May/June Happenings

June seemed to be very busy. This summer is flying by quickly. I can't believe it's already the middle of July! 

Grace doesn't like to wear clothes. She also doesn't like to wear diapers. Combine those with velcro closure diapers.......! I watched her sit there for over 5 minutes one evening working at that diaper to get it off! She finally succeeded. Little stinker!

 Grocery shopping with the whole family, even Daddy. After a stop at the dairy, we decided to eat at Carriage Crossing. Except we got there and realized Jacob didn't have any shoes on!! So Daddy took the boys over to the little school playground and the girls and I went in to order our supper to go. It was a lovely evening for a picnic!

 Such a big girl!

 Our dear friends moved away :( but we got to spend lots of time with them the week they packed up and loaded the truck! They stayed with us for a few days and the kids had a lot of fun together. They filled our entire sidewalk up with beautiful artwork!

 She's on the move!

 That's a lot of kids...and this doesn't even show all of them!

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I've been buying raw, local honey from a sweet man for a few years. I've always said it would be fun to have a tour of his little operation. We finally did! It was so fascinating.

 The insulated, heated room to keep honey in cold weather so it doesn't crystalize.

 Learning how the honey is extracted.

 Jacob was all about the machines!

 LJ modeling the beekeeper's protective gear.

 Inspecting a honeycomb.

 Feeling the beeswax.

 Showing us how the bees seal off the honey inside the comb with wax, and how he breaks the wax open to get the honey out.

 The kids thoroughly enjoyed the entire morning. And Mr. Honey (as Isaac kept calling him!) loved it, too!

 My diffuser came in very handy when we got our new-to-us vehicle...

The kids all approve....

And so does Mama! ;) Our van served us well for almost 10 years, but it had given about all it had. 255,000+ miles on that thing!

 Since Aaron's car sat in front of our house 95% of the time, we decided to trade it in as well. I'm thinking we got a pretty good deal on those two beaters! Haha!!

 June brought Addie's wedding!!!!! The kids were so excited to see Seth again they just couldn't contain it! ;) He should know better than to take a nap out in the open on the couch!

 We also camped that weekend. And it was even more of a fiasco than the last time. I forgot to pack much of anything for the kids to play with, which means they spent most of the time at the camper fighting with each other. And then we all got at least a little sick with some stomach bug. Except I got it the worst of all. I've never in my life been that sick. And being that sick at a campground....well, I'm just thankful I actually had a bathroom to go to! I spent the majority of one night in there. I even pulled the Tahoe down and parked right in front of the bathroom. I slept a little in there, but mostly I was in the bathroom. Aaron wasn't sure what to do about it all. He had Grace (and I had forgotten to bring the pack-n-play so she couldn't be left when sleeping since she was up on the bed). And of course, she didn't sleep well that night and it was too cool outside to walk her around. I ended up laying in the middle seat at one point to feed her. I was in pretty bad shape. At around 3am, Aaron had finally gotten Grace to sleep. By 3:30am, I was so dehydrated that my limbs felt electrified and my hands seized up. I texted Aaron (thankful for voice text because my fingers weren't working!) a couple times to come get me, but he didn't answer. I knew he was sound asleep so I just prayed over and over that he would hear his phone, which is always on vibrate. I called several times and by God's grace, he finally answered. He came down and panicked as soon as he saw me. We obviously couldn't just leave the kids in the camper, so we tried calling Seth. No answer. Somehow we didn't have Bruce & Shirley's number!! So, Aaron loaded up all the kids (he said he cringed when he went to pick up Grace since she was finally sleeping soundly), came back and got me, basically carried me to the car, and off to the ER we went. We spent several hours there while they pumped me with fluids. Thankfully, Grace slept the entire time. Anna evidently took a little snooze in the wagon. The kids were angels, Aaron said. I was pretty well just out of it. 

It was just a perfect storm. Nothing I had with me helped to stop it. I couldn't be away from the bathroom long enough to stay with the kids for Aaron to go see if the gas station had any medicine. By the time it got really bad, it was the middle of the night. Just crazy.

 This is how Aaron felt after the whole ordeal. Imagine how I was looking! 

We made it home and the kids still want to go camping again!! Aaron said, "Maybe we need to just give up on camping!" Ha!

Camping

We've been camping a few times this summer. It has been a fiasco every single time!! But the kids love it, so we keep going. Ha!

Old Faithful barely pulled the camper ;) This is actually not our camper. Ours was being used and Aaron had a bee in his bonnet to go camping THAT WEEKEND. Who am I to argue? I've been begging him to camp more often for 3 years. Some friends of ours let us borrow their pop-up, which is just a bit bigger than ours.

 This time, we camped up on a friends' property north of interstate. Middle of nowhere, quite literally.  No running water, but we did have electricity (which is a good thing because we needed the heater!). And it rained almost the entire 5 days we were there. The kids made the best of it and we did get one afternoon of no rain and they went exploring!

 Beautiful views. The windmill drove us crazy at night...it needed some WD-40!! haha

 This used to be an old farmstead, but the only thing left is a machine shed and parts of an old silo and some pens.

 Aaron was helping clear some pasture land. It was a fair distance from where we parked the camper, so I was surprised when Jacob said he wanted to go see Daddy by himself. All he had to do was follow the tracks, but he's not usually one to venture off by himself. By the end of the week, even Isaac was walking back and forth by himself! I loved seeing the boys go off together, playing and exploring.

 One disadvantage of this camper was that the inside stove couldn't be used because of a leak. Which normally, when camping, wouldn't be a problem at all. The stove can be hooked up on the side of the camper. The only problem was that it was raining most of the time we camped! I had a couple of crockpot meals planned, but hadn't accounted for rain & cooking outside on a propane stove!! We made it work and ate quite well, if I do say so myself. Anna & I are the only ones that really like sandwiches, so I've had to get creative with camping meals!!

 We smashed in the exersaucer for Grace and I am SO glad that we did!! She wasn't quite crawling at this point but she was mobile. There is NOWHERE for a mobile baby to hang out! She loved it. And it was a lifesaver for me!

 Even camping, I brought my Young Living along! ;)

 While Grace napped one afternoon, I left Anna in the camper with my phone and walked up to hang out with Aaron. I told her to text me (not enough reception to call) if she needed me to come back. She took her first selfie. ;)

 I used her blanket to cover up the outlets and she had a little bitty corner to sit in.

 Active, active baby!

 Jacob hauled his bulldozer up the hill to play while Aaron worked.

 Grace thought she was pretty hot stuff, driving!

 She told me she would love to help me clean up, so she washed dishes for me! :)

 I used a couple of totes to pack food and games in, so that we could keep them outside and not take up precious space inside. I'm REALLY glad I made the kids pick games and movies and activities to pack since we ended up being stuck in the camper a LOT.

 For some reason, it took me several days to figure out we could play in the big, empty machine shed! I sat with Grace and had the kids play "Red Light, Green Light". It took up a good chunk of time.

 The kids found some beautiful flowers for me on their exploration.

 These two...

 Waaaaaaay up there, the kids went exploring. 

 They almost made it to the top of the hill!

 And thankfully, I also packed my Boba. She loves riding on my back and I spent one afternoon pacing back and forth trying to get her to sleep.

As stressful as it was, the kids still had fun and they still want to go camping! Aaron....not so much! Ha!! I forgot to mention that the first night, we about burned up the place. The extension cord we used got so hot that it melted to the camper plug. I woke up at 2am to pitch black silence. And it quickly got COLD! We ran the cord right through a corner opening in the camper to have at least one space heater going (it really was cold enough to need them!). Aaron didn't sleep much the whole night because he was so afraid the cord was going to catch fire! Our friend brought us another cord the next evening, so we just spent the cloudy, rainy days in the semi-darkness because we still couldn't get the camper plug in to work. We made do. ;)