August was crazy!

August really was a crazy month. It was like family reunion month. I saw every single person who normally reads this blog except for Greg in that month.

But now that I look through my pictures I realize I did a horrible job taking any!!! I mean I have a few of Jeff and Lois who were here a weekend, and none of Rick and Erin although I got their kids and none of my Mom, Adam, or Ann, or the Heit grandparents, or Randy although I thought I'd gotten some....If I did they are lost. What does that tell you??? It says I need to steal your pictures guys!

Anyway, here are some that I did take.

 

 Epic always has new things to see. Here are Jeff and Lois walking it with us. It was great fun to see them again! 

 Here are Reed, Blake and Rhett. We were glad to have finally met Rhett and play with the boy cousins. Wesley cried when they left because he was having so much fun! So we have since played Minecraft together. 

 Then the rest of the cousins showed up! Cousins are tons of fun. Baby Gemma was not quite born yet.

With Rick and Erin's family we walked around downtown and State street and UW campus. We ate sandwiches, sat in a giant orange chair, and made tons of bathroom stops for the six kids. 

We also went on a pontoon boat ride. I did not bring my camera into that water, so I got zero pictures. It was my kids first boat ride ever and my first in Wisconsin. After that we went to the beach where I managed to get one picture! What a good one. 

Then my mom came out along with my brother Adam and my sister Ann. Sorry absolutely no pictures of them. sniffle sniffle. I guess since my mom was taking so many I figured I would eventually get hers?? Okay I did find one.

We were shopping at Walmart. I went there a lot when we had people here. It seemed I needed to buy more milk every three days.

Michelle and my mom and Erin went to a sale and Rick and the kids and I went to Legacy Academy the "climbing place." Here is the single picture I took of that. It's hard getting in pictures when you're busy actually playing with the kids.

 One of those days we also drove down to the House on the Rock and toured the first two sections. 

I did take pictures here, but my camera did not do so well in the dark lighting.

 Kate and Kairi sit on a cat. Wesley sat on it too. Poor thing.

 

 Here are all the cousins at the room of infinity. Kare, Brie, Wesley, Abby, Chelsea, and Kairi.

 Here is an example of what most of my pictures look like. At least in this one you can kind of see Rick.I do believe Erin had better quality pictures.

Then Rick and Erin left to go to Wisconsin Dells. We had scheduled a few months before hand to go there too, but a day after them. We met them there for dinner our first night. 

On the drive there Michelle had her baby!!! My mom was texting me about while we were in the van (Don't worry Chris was driving) and I got goosebumps! I was so excited! Baby Gemma is my first niece from one of my own siblings. Thanks for having a baby Allen. I was really excited when she came! 

The spot we had dinner was Buffalo Phil's. They deliver your food on a train! Since we were seating ten people we had an hour wait before we got in.

 

 Here are Chris and Kate.

 Here is Wesley looking at the train of food. It was tasty. The train also came around and blew bubbles and drove around with toys on top.

After dinner we checked into our hotel. Here is what our room looked like. The first night Kate ended up on our bed and Chris ended up on the bottom bunk. The second night Kairi almost did the same, but we got her go on the bottom so Chris didn't run out of room. 

We went to Mount Olympus water park which is fantastic if your kids will actually touch water.

 They did go on one lazy river ride and into the tidal pool until Wesley flipped over in the water and they didn't like it anymore. I went down one water slide. 

We spent some time in a building with a few rides including the tea cups and I swear I had pictures of this, but alas they are missing someplace too. This is what happens when you blog way late. You lose pictures. Oh well.

 We also went to the science museum place there that still looks the same as it did in the 80's.

 The kids really liked this puzzle place where one person builds a shape and the other person tries to recreate it without peeking, but using clues they are given by the creator. 

 This is how Wesley spent his time there. He was hiding from the animated robots that were most of the time behind walls of glass or rope. Funny enough I overheard him telling his school gym teacher during a school picnic that the robots where his favorite. 

This spot was close to our hotel room, so in the morning before things opened up, the kids and I went here and colored pictures under the candy.

 Here is a picture taken inside of the science exploratorium. 

 At the water park they also had go carts. We were able to pull off riding them by having me stand in line three times over for the first one so Chris could take the kids. It's a little difficult to do when you need an adult driver and there are three kids and only two adults so someone has to stay with the left out child. Chris and and Wesley went first. 

 I got to drive Kate.

 Chris and Kairi went too. We got in two rides before the lines got super crazy. 

We got to drive under the Trojan horse.

 

Here is the baby that was born while we were at the Dells. I missed seeing Michelle in the hospital, but we got to see her shortly after they got home. Hi Gemma!

Here Gemma is getting her baby blessing at church.

While my mom was out here, my garbage disposal went on the brink and started to flood all the things below it. At least I had an ice cream bucket down there that was holding two inches of water along with my extra sponges supply so it wasn't as bad as it could have been. We fixed the disposer by replacing it with a new one.

 Chris and the kids created a rainbow fan.

 We also saw Elsa at Orange Leaf and supported our kids school.

 The girls played with facial hair.

 Chris got himself a birthday present a little early. 

And then the kids started school. And all the family left and went home.

 Wesley is in first grade.

 Kate is in 4k, which is like pre-kindergarden. They meet four days a week for three hour long days.

 Kairi is in 4k too.

 The first two days they did great walking into the school from the school bus. The first day when they reached their teacher both girls started to cry and I ended up walking them to their classroom and the teacher closed the door between us while they wailed. They stopped at least within an hour when the teacher emailed out that everyone was doing great. 

The second day when we reached the front doors Kate took off running (towards the cars) and would have dashed around the edge of the school down the sidewalk had I not caught her and carried her in crying. 

After the weekend, I had Wesley walk them into school and now they are doing great and don't throw fits, because I am not there to see them. The teacher says they're doing great too.

Since the kids were out. I painted the office. But now we are getting into September so that's it for now!

July of 2015

Here is where I type in some words so that when I put in the pictures they line up nicely and don't hog this space. However, there is a hog below.

 There is a special day in July called the 4th of July. We've created a tradition of going to the amusement park on that day. Here is the picture from this year. The kids still like the "whoa!" ride that spins them in circles the best. 

 I got to help put together Michelle's baby shower. Gemma was born in August, and we couldn't be more excited. 

 We had not done this in a while so we went on the "Troll Way" in Mount Horeb and took pictures by some fourteen trolls.

 This is a troll bench.

 We also went to the beach.

 Here is when we went to the Dane County Fair. We didn't go on rides but we did see the exhibits and get hats, balloons, cookies, etc.

 This is the hog that Kate pet for over twenty minutes until the guy closed up the cage. She would have pet this pig all day!

 We got rained out at Epicnic this year, but before the rain came down we got this picture and ate lunch beside Allen and Michelle.

 These are balloon animals the kids had to have from Epicnic. You can see who ended up holding them once the pinata was being hit and our kids wanted to make a grab at the candy. Kate wanted the Octopus, Kairi a seahorse (blue) and Wesley got a zebra which was black and white. 

I liked my chicken and elephant lego so much I took a picture.

Wesley Had a Birthday in June.

I have been slow on the blog since those nine posts about Japan. Honestly waiting for pictures to load takes FOREVER so when I think of it, I just go....eh. I will do it later. Well thanks to Greg I am now updating four months later.

 For Wesley end of the year field trip we went to check out the new polar bear exhibit at the zoo. We have not been back since but it was pretty cool and you can see the bears (yes two of them) now. This one was playing with a fake ice block.

 Wesley had a birthday and turned 6. It was a carnival theme so we had squirt the ping pong balls, shoot into the hoops, plinko, a marble maze, mini bowling, and guessing game. I may have forgotten one, but you get the idea. 

 Here are the birds that used to be above the front door. They've since left and abandoned the nest months ago so it no longer sits on the light. I think they gave up on it for two reasons. One we chopped down the tree that hid them from view. Two I witnessed a hawk swoop right onto the doorstep below this and eat one of the fledglings. I was surprised how close it got to me when I was standing just on the other side of the door.

In June Wesley graduated from his year of gymnastics. He elected to not sign back up for it after doing another summer class. That means he took two sessions of it before giving up, just like his sisters did. 

 Kairi and Kate are done with gymnastics too. They wanted to do ballet, but the one place that has good reviews also has bad times for us. So that hasn't happened. Plus I didn't want them doing too many things when school was starting. Because they take a while to adjust to new things.

Here are trees going down. I must say I like it. The side of the house looked a little strange at first, but I don't have to worry about the trees falling into the front room and squishing the piano when it storms and they no longer will scrap the roof (there are a few marks up there) and the ants had nothing on which to climb into the kitchen this summer, so my ant problems greatly went away! 

Here the girls graduated from our mom's co-op preschool group.

 We saw some animals at the Fitchburg library.

And we made another movie that you can view here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdlOtXB9ifc

That was it for June Y'all!