July 2016-Part 2

I'm back again. I had to split July into 2 parts because we actually went on a little family vacation and I have a lot of photos. Don't worry, I only picked a few to share. :o)

I have been in love with the idea of having a camper for a while now. Love the idea of a little home-away-from-home that we can bring along with as we go on adventures together. I love the idea of traveling, but the expense of hotels and food has kind of kept us at home. Well, that and the fact that hubby has to be at work. 😜 I also love camping, but this body does not like the idea of sleeping on the ground. We also have family and friends all over America that we like to go visit. It would be nice to have our own little "hotel" with us.

Since we've never really been camping together, hubby thought maybe we should rent a pop-up for a week or so and see if we even like it. We planned a trip to see several waterfalls in the northern area of Wisconsin. Unfortunately, I didn't keep track of which waterfall was which, or even all the ones we went to. I do remember Amnicon Falls, Copper Falls, and Patteson Falls, but I couldn't tell you which picture is which. Sorry. We weren't able to see a couple of the falls we'd planned to see due to some roads being washed out the week before from torrential rain.

Here's our little home-away-from-home. We got a great deal on it from a local camper rental place. If you're in the area and looking to rent, check them out R and R Campers. (No, they're not paying me to say this. Just our opinions.) It was clean, well cared for, and they gave us great instructions and walk through to make sure we knew what we were doing.

These were the first falls we stopped at, but again, I can't remember the name. This was as close as we could get to the falls from the trails, and the mosquitoes were so bad, we weren't inclined to explore much further.

I do remember that there were 150+ steps down to the falls and 150+ back up!

We were just a bit tired after that!

All the falls in Wisconsin look like root beer! We did find out it's from the tannin of the Tamarack and other trees and not because it's dirty or full of copper. Apparently Copper Falls got its name because early settlers thought there was copper and came to mine the area.

I believe this was at Patteson Camp Ground. The water was really too cold to swim in and there weren't many other kids around, so she decided to play with whatever friends she could find. 😊

One afternoon we had a bit of a rain shower. Time for mom and dad to take a nap. Michelle did enjoy having one end of the camper all to herself and her stuffies.

She constantly wanted to be in the water. Again, the water was a bit cold, but she was out there anyway. I just enjoyed relaxing on the beach and imagining what it would be like to live in that house across the lake. 

We did escape the campgrounds once to head into Duluth for some shopping and our favorite Japanese restaurant. Yum!!!

I'm telling ya' we couldn't decide if it looked more like root beer or Willy Wonka's chocolate river.

Because we weren't able to go visit several of the falls we had hoped to, we decided to come back a day early and "camp" in our own yard. My husband's ingenuity amazes me sometimes. 😋

So, what did we decide? Did we like camping? YES!! In fact, we ended up buying a camper later in the year, but I will post more on that in an upcoming post.

Till next time...
God's love and blessings!

July 2016--Part 1

Hello there! Yes, I am back again. I was hoping to update with a couple months at a time, but I don't think that's going to work. Looks like July may need a post all by itself or possibly 2 posts. I forgot how much fun we had last year. :o)

For the last several years we've had friends over for a BBQ and fireworks on the fourth. It seems our fireworks display gets a little longer each year. Fun, food, friends and fireworks!

The "launching station"--far from the house and vehicles. :o)

July is when the raspberries and black caps start getting ready to pick. This year was a pretty good one. Actually, it was the best one I've had since we moved here. I ended up with 13 gallons of berries in the freezer by the end of the summer. These are black caps, lots of lots of black caps. I believe they are also called black raspberries.

When I go out to pick, the animals usually follow. Layla, the black dog in the front, stays with me the whole time. Coco generally heads back to the house a couple minutes after we start out. He's not one for picking berries.

Yes, even Mittens the cat follows me out there. I often find him hanging out in a patch just ahead of where I'm picking. 

Michelle and I went to church camp again this year. It's a super fun week filled with lots of activities and time spent learning God's Word. Can't beat that. Here Michelle is studying her memory verses for the week hoping to "quiz out" and get lots of points for our cabin. The best part is she is hiding God's Word in her heart. 💖

Well, since this is already long, I think I will end here and finish up the month on my next post.

Till next time...
God's love and blessings!

2016 Part 2

I'm back with part 2 of 2016. We'll start with April.

April: This is such a fickle month. We never know what the weather is going to throw at us. It started out with a bit of snow, but by the middle of the month most of it was gone.

 I LOVE when I can start hanging clothes out on the line to dry.

By the end of the month, my flowers were peaking out.

It even got warm enough for a nap out on the swing. :o)

I'm trying to be intentional about getting in front of the camera once in a while. She's teaching me how. 

This picture makes me a bit sad. When we first moved here to this little town, she would always grab this cart to use. I remember it squeaked SO bad! Look how big she is now! I really wish I'd gotten a picture of her with it way back then.

Our home school group hosted a science fair in April as well. Here's Michelle and her pal demonstrating their experiment for the group.

May: The weather gets really nice here in May (sometimes) and it's the perfect time to go visit our town lake. We love to watch the geese families with their little goslings. Sorry for the not-so-great photos.

Everyone loves the swing. :o)

We get together with some of Michelle's girlfriends once a week or so so they can get some exercise in. Sometimes we hang out at the park, sometimes it's swimming, sometimes it's bowling. I have to post this here for Michelle as it was her first time breaking 100!

June: My garden really filled in this year.

What do you do when the power goes out and you still need to finish 100 flowers for a wedding cake? You work by lantern light and pray nothing melts in the heat.

This little cutie got to go to camp for a week. She doesn't look excited about it at all, does she?

One Sunday these two realized they had dressed to match. Michelle wanted me to take a nice picture of them. He has a hard time being serious.

Awww! I love this. I think this one needs to be printed. See, if I hadn't sat down to update this blog, this photo would have stayed in cyber limbo for who knows how long and that would have been a shame.

Stay tuned for part 3.

Till next time...
God's love and blessings!

Wow, just wow!

I cannot believe it's been a year and a half since I last posted to this blog!! I'm flabbergasted! I mean, I know time flies when you're having fun and all, but that's a bit ridiculous. I'm so embarrassed. I thought about just giving up and just letting this little blog disappear into nothingness.

I first started this blog to help our friends and family who live quite a distance from us keep up with what's going on in our lives, but with Facebook and smart phones, I have found that I don't really need it for that any longer. Let's face it, posting a pic from my phone with a quick sentence is SOOO much easier than sorting through photos, resizing them to fit, waiting for our exceptionally slow internet to upload said photos, and then coming up with the words to go along with those photos. Then I see other blogs and their gorgeous photos and feel that mine are so lackluster and boring that no one would want to read this little blog.

Then I started going back through posts and LOVED re-reading what was going on in our lives at that point in time. So many fun things I'd completely forgotten about. The photo quality didn't matter so much as the story did. So, I've decided to keep on posting, if for no other reason than for me to have a place to put my memories down. Who knows, maybe I'll get better at photo taking in the process.

Anyway, I'm going to recap the last 18 months or so, but I'm going to do it in a couple of posts. I'm going to ask my daughters to help hold me accountable to getting on here and continuing. :o) So, without further ado, here's the first quarter of our 2016--

January: Michelle started violin lessons. She has learned an amazing amount in the short year or so that she's been playing. I'm glad that she's one that enjoys playing. While I still have to remind her to practice, she does it joyfully. That smile she's wearing still hasn't worn off.

February: This month is always super cold for us, so we try to find projects to work on inside as much as possible. Michelle made a small quilt for one of the little girls at our church. I didn't get a picture of the finished quilt before we gave it away though. :o(

 March: This girl is always smiling! My days would be so boring without her. :o)

We took advantage of daddy being home on winter break and he started making my dream desk for the craft/school room.

Isn't it awesome!! I think I'd like to paint the walls and do a different fabric in here, but for now, this works so much better than all the fold up tables and mix-match cabinets we had before.  If only it looked this clean right now. :o)

The BEST thing that happened in March was the announcement that we were going to be grandparents! SOOO happy for our daughter and son-in-love. You'll have to wait for a couple more posts to see the little cutie! 

Who am I kidding?!? Did you think this Grammy would pass up the opportunity to show off her grand baby? I don't think so. Let me introduce you to Paul Michael Brooks. Isn't he the cutest baby, EVER?!? I mean, seriously, that nose, those chunky monkey arms, those little ears. I can't get enough!!! Unfortunately, they still live in Hawaii, which means I don't get to smooch on that little face. :o( However, I am so very grateful for modern technology and being able to video chat with them and get pictures often. Although this is the newest one I have, which is a week or so old, and I had to swipe it from my daughter's Facebook page. I think we need to remedy that ASAP!

I was planning on sharing the month of April today, but this has gotten a bit long, so I'll close here. The plan is to be back tomorrow with the next couple of months. We'll see how that goes. Right now I need to see if I can Facetime that little cutie of mine. 😍

Till next time...
God's love and blessings!