Today's Antics…

G'pa is at the house every day except Sundays working on the farm machinery.  On most days, he has at least one, if not two, little helpers.  Notice the wheelbarrow in front of the combine.  It was helping G'pa hold his tools.  G'pa gets lots of assistance whether he wants it or not.  I'm glad he's retired so that he has time for all his 'help'.  I'm not sure what my kiddos are going to do this winter when G'pa isn't around every day.  I'm sure that there will be much sadness.  But, that is a future problem…today, G'pa was here.  Today, G'pa moved the combine and put the header on it.  Now, we missed that excitement (silly errands) and the boys were very disappointed about that, but they caught a little ride after lunch.  However, that was not the 'big' fun of the day.  G'pa got out some new play equipment…now, it may not look like play equipment to an adult, but the kids spent hours playing on it this afternoon and evening.

 It started out as a balance beam.  My little acrobats spent a lot of time balancing on the beam…hanging on…working on walking the beam without hanging on.  Good fun.

After awhile, walking on the bottom beam wasn't enough excitement and it was time to move on to bigger and better tricks…it was time for the high beam.  X lucked out that he is the person with the most balance that has the smallest feet.  His feet could fit on the railing next to the metal beam…E's feet were too big…and C just doesn't have the balance yet.


When balancing wasn't enough of a thrill, the dismounting started.  E didn't have enough balance to do it eloquently…however, that didn't stop her.  X got some great height and distance though.  C had to get in on the fun too, although, I helped with his dismount because his abilities aren't quite up to par with his siblings despite the fact he thinks that they are.

All the playing made everyone thirst.  The outside pump quenched it fairly well.

A Taste of Campfires…

Tonight we introduced our kids to the wonders of a 'Hobo pie' for dinner.  It wasn't a great night for a campfire or anything, but I told the kids on Tuesday that we'd have them tonight to celebrate Dad coming home from another trip to Haiti.  So, despite the weather, we had a campfire and hobo pies.  It was fairly windy and a bit rainy, but we had fun anyway.

We burned E's to a crisp…problems of being the first.  Mom forgot how long it took to cook them.  But, the rest were better.  Her second one was 'perfect' and made up for the crispiness of the first one.  We filled them up with tomato sauce, olives, pepperoni and ham.  Yum.  After the 'healthy' ones were eaten, we got out the pie filling and had cherry pies.  They disappeared even faster than the sandwiches.   However, the night would not have been complete without the pinnacle of the evening…S'mores.  They waited all night for those…and we had to eat them inside because the sky started seriously spitting at us (and thundering) once they were made.  I'm not sure Jut's was even cooked completely as we rushed his.  But, it was a fun evening.  Even the kitten, Rocket, came out and feasted with us devouring the discarded crusts.

I love this whole living in the country business.  Kids running in lush grass…sticky hands and faces…sometimes life is just perfect.  (and yet another summer memory passes without pictorial evidence…sigh)

First Day of School

With the rest of the state, we started school on Tuesday.  The delightful anticipation made the day a bit crazy but we kicked off another great school year.  E is in 2nd grade and X is 'officially' in preschool.

E was very cute and brought 'an apple for my teacher'.  It was made out of paper and said, 'First day of skool'.  She's so sweet when she wants to be.  She said her jumper was the 'perfect first day of school' outfit because it had apples on it…on the buttons and at the border on the bottom.  She's just too cute sometimes.

X was excited to 'officially' start school.  Although, he really won't do too much different than he did last year except that I'll be teaching him to read this year.  He excelled at his first two lessons.  We'll see how long he's excited to do lessons each day.

 C wouldn't be left out of all the fun and excitement.  So, he made himself a 'name' poster with the other two.  And although it appears that he ate a marker, really it was a leftovers from his 'snack' of a funfetti pancake that he had to eat while he was making his poster.


Finally, they wanted to do a 'fun' shot with all the pics.  Don't they look fun?!

The Summer that Doesn't Exist in Pictures…

Wow!  What a crazy summer it has been.

We moved out of our Alma house at the end of June and shoved everything we owned into our garage and Dad's tractor shed.  Nothing was ready at the house to be able to move things into it.  Thankfully, the flooring got laid in the next 2 weeks and we could slowly start moving things into the house.  I thought for certain when we got home from camp after the 3rd week of July, we'd be moving into our house but instead we ended up camped out at Mom and Dad's for another 4 days.  On Thursday, July 24th, we were permitted occupancy.  There was much rejoicing.  However, it still wasn't completed.  Our last 'professional' left on Sunday, August 10th after finishing refurbishing the original floors in the back half of the first floor.  Whew.  What a long process!!  Then it took another couple weeks of working outside in the front of the house to make the bank happy enough to allow us to receive our final 'draw'.  So, here it is September 3rd and the house still isn't 'together'.  There are still boxes.  Our garage is still a disaster, but we are making progress.

So, that is in a nutshell…why our summer doesn't exist in pictures.  Taking pictures of a house that you want complete but isn't is frustrating.  We spend most of our summer here trying to get it ready/finished.  I don't think it will make the kids' top 10 summers of their life, but we did manage to have some fun despite the chaos.

Here are the high points:

E got to experience her first church camp.  She spent 2 nights away at Rock Lake by herself.  The tooth fairy even visited her.  She had a great time and can't wait to do a whole week next summer.

We took a trip up to TC and visited my sister and brother-in-law over the fourth.  We got to watch the Blue Angels zoom over their house.  I think it impressed us more than the kids…but hey, Aunt Stacey has Disney Junior and that was heaven to at least 2 of my kiddos.

We spent another week at Rock Lake for the high school week.  It was a cold, cold week.  The kids froze taking swimming lessons every day, but they made great progress with their swimming ability.  Plus, several of our faculty had kids also…so they weren't the only kids at camp and that was a lot of fun for them.

Aunt Jenna got married in August and so we traveled down to Indianapolis for several days.  We had a great time.  The kids enjoyed swimming every day and seeing cousins that they don't see very often from both sides of our families.  We also got to visit the Children's Museum there.  The kids loved it.  Trying to keep track of everyone made me a little crazy but we survived and didn't lose anyone.

Throw in a crazy week of VBS, a Breakfast on the Farm event, and that brings us to Labor Day.  Insane how quickly the summer passes.  We said 'good-bye' to one of our dear friends that is starting her very first youth ministry in Petoskey and have had a couple of gatherings at the house.  It is fun to share our wonderful blessing with others.  When people see it, it may not be an "HG TV reveal" but it is still fun to share.

We 'finished' our summer with a relaxing trip to Holland to hang out with our good friends for a couple of days.  Eight kids in one house may not sound relaxing to you, but for us, it is always a welcome respite to our hectic life.

So, that is a snapshot of our summer that doesn't exist in pictures.  The summer of 2014 may not have pictorial evidence but that doesn't mean it will be forgotten anytime soon.

We Love Trains!

Yesterday, we happened upon the park just as the steam train was coming through.  They stopped at the park, let the passengers off, and then backed up, came through at full-throttle and then picked everyone back up.  It was quite the production with an ambulance and police on-site.

The conductor came up to the boys and chatted with them for a bit.  He then introduced us to one of the train engineers, Charlie.  X asked him a couple questions about driving trains and Charlie answered them and then asked if X liked Thomas.  That brought C out of his shell and he even talked to him a bit.  Charlie invited the boys to Owosso to check out the trains.  He was very sweet and really good with the boys.

Since we had such a good time on Saturday morning, we invited Grandpa Oberst to join us on Sunday.  So, Mom and Grandpa met us at the park and we got to watch him with the train.  He remembers when steamies were the norm...so interesting.  It was fun to experience that with him and hear about a bit of history.

Pre Ballet

E took Pre Ballet this year.  She loved it.  She always claimed that she only danced because she loved the recital and preforming for a crowd.  Today was the show.  She did great.  She listened to the music very well to hear her cues. It was her first dance without an instructor/helper on stage.  The girls did it all on their own.  It was good.

Her instructor, Miss Kathy, gave her a great compliment regarding that fact during practice one day.  She told me that E was in the center because she was a great leader and kept time to the music very well.

It was a fun show to the theme of the Beatles.  E danced to "Here Comes the Sun" by the Peanuts Toy Instruments.  It was a fun show.

Recital Practice...E is 5th from left

The "Sparkle" girls...all pre tap and pre ballet girls

Last pose of the performance

Most of the pre ballet girls

The boys waiting for the show

A little brotherly love happening

Right after the show

E is Seven...life is heaven

E turned 7 a couple weeks ago.  Seven years old...craziness.  She, of course, had a raspberry pie on her actual birthday.  My girl LOVES her pie...she gets upset when she can only have 1 piece at a serving.

For her birthday, she wanted a Frozen theme.  So, she wanted a cake instead of pie.  Thanks to Pinterest, there are lots and lots ideas out there.  E had Olaf's nose her veggie at dinner...and blue finger jello for ice chunks.  I couldn't find any characters in the stores, but thankfully our neighbor had an Elsa that we borrowed for the cake topper.  The secret the cake hid was E's favorite mint chocolate chip ice cream.  It was a chocolate cake with a center of ice cream.  It was a fun and tasty surprise.

E is my bookworm.  She is a vivacious reader.  In the past 2 days, she has read 3 Boxcar children books, a Bobsy twin book, 2 Littles books, and I think 3 more but I can't remember the titles.  We returned from the library at 11 yesterday and today at bedtime she's read at least 9 books.  She tells me all about them when I ask.  She loves her books.  The sad thing about her reading so much on her own is that she doesn't cuddle up and read with me and the boys as much.  Independence is bittersweet sometimes.

E is my little mother to the boys.  She loves looking out for them aka bossing them around.  But, she can be surprisingly tender and sweet with them too.  If someone is hurt, she's inside making them a card or running for supplies.  She's a great helper.

My girl still loves her dresses...but she started enjoying wearing jeans this spring too.  She's not quite the girly-girl that she was for a long time.  However, she does like me putting her hair up sometimes.

Dance recital is this week and she's super excited about that.  She loves preforming for an audience.

She's getting more independent all the time.  She fixes her own oatmeal in the morning.  I'm working with her to ask when things are too hard to avoid messes, but she always wants to do things on her own.

Her imagination is still wonderful.  She loves to tell stories and fabricate adventures.  She'll spend part of the day playing Star*Wars with the boys but she'll also spend time creating her own stories with her dolls or toys.

She's very excited about the upcoming move.  She's ready to have her own room again.  It is painted lavender with sparkles.  It is pretty.  She's getting a 'big' bed.  She's ready for her own space.

Bathroom humor upsets her, which makes the boys tease her even more.  They all bicker constantly...makes me crazy, but I suppose it is all apart of being siblings.  At the end of the day, they all love each other.  They were even all attempting to sleep in the same twin bed for awhile tonight. They are so cute when they aren't exasperating.

E is great at math.  I love teaching her and watching her knowledge blossom.  The gift of intelligence is an amazing blessing, and I'm so thankful that she received that gift.

She had her first day trip away this spring.  She went with a friend to Auburn Hills to Disney on Ice.  She's growing up and enjoying new experiences.  She's very excited to go to camp this summer by herself for 3 whole days.  Here comes that independence again and learning to let go bit by bit.