Life in July

July was a busy month.

To start off, our nephew and his wife added a new baby boy to the family;
Nick, Brittany and Holden were here for a visit;
the transmission went out on the Suburban on the way to the airport to pick them up so pretty much the whole time they were here we had the 4-Runner (which holds 4 people comfortably) for 8-9 people!

We spent a day at the zoo with all of us, my mom, both sisters, one brother-in-law, four nieces and two nephews (and my BIL's grandma). The weather was cool which was nice for a day at the zoo and we had a great time.

We celebrated the 4th with a barbecue and fireworks at my parents and celebrated my niece, Rilee's first birthday;

Kelly went back to work after being off for 11 weeks;
the Allen's returned to Texas;
we had a 40th birthday party for my BIL;
my BFF was here visiting from California and we got to go to lunch to catch up;
we had a graduation party for my niece, Sarah;
we went to dinner with some good friends from church and,
we spent MANY days out on the boat!

June Happenings

June was a busy month! Kelly was still on his leave and spent most of it working to get the boat running. Not exactly how I had envisioned spending his time off but, oh well, that's kind of the way life goes!

In June we went kayaking at Devils Lake,

Shelby FINALLY got her braces off,

we welcomed a new member of the family, my niece's baby boy, Karter, the girls got out of school and we took the boat out a couple times.



The month went by fast!

May Goings On At Our House

May was a lot of wonderful with a little not so much.

The wonderful was having my sweet husband home after a looonnng deployment to Iraq. He came home with 11 weeks of leave time so we spent the days together while the kids were at school hanging out, waiting for the rain to stop, bike riding (when it did) and he shopped for a boat. He ended up buying a boat that needed a new engine (what can I say, we love a challenge!).



Another part of the wonderful was the trip that Kelly and I took to Washington. We spent three nights in Seattle at the Silver Cloud on Lake Union. We had a great time checking out Gas Works Park, riding bikes, visiting Ballard Locks, Pike's Market and Fisherman's Terminal.








We left Seattle and took the ferry across the sound and stayed three nights at the Inn at Port Ludlow. We stopped in at a marina and found a guy that worked there that had an engine for sale that we ended up bringing home for our boat. We spent our time there kayaking, riding bikes, visiting Port Townsend and the Museum of Glass.





The "not so much" was my grandfather passing away while we were on vacation (see previous post for that). We came home from our vacation and had a nice going home celebration for him.