Race for Ariana Mae

While I was getting last minute things ready for Donovan's birthday party, Dan went to Grand Ledge to run a 5K for sudden unexplained death in children.  Even though his leg was still healing from his bee sting, he got his fastest time yet - 26 minutes!  Congratulations Sweetie!  Wish we could have been there to support you!

 Dan's upcoming races:
Cedar Springs Red Flannel 5K - Sept.
Mackinac Island 1/2 Marathon - Oct.

Our Hearts Are Grateful!

At Roswell's yearly check-up, his doctor heard a heart murmur and thus referred us to a heart specialist.  Dan and his sister both have mitro-valve prolapse, so we needed to find out what the murmur was, if it was serious and would require surgery and/or medication, and more info. 

Thankfully Dan's parents were visiting, so we left them with our other children while Dan and I took Ross to the Children's Heart Hospital to meet with the doctor.

After an EKG and a few doctors listening, we found that Roswell doesn't have 1 heart murmur, he has 3, all in different locations.  But thankfully, the doctor said he classifies them as really loud "innocent" murmurs.  They should heal as he gets older and won't have any limitations, medications, or any special treatment of any kind.

Our prayers were answered!  We couldn't imagine having to restrict our very active 3 year-old from being a crazy boy!  :)

We went to the store afterwards, and Ross got to ride the penny horse to celebrate.  We are so grateful that Roswell is alright!

Guess Who's 7?

My baby Donovan!

 He's getting to be such a big boy.  He's a wonderful big brother and a great helper.

 Donovan loves outer space!  He wanted a rocket cake.  I was making a cake for his party in a few days, so I made this rocket out of cupcakes.

We went to Red Robin - yum for his special birthday dinner with all the family (including Nama and Papa Earl) then we came home to have the cupcake cake.

For a special treat, and because he filled up his good behavior chart he got to watch a movie he's been waiting for for a while now.  When 1st grade got out for the summer, Daddy gave him The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe to read.  Donovan is such a fantastic reader we thought this would interest him.  This is a 5th grade level book!  He finished it in 4 days!  He loved it and could tell us everything that happened.  We told him that there was a movie about it as well.  He finally got to watch it with us and stayed up late.  He loved it!  He is now reading Prince Caspian.  It's a little slower to read, but he is loving it too.  I love that he's such a book worm.

Donovan's birthday was on Tuesday, so we decided to have his friend party on Saturday.  He got to choose the guests this year, and he wanted his boy friends. 

He wanted a space party, so we had fun coming up with games and even invitations that were thematic.

 L-R:  Donovan, Jared D., Elliott, Roswell, Zachary K., Ethan O.

 The first game was pin the eye on the alien.

 They were blindfolded, but the boys were determined to feel their way to put eyes on the alien's antennae.

 We got to play the paper sack game of my youth, where you have hands behind your back and lift one leg to pick up a bag filled with candy by using your mouth.  The bag gets shorter each time it goes through the players.

 Rossy didn't quite understand the rules, but had fun anyways.

 Then the boys took turns hitting the planet Mars.  This was a fun pinata to make.  While Elliott was making his monkey bank, I was making this.  I thought for sure that it was too flimsy (even though it had 4 layers) but it proved to be quite strong.  Even mighty wacks only dented it.  It's demise was when the top hatch came off.

 Would this make Dan a Martian?

 Then the boys got to create their own personal pizzas.  I made some for the rest of us too.

Eating the pizza's.

 They also played Alien Egg Toss.  We used those giant campfire marshmallows.

 And also the clothespin into the jar game.

 The clothespin had to be dropped from your nose, this was Roswell's rendition of how to get it in the jar.

Here is Donovan's real birthday rocket cake.  I LOVE making cakes!

Blast Off!

Happy Birthday my sweet Donovan!



DeWitt Ox Roast 2011

I love our small town!  We got to go to our city's festival this year.  We even got Nama and Papa Earl to come with us while they were visiting.

 This was our spot on the parade route.  It was a great spot!  People from Tim Horton's kept passing by with free donuts and coffee.  Each of our kids got a bag of 3-4 Timbits.  We scored more than a dozen between them.  We also got tons of candy from all the parade participants.  You can see Dan's legs in the right corner.  He had mowed the grass the day before and got stung by ground bees.  His ankle swelled to twice it's size!  He ended up going to the doctor where he had to get a steroid shot and steroid cream and was told that he is very allergic to bees.  So much so that now he has to have an epi-pen incase he gets stung again!  Now we have to take extra precautions when we are outdoors and in places where there might be bees.

 Back to the parade.  A cool plane.

 The kids loot.

Then we got to go see the different vendors in the heart of the festival.  We've lived here for 4 years and this is the first time we have had an ox burger.  Might you think that an ox is like a cow?  Yes, you would be right.  It was just a shredded beef burger.  But it was tasty.  Dan also got to have his beloved elephant ear.  For someone from AZ, this was just a giant Indian fry bread with butter and cinnamon sugar.  He was loving it.  I think it was over-rated.  I can make that at home for much less!  But it was from a carnival/festival, so it must also have that extra quality to it, I guess.  We had fun.

Classification

The boys picked up a lot of rock fossils when we went camping.  When we came home Donovan decided he would put them in categories so that we would know what they were.

We smiled because this is such a Dan thing to do.  Dan's parents and sister said that Dan used to do this sort of thing in his childhood. 

When Dan got home from work this particular day, he looked at the classifications.  Some were cute, like tooth rocks (rocks shaped like teeth), kind of fossilized, and paper wood, but he was pretty right on with some of his sedimentary, limestone, and other sections.

I wonder what the future will behold with our little budding geologist.

Monkey Bank

School will be starting soon, as one of the summer projects for Elliott's kindergarten class, they were supposed to buy or make a piggy bank.  (They will be learning about money, saving, and all that entails.)  We were having a tough time finding a non-breakable bank, so we decided to make one out of paper mache.  Dan used to make a lot of paper mache (chewed up paper) projects through OM (Odyssey of the Mind) in school, so he showed us how.  Elliott's favorite animal is a monkey, so he wanted to make a monkey bank.

We got a balloon and made a flour/water solution for the glue.

 Then Daddy showed how to put the newspaper strips in the glue and spread it on the balloon.

 The boys got to work.

 They really did a great job!

 Mommy helped too.  We needed to have a way for the money to get out, so we also cut and attached the top to a juice bottle so that we could unscrew it and shake the money out.

 After several layers were put on so that the bank wouldn't break, it was time to paint.

 And here's the finished product!

Mr. Monkey Bank!  There's a hole where his mouth is to feed him the money, and the nozzle is on his rear so that he can deposit the moolah.  When we took it to his class for the meet the teacher/open house, Elliott's bank was a hit!  Everyone loved it.

Water Day

After we said good-bye to the Browns, we headed to the kids' Primary water activity.

They had lots of fun playing in the water and doing some games.  They even got to have a yummy treat!

Saying Goodbye

We had lots of fun with the Browns.  It was nice being able to have the cousins play, have slumber parties, and be crazy together.

 But all things must come to an end.

 Ainsley really didn't want to leave Uncle Dan.  J/K she just really loves her daddy.

 Ainsley giving Avery a hug.

 cutie-pie

 Sister and Brother

 Tight squeeze!

The Brown Family

We love you guys!  Thanks for visiting!  We (nor my toe) will never be the same again. (I'm only teasing.)  We had fun.

Camping with the Browns

We made plans to head up to Northern Michigan to go camping.  We called ahead and realized that there were only a few camp sites left at D.H. Day campground at Sleeping Bear Dunes, so we left about 6am to get there before they were all taken.

Early morning.  Eating a Tim Horton breakfast on the way.



Are you sure we want to go camping???  No j/k Dan was looking silly so I could take new pics with my new phone.

After we made it to D.H. Day in record time (9:30am), we found that they only had 1 site left and the ranger refused to let all of our party share it.  Poo!

So we ended up calling and driving to Leelenau State Park and camping there.  We liked it there!  And being a State Park, we again were able to have our entrance waved because we bought the recreation pass for our registered vehicle.  (We've definitely saved money by purchasing this!)



Made it in time for lunch!

 Ainsley loved pushing Avery's stroller all around.  She's such a girl!

 It was a little windy and overcast and chilly when we made it to the tip of the peninsula.  Dan was pretty cold dipping his feet in Lake Michigan (our camping backyard!).

 Camping Cousins!

 Miss Ainsley

 We went to the lighthouse right by the campground.  This is a lego replica that took 6 months to make.

 Looking for fossils.  We came home with tons of fossil rocks!

 Trying to skip rocks.

 Lounging while dinner is cooking.

Making s'mores.  While preparing to come to Michigan from Florida, Aidan would say that he was going to go camping to make s'mores.  He was so excited to make these both nights, as were the rest of us kids!



bedtime.



 The campground even had a miniature playground to get more wiggles out.

 We showed the kids how to twist the swing so that you fly in circles.

 The Saginaw Voyagers were going to sail away.

 The 'French' Voyagers were even dressed in period attire while they carried their birch boat to the lake.

 Everyone getting situated.

 Setting off on their journey.

 The sad thing about not having a reservation at this campground was that someone else had claimed our spot (it was supposed to be an unreservable spot but got reserved - go figure) for our second day.   So we all had to relocate to a site on the opposite end of the grounds.  We decided to make it easier and just take the insides out and walk the empty tents to our new spot.

 There were lots of stares, but who cares, it saved us the hassle of setting the tents up again.

 After our relocating, we headed to Sleeping Bear Dunes.  This is the start.  It doesn't look so bad from here.  Steep, but you figure that it's not bad to the top.  Until you get to the top.  It doesn't stop!  I think we climbed over 4 big hills of sand before we stopped. 

 Here's the view from the top of that first climb toward our car.

You also need to understand that it was pretty hot.  The sand was burning hot in spots.  Or rather it felt cool in the shady spots, the rest was burning.

 This was the last hill we were going to climb.  We were able to see Lake Michigan from here but there was still about another mile to climb.  We were tired (I guess mostly really out-of-shape me was tired) and Ross was crying because his feet hurt.  So we decided to turn around and go back.

If you ever go, it is beautiful, but use the bathroom first because there are no pit stops along the way!

 I think the kids were all pooped out!

On the way back to camp, we stopped by Lake Michigan so the kids could get in.  They really didn't get in much though.



It was a fun camping trip.  On the way home we stopped by Traverse City and got some YUMMY pasties.  MMMMmmmmm!  Good trip!