Good Bye Summer, Part 2

Before the leaves fall off the trees, and I forget all these special memories, I offer the rest of our summer, in no particular order.

We went to our cabin in Northern Wisconsin for a week with the grands.  We all have the best time and make so many memories.

My brother has a place 30 minutes away, and we spent a few hours there enjoying his lake and his new cabin.

No railing on the deck then, but it has one now.

Claire and grandpa ~

Cooper and my nephew Evan 

Ben and Cooper in the front, Elizabeth and Jackson in back, and Jessica, the lifeguard I guess.

It looks like they are in an inch or so of water, so I will assume that they took a little ride.

Elizabeth and Laura

Our Claire Bear

Cooper on the boat at our cabin.

Elizabeth

My grands plus my niece and nephew, Emma and Evan.  Not too bad, maybe 2 kids are looking:-)

The whole gang.  Isn't it so green and pretty in Wisconsin?

{Too bad most of the years it's white}

Cooper and Evan.  Our centerpiece of flags was used later for a rousing flag hunt.  That was a fun activity and one we will do again.

{I give no directions for the game because I think you can all figure it out.  It's that simple:-) }

One of the reasons for the family to join us in Wisconsin was to help celebrate Bob's folks 60th wedding anniversary.

We held a dinner at a small hotel ~ all arrangements made from Texas via phone and internet.

I was so happy and relieved that the whole evening turned out just the way we wanted.  Whew!

When they married 60 years ago, Bob's dad was in the Air Force and they married on the base, no wedding dress, no cake, or pictures.

The cake turned out so well, and the topper has some "diamonds" as the 60th is the diamond anniversary.

This is a picture of Bob's dad with his 2 sons and his 5 grandsons and his 6 great grandsons.

The table decor was simple, white flowers and "diamond" picture frames and gemstones scattered.

The whole family, missing is our Laura's husband Tom:-(

What a legacy from 2 people!

4 children

9 grandchildren

9 great grandchildren ~ so far

Our family, missing Tom.

Bob's mom, 1 daughter, 4 granddaughters, and 3 great granddaughters.

Bob's sister, Jan, passed away in 2010 and was missed terribly.

We all did have a wonderful time.  We stayed together at the small hotel and all met in the morning for breakfast before everyone had to travel back home.  No one lives near his folks, the closest are about 5 hours away, so I was so glad that all of the children, grands, and greats were there.

Bob and I put together a DVD highlighting the 60 years and all received a copy as their party favor.

And now the party is over ~ we actually took this on our way to the 60th on our way out of town.

And for reasons that deserve their own blog post, this may be the last BIG FISH picture.

sadness

And, totally unrelated to the above trip is this picture.

Early in the summer we met some good friends for a stay at this resort.  It is the Osthoff in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin.

Such a lovely place.

Our guys went to a few golf courses in the area and Robin and I yakked and ate and sat on the beach or at the pool.  Pretty much a perfect vacation in everyone's opinion.

One of the golf courses.

And while they golfed we toured this lovely basilica that we could see from miles away.

And, to close

A few pictures of our Camp Read A Lot

I did do the "camp" again.  The kids read lots of books and earned lots of prizes.  I now have 3 readers and we do have lots of fun doing different activities. 

Sad to say I didn't take many pictures.

But of course swimming is our primary fun, and a close second is playing with oobleck.

We did that a few times, with the addition of shaving cream for a real mess fun time!

One of our activities was making this pizza.

It went with the book Sweet Dream Pie. 

This is a sugar cookie, strawberry jam, orange coconut, and jelly beans and gumdrops for toppings.

Elizabeth and I made it and it really fooled the boys.  They didn't want to try it with all of those toppings!

Of course it quickly changed when they found out it was sugar.

These next few pics are of a reward night ~ snacks and watching Monsters Inc.

{they seldom watch a movie at my house}

The kids spent the night and all had fun.

{Claire went home with mom and dad after snack:-) }

Such a fun summer, and we ended it celebrating a little girl turning 3!  But that's for another post.

Good Bye Summer, Part 1

Hello little blog.

I've missed you.

Lots of fun has happened around here this summer.

Many "grand" adventures and special memories made.

I am too overwhelmed by how much I have to catch up that I won't even try, instead just some snips and snaps of our summer, in no particular order.

Elizabeth is now in the 4th grade.

What?!?

I don't know why grandchildren grow up so much faster than my own children did.

Anyway ~

Our tradition is to take the grandchildren on an outing for back to school.  We give them a choice of a few different things. 

Every year she chooses to go here.

I will be so sad when this is not the choice.

The lunch is big on cute.

We love it.

I am a big fan of cute.

We did not let her eat this all by herself.  Grandpa and I had some bites and lots was left in the bowl.

This girl does love her dessert though.

{just like grandma}

We had a wonderful time and after a lot of deliberation she choose a new doll.  We give her some money for a treat and she had saved up the rest.  She usually comes home with a new outfit or accessory so this was a treat.

We won't even try to count how many of these dolls she has.

But, I love a little girl that loves dolls and I love that she still loves to play with them.  She also loves the books and AG has lots and lots of stories to go along with the dolls.

Doll + Books = Happy Girl and Grandma:-)

Our youngest grandson turned 5 in August.

The party at grandma's was Minecraft.

I don't even know what that is and so you see there is not much in the decor department.  I guess it's a game on the iPad and it's AWESOME!

{according to the grand boys}

Happy 5 Jackson!

We sure do love you!

The boys' back to school outing was at Legoland.  Just like Elizabeth they have picked this every year.

This was our 3rd time as Ben and Cooper are entering 2nd grade.

Jackson is in preschool again.

Waiting in line wasn't fun.

{none of my 4 boys are good at waiting:-)}

But Cooper volunteered to help make legos {gray shirt}

Such fun.

There are only a few rides at Legoland.  This is the swing.

Last year Jackson wouldn't go on it so this was big for him.

They have these little cars that the kids drive around.  

Grandpa and the boys building a giant tower for the earthquake table.

Great fun and quite serious.

The other really fun activity at Legoland are the 3D movies.  I think we saw 4? of them.  They are pretty short, but the boys love them.  My favorite part is that the boys always look for the seats with lots of water.  They want to sit where the action is!

This means you will get sprayed during the show.

{Grandma sits in the row behind them:-)}

And, lastly, for this post, is a picture of Bob's new car.

We have finally made it to the 21st century and have a car with a DVD player.

Oh my, the grands love it.

Stay tuned for part 2.

Fun at the Cabin

We have a little cabin in the Big Woods of northern Wisconsin.

{Doesn't that sound just like a Laura Ingalls Wilder book?}

We love our little cabin, even though we don't get there very often.

This year, the whole family {minus Ryan who had to work}  got to spend a week there and we had so much fun.

The kids didn't make it up last summer, and so Jackson didn't really remember the cabin, so it was fun reintroducing him, and introducing Claire to life in the Big Woods:-)

We had Bob's side of the family up one day, spent another day with my side at my brother's place which is about 30 minutes from us, and the girls had a childhood friend up another day.

Lots of activity!

I, as usual, took a minimum of photos, but here are a few highlights of our week.

Beginning with a sweet tradition...

We always have peanut butter m&m's on the counter.

This year I began the week with the giant bag and I know I had to add a few more bags as the week progressed:-)

Everyone loves them and it's a sweet treat that we don't dare indulge in at home. 

We were also blessed with hot weather.  It can go either way up north ~ cool ~ rainy ~ hot ~ humid.  We had more of the hot this time and that is good because when you have 10 people + lots of company you want to be outside in the water!

Here are Jackson and Ben enjoying the lake.

Elizabeth and her dad.

I like to make the grands pancakes in the morning.  I saw these on pinterest and wanted to make these at the cabin.  Our cabin has kind of a bear theme going on that I started for the grandchildren.

These were perfect and they loved them.

The addition of syrup was supposed to be his mouth but it sure ended up looking like a mustache!

My brother has planted hundreds of trees on his property.  This tree was planted when Elizabeth was born and it was teeny tiny.  She loved having a tree named after her:-)

Another pinterest project checked off!

I made this dessert one day ~ it's supposed to be a campfire.

It's a brownie with icing and candy ~ they loved it.

Another fun activity is the sandbox. 

I think this might have been Claire's first time in a sandbox.  She liked digging but didn't want to get in. 

An action shot of the bean bag game.

My brother made this game for us and we love it.

This one represents KC, where we lived for many years.

And of course this is where we live now, and where all of the grands were born.

One day when we didn't have any company we went to a nearby town and went to the county fair.  I knew the kids had never been to a county fair, and I'm not sure if my girls had ever been to one either.

We saw some farm animals up close.

{of course these are llamas, I don't know why they'd be on a farm, but we did see pigs, sheep, cows and horses}

Tom and Cooper eating snocones.

It was hot!

Elizabeth and Ben.

Is that big enough Jackson:-)

We stopped by the barn dedicated to my uncle.  He was very involved in this fair, and the kids had fun finding their names on the donor board.

Before we left the fair the kids did a few rides.  It was so hot, I just snapped a few pictures and then I went to look for shade!

Cooper is not too sure about this.

He ended up loving it as it went around in a circle forward, but then it reversed and he hated it.  After that he was done with rides.

And at the end of the trip on our way out of town we always stop by and arrange ourselves in many combinations in front of the big fish.

It's tradition!

And she's outta there.

We had such a wonderful time.