35 Years...

David and Nancy (Nathaniel's parents) celebrated their 35th wedding anniversary with the family in June. Here are some photos of the family. We went to Bennihanas to celebrate. There we saw quite a show with knives and spatulas as they cooked our meal on a hot flat surface in front of us. The kids were enthralled with it all, and Eliana learned to use chopsticks. Following the dinner, we went back to Auntie Lauren's to have cake and open presents with the rest of the family. The cake was in the color of the original bridemaids dresses! What a neat touch!

They were surprised with a trip from the kids and it was packaged in ones in a jar that they had to count up!

David and Nancy have raised a wonderful family and are great examples of what a Christ-centered marriage looks like. Thanks for being such a blessing!

Happy 35th!

First Camping Trip

Our very first camping trip was to the bluff area of Minnesota. We stayed at Frontenac State Park mid June. The first night we ate in Lake City, Minnesota at a little family resturant where they were having all you can eat fish. This was recorded as Joshua's all time favorite part of going camping! In addition, Joshua loved seeing record numbers of deer. In his deer tally account he has now counted ten in his life that he has seen thus far.The kids had fun and a kind gentleman offered to take our family's picture then. The boys were goof balls and had a blast walking back to the car goofing around together as only brothers can! The weather was magnificent and the kids loved sleeping in a tent. Eliana especially loved sleeping in the tent and even taking a nap in the tent. Gabriel wrote about his favorite part of camping and it was the fire! The kids loved watching, helping and best of all making smores with the fire. For those friends in Brazil that have no idea what smores are. They are basically a squishy sticky glob of sugar (marshmellow) that you melt over a campfire on a stick or metal prong. Then when they either light on fire (as most do) or are a scrumptious golden brown hue you take two pieces of graham crackers (much like a cookie) with some chocolate and slide it off between the layers of cookie and chocolate. You then have a smore sandwich and the name S'more comes from wanting "some" s' "more" more....smore.

The first night in the camp ground there seemed to be some animal trying to get into the trash recepticals and put up a mighty racket all evening long. I hardly slept, but our dear ones and Nathaniel all got a lovely night of sleep. The next morning the kids arose at 5am to the sounds of the birdies in the trees! Our solar powered children were up and at em! We decided to leave the campsite and go out onto the bluff to enjoy breakfast and not disturb fellow campers with our children's voices of exuberant joy. We discovered at that time that our milk we had frozen the day before had still not thawed and so cereal with milk was not an option. We visited Wabasha then and over the course of the morning travelled to Wisconsin to taste the cheese and visited another bluff where there is a great view of the Mississippi river valley. Overall it was a successful camping experience and the kids woud love if we could do it again.

Summer Vacation!

It has been so long since I updated the blog! We have recently gotten internet in our home, and so this process of getting photos and info onto our family's blog should come more often.

School was out June 2nd for the children and June 3rd for me. The children are happily on summer vacation. The transition to being off a schedule though does come with an adjustment period!

Here are some of the events since we last updated the blog:

Easter

We colored eggs over our week break from school. We also attended the Riley Easter gathering at Nathaniel's parent's house. There they had an Easter egg hunt. May 2009

Joshua's 8th birthday was May 14th. We celebrated with small events and then took a family break to Duluth, Minnesota. We had a blast although it was mighty cold up there! The car ride to Duluth takes about 3 hours. During that time the children had a lot of extra time in the car. Creative Gabe created some new eye glasses!At the end of May Gabriel graduated from kindergarten. We also picked out our family's dog, Lacy. She's a little toy poodle. Very precious and a great addition to our family!

And Recently...

We have been traversing local parks and getting to know our area. We are close by a huge indoor park that we discovered on a rainy day. The kids went in and I wished I had brought a book as once they were in the climbing (four story) tree, I didn't see them for a LONG time!