Rodeo 2019!

We had our usual awesome time at the annual TriState Rodeo in Fort Madison Iowa last weekend.  The kids are master candy catchers at the parade!

And I got plenty of baby time with our newest member, Maryn!  She's just a love and got spoiled by everyone around her for the weekend!

 It's official, both Noah and Ayla are taller than Aunt Michelle now!

 The boys are a lot of fun to travel with these days: not teeny babies that need naps and not teenagers that are too cool.  It's a great time!

 It was a beautiful night for the rodeo, until the rain moved in.  But fortunately we had a pretty good time before that!

Noah, master of the photo bomb.

 Everyone got their treats.  Isaac enjoyed kettle corn and cotton candy.

 Sam LOVES his cotton candy, and Noah even sneaked in his funnel cake before the showers started.

 The annual line up of all the kids, can't believe how many we have now from newborn - 11 years old!

 The kids found a pretty interesting bug while playing in Dale & Becky's yard, always something fun to do with these great friends.

 Back at home, the big news is that we have a black belt candidate!  He signed all his paperwork and the intense training has begun.  If he passes all his screenings, he should have that belt at the end of January!

 We have squeezed in a couple visits to Papa's house too, recently.  This last time, Auntie Kim and Daddy showed the boys how to play some handball. 

 Sam just being Sam, constant joker!

 And Miss Molly is doing well and preparing for her big Halloween birthday!  She's just thrilled about her costume.

So now we head in to fall and look forward to fun times with Halloween!

Back to school 2019

Summer had to come to an end, like it always does.  Phooey!  Noah really enjoyed his last week of karate camp, they had great weather to be outside most of the time.

In very sad news, we had to put our sweet girl, Lily to sleep.  She kept having seizures despite our best attempts to control them with medicine.  She made it very clear she was ready, and we sadly said our goodbyes on August 15th.  Molly seems to be doing ok without her sister.  She is getting plenty of extra love from all of the boys now.

The boys began their first days with much anticipation!  Isaac is in first grade in Mrs. Sheahan's class!

 Noah is in 6th grade in Miss Spain's class, his last year at Nerge!

 And Sam is off to 3rd grade with Miss Flannery!

 And while this is not my first day, it IS my first day FULL TIME in 11 years.  I was anxious, but everything seems to be working well with Mike doing before school drop off and me able to get home to meet them after school.

 Isaac brought home a great first day pic from school!

 Sunset Park, which is right across the street, was redone this summer.  It finally opened back up the first Friday of the school week, it's been busy ever since!

 We've been enjoying cousin time with Addison and Xavier.  Addison is getting so big!

 At work I have some fun new duties, one of them includes a preschool classroom.  I have a student using a device with eye gaze this year, pretty cool stuff!

 As I have returned to full time, we re-distributed all the household tasks.  The boys have really taken it all in stride with little complaining.  Sam loves feeding Molly!

 Our Labor Day weekend has been great!  Last night, we tried out a projector outside on the garage, it was a perfect night and lots of fun!

 And we were able to watch the Schaumburg Septemberfest fireworks right from our front yard!

 Today was the parade with LOTS of candy and some good marching band action!

 Noah was a bit "too cool" for candy when it started, but eventually he came around and was out there catching loads of it!

Pretty decent start to the school year, I'd say!  Next week we have our annual Rodeo trip! Can't wait!

Mexico!

So, our big vacation to Mexico was an absolute success!  It was a celebration of my 40th and we had two other families (the Townsends and the Desai-Gruenhagens) join us!  The plane ride down was great, it's much easier to travel with kids that aren't babies anymore!

We hit the ground running, beverages in the van to the resort!

The first night we had dinner at the Latino/Steak restaurant at the resort.  The moms at one end, the kids and dads at the other end.  I think the folks in between us had a good laugh!

 The resort itself, Azul Beach Resort in Riviera Maya, was lovely.  They do have some seaweed on the beach, but the pools were awesome!

Our first full day there, we had a brief morning storm.

The boys enjoyed the all inclusive aspect of the resort.  They tried lots of new things!

We spent most of the days enjoying the pool and "living the life" as Isaac would say!

Sam managed to chip a permanent tooth on the bottom of the pool one afternoon, seems like it should be an easy fix and it makes for an epic story!

There was a wedding while we were there (in the background).

Mike learned the dangers of falling asleep while surrounded by people with phones!

Most of the group took a day trip to Isla Mujeres on a private catamaran.  Poor Noah ended up with some food poisoning, so he and I had to stay back at the resort.  But, they all had a great day!

 They did a lot of snorkling and enjoyed lots of good beach time.  They even saw some very tame sharks!

 Back at the resort we enjoyed a last dinner before heading home.

 It was so awesome of these two families to come together to join us, friends forever!

 One last goodbye photo before our flight home, what a blast!

 Back at home, Mike was off for another week and a half before starting his new job at BP.  So, we took advantage of dad time and did some other fun things.  We tried out PacMan Arcade/Entertainment!

 The bowling lanes there were shorter, so Mike had to adjust his game and help the boys.

 Plenty of pinball

 And the ever popular skee ball

 Mike shaved his whole face, which the boys hadn't seen in years!

 Uncle Josh is the proud new owner (well, leaser) of a Tesla.  Isaac fits in the front trunk!

 Our poor Lily kitty has been having some troubles with seizures.  We are trying to find the right medicine to get her situated.  She had to spent a couple days in the hospital and got her belly shaved even!  She looks pretty ridiculous!

 We did a fondue dessert one evening, the boys enjoyed it!

 We also tried out Raging Waves Waterpark in Yorkville, it was so fun!

 Now Mike is back to work and the boys and I are enjoying our last week of summer vacation.  Noah is doing another round of karate camp!

 What an amazing summer, can't wait to do it again in 2020!