Photo shoot

When you are adorable and your cousin likes to take pictures, you get all dressed up on a camping trip and do a photo shoot. I love that Abby and Brook do this. Brook takes so many cute pictures of her. I can't believe how fast she is growing up!

 

Yankton Vacation

Yankton Vacation, one of the most looked forward to weeks in the summer. Good friends, good food and great company! I really can't say how much this vacation has come to mean to the kids every year. It is a time where they get more freedom than usual to be with friends, cousins and to explore. Now that the kids are older it is also fun for Robb and I! Don't get me wrong, it's always been fun but at one point when the kids were little it was just watching kids in a place that wasn't baby proofed. Thank goodness they are older now! We know that Megan and her family is currently in that stage of life that is hard, so we try to help out. Abby is a kid whisperer and Emmy, and Harper are inseparable for the week. 

This is also the one time of year that Robb gets to spend an extended amount of time with John and Andy. Not to mention his very favorite activity of boating.

It is fun to see all my "big kids" get along so well with all Megan's "little kids"!

AJ got to spend his birthday at the lake this year. Happy Birthday AJ!

Family volleyball tournament.

Aaron brought his drone and took this picture of the marina at sunset. Can you blame us for loving this place? It is beautiful!

Baby Zander joined us this year. He is incredible chill, and we all love him to death.

Pat is the forever activity coordinator and entertains these kids with her "special supper drinks, endless games, crafts and patience for their clinginess to her.

Cooper is getting so big! No longer the baby of Yankton anymore.

Ginger and Brook brought metal cut outs for us to paint. We all loved this.

Lucy loves everything about Yankton! The people, the food and getting to be a part of everything and her very favorite is the ground squirrel hunting.

This is Scout's first year at Yankton. She loves it but she is a lot more work than Lucy. She is more time demanding, because she is a puppy and can't be left unattended in the cabin without eating things. She did go to the Yankton kennel a couple days when we were on the boat a lot that day.

We rented the pontoon boat again and spent the day cruising around while the boys wake boarded.

Captain Bob is always a good sport at keeping about 20 people on the boat happy.

Steph and Lester came up for a day. It was fun to see them.

Yankton in a way marks the end of summer for us most years. When we get home from this vacation we start school shopping, the boys start attending camps for school. Yankton is our last Hoorah before we know a school schedule is coming. 

 

Goodbye Grandma Mona

Grandma Mona had been living in Bullhead City Arizona. Steph and Lester were actually planning to go see her a couple months after Dad's death, when we got the news from Greg that she was in the hospital. She had been having trouble breathing and they had sent her home with home oxygen, but she continued to have issues and she ended back up in the Las Vegas Hospital. This is where they tested her and found out that she in fact had Covid and probably the Delta variant which is the scary one currently. We were all worried about her because her health wasn't very good to begin with and this would be a tough road. As the days went by, Greg stayed in Vegas to be close, but unfortunately not with her due to Covid visitor restrictions. Greg really missed Dad at this point because he totally would have been there handling things. Instead, it was Greg trying to handle things on his own which is tough when it is your mom, and she is sick, and you are far from home. Eventually, she got put on the ventilator to assist with her breathing. Covid is brutal on your lungs and if get put on the vent the likelihood that you will come off of the vent is not good. Grandma Mona passed away on July 18. 

She will now be with Grandpa Larry and Dad again. It is so hard to lose another person so soon! I will forever remember the summers that they let all of us cousins come stay at the same time and would take us to Tia Zia to eat and the Corner Bar to get ice cream. Grandma liked to sleep in, but she would wake up early to make dozens of pancakes for us. We played Annie, Annie I Over for hours with a tennis ball tossed over the garage roof. You tried to teach us how to play badminton, but we were hopeless. I know that I was lucky to have you as long as I did but saying goodbye is never easy. 

Love Ya 

Grandma Mona

 

KC Trip

Every summer about this time Robb and I have this sudden feeling of summer slipping away and this strange feeling that we need to stretch it as long as we can. This trip may have actually been my hair brained idea. We didn't take a big summer vacation this year, so I was feeling the need to have a trip with just our family before the summer was over. We bought tickets to Worlds of Fun and Oceans of Fun for the weekend. It was still Covid rules, so we had to reserve our date to do the waterpark part of the trip. The first day we spent at Worlds of Fun. It was horribly hot, and we had no idea how busy it would be. They were also in the middle of a staffing crisis, like everywhere else, so there were very few food and drink stands open and you had a search for a place to get a water. Abby, Emmy and I went on some of the smaller rides while Robb and the boys got in line for some of the bigger rides. As long as we were happy with the little kid rides, the wait times were ok but as soon as you wanted to go on anything big at all the wait times and lines because like Disney World without the nice staff and coolness of it all. Robb and I left the park the first day feeling a little defeated. We had tried to plan something fun and I'm not sure anyone had much fun. We made a game plan for the second day, determined to make it better than the first day. 

That night we found a KC BBQ restaurant that had gluten free options, it was close to our hotel, and it was delicious. This was a highlight of the trip. We always get excited when we can find a restaurant that we can all enjoy.

The next day we got up early and got to the park when it opened. We all picked our number one ride to go on and made a dash for that line right when they let us in. This went much better. By getting there early we had already rode the total amount of rides we had made it on the day before by 10:00 that day. In the afternoon we made our way to the waterpark and spend the day there. The waterpark was less crowded because they capped the amount of people that could enter daily. Overall, the second day was much more enjoyable for all of us!

When you have a group of 6, things are always a little crazy and almost never go how you plan but I wouldn't trade our crazy wild-life for anything. This group of crazies is what keeps things interesting for Robb and I.

 

Addams Family

One of our favorite summer traditions, is going to the musical that they put on at Pinewood Bowl every summer. The girls and I have been going to this for quite a while now and enjoy it every year. This year they did the Addams Family. I think this was one of my favorites. It lacked the flashy costumes, but the story was funny, and the acting was impressive. We always pick a hot night to go but this year it cooled off and we didn't end up that hot by the end. 

 

4th of July

With the boys being in Norfolk for the 4th of July, that changes our plans too. We went to Norfolk to celebrate this year. We were missing the kids and if your kids are running a firework tent you feel like a trader for buying fireworks anywhere else! We split time that weekend checking on the kids at the tent, bringing them food and snacks and doing all fun 4th of July stuff. 

The kids all went to the river to swim one night.

Emmy has decided she loves to light smoke bombs this year.

We watched Big Bang Boom at Skyview.

We swam in Steph's pool.

We had a BBQ at Steph and Lester's new backyard.

Mom, Emmy and I attended a parade where we questionable got heat stroke to see a bunch of old cars drive by. You know all the fun things. While we missed spending the 4th with friends, it was fun to see family and to see they boys working.