just wouldn't do it justice to how funny it really was. But I just had to share it. So, much for the the short story... enjoy the pictures.
Oh, and inside of my tennis shoes I found two little dolls that she must have been playing with when she went out...