Happy Birthday Jewel

by Sarah 

Last Friday night, Levi's, Jesse's, Kate, and Aunt Sarah came over for supper and the evening. After a delicious supper of Monicals, we headed outside for the evening. 

Jason is always a fan of swinging.

This was little man's first time on this tire swing. He was actually holding on totally by himself in this pic. 

Little blue-eyed wonder was being a stinker and wouldn't smile for the camera. So I had to play peek-a-boo and then snap pics while he was distracted. 

Jasper and Jason are quickly becoming two peas in a pod. Where one is, soon there will be the other. 

A few people rode horses, a few took walks, and the rest of us headed down to the lake for awhile. 

So lately, we have been sighting rats across the road. One of them in particular likes to hide under the sheet of plywood by the gluten pile. And it manages to evade the shovels on every attempt. The boys thought they'd take another shot at it on the way to the lake. (No they did not get it, and no, we still have not gotten any of the rats yet.) 

Looking at the cows on the far side of the pasture. 

Jason is pretty muchly fearless when it comes to water. He kept wanting to walk right to the edge of the dock and play with the water. 

Kiowa Mercy has pretty much turned into a little model. 

                                                                           That smile!💘😍

I told Flint to smile and he gave me a small half-hearted smile. So I told him to smile big. And he gave me a cheesy fake smile. Stinker! He sure is cute though💖

Flint was going to go on a short horse ride before Katie and Aunt Sarah went on a long ride, but he didn't want to get off so he got to go with them on the long ride. 

This is also where Aunt Sarah was struggling with her horse. She was trying to pull Diamond's head up for the picture, but it was not going well because... 

....the horse thought she was supposed to back up so she proceeded to back up and Aunt Sarah could not figure out how to stop her. Diamond kept backing farther.... 

...and farther... 

...and out of the picture😅

We celebrated Jewel's birthday a day early. 

It was Aunt Sarah's actual birthday though so we celebrated that as well. 

No this not a bunch of kids fighting. Jason went over to Flint and gave him a big hug. Kiowa saw them standing there and wanted to get in on it too. What a bunch of cuties!💖 (They do not always get along this well, but they do have moments when they act like they actually do love each other😅)

This is what we call "Kiowa holding her dish of snack on her head so the two cute hungry babies cannot reach it." 

FL 2021 part 3

by Jewel and Sarah

Although it took several cancellations and reschedulings due to poor visibility, Katie and Jacob finally got to go para-sailing on Thursday. They said it was really fun, and really high. Pic credits go to Jake, who said he was a little nervous he was going to drop his phone. 

This is what we saw from the beach; if you look in the middle you can see a yellow para-sail, and we think this was most likely Jake and Katie. Needless to say, we other kids were slightly jealous of them and the wealth that allowed them to do this 😀 

We also met up with some people that Mom knew, the Martins and the Wettsteins, and it didn't take long for Sarah to make friends with their kids. Josh had fun tossing a football with Cooper for awhile too.

Dave the Octopus, created by Mom. 

In case you can't tell, this is a barn and grain bin, started and mostly created by Sarah.

As time went on it got more and more detailed. 

Josh was attempting to build something here, although I'm not for sure what. Sophie, in the bottom left corner, really liked Josh, although I'm not sure it was mutual when she tried to help him with his sand creation 😂 

Can you tell we're from the Midwest??

That night, while Jake and Ben were throwing a football around on the beach, the rest of us went out for pizza at Ripfire Pizza. It was very good pizza, and enjoyed by all. 

We ran into Kap & Gayle on several occasions, and I think here we were showing pics of our sand castle. Not for sure exactly. We also ran into Eric & Leann again, and earlier we saw Kevin & Tammy.

Friday was our last day, and so we determined to outdo our original sandcastle. It was a little cloudy and foggy at first, but not too bad. We started early. Like 9:00.

Sarah and Josh started off on building some mountains right away, since, after all, how do you build a sand castle without a big mountain??

Bags games soon started.

Can you tell we have some boys in our family who love airplanes/rockets/anything big and fast and cool?

Guess who the bookworm of the family is.

Soon after Josh decided to be done with his castle, Katie finished up her zoom calls and came down. She started helping Sarah with the original one, then they decided to take Josh's abandoned mountain and create it into an identical second one. 

Meanwhile, Jacob and Ben set out to build a rocket.

Busy at play.

Jacob's rocket. Impressive.

When in doubt, add more stairs. Even if they don't lead anywhere. 

Jake, Katie, and Sarah did most of this one, with Jewel and Josh helping a little bit. 

And yes, a lot of people stopped and took pictures of it. One person asked us how many years we'd been building sand castles. Turns out we actually just grew up in a huge sandbox, and we have the time, imagination, determination, and ingenuity to do it. 

Yes. This man's picture had his wife and their friend posed in front of the castle. Another person took a picture of his friend acting like he was building it. It was amusing.

And so ended our last day on the beach😞. 

After getting cleaned up at the condo, we went to the Village again and had supper at the Daiquiri Bar and Grill. It was really good. We enjoyed not having to wear masks either😉

And then it was back to the condo to clean up and get to bed so we could get up at 3:00 and head back to the frozen (literally) northland. None of us were ready to leave. It was a great week.