The Baxa’s

Last Sunday, we had an impromtu beach day with the Nelson’s. We piled in the car and headed out to the Warren Dunes. I love doing outings with my sister. Not only do the kids have the best time ever with their cousins, but it reminds me to slow down, and relax. April is really good at going with the flow. Relaxing. Sitting back and watching the kids have a good time. Me? Not so much. I am a very scheduled person. I like a routine. So, when we do outings with the Nelson’s, I try to be more like my sister, and just enjoy the day. It is always a ton of fun, and relaxing. We spent the day at the beach, the boys and the kids hiked up the huge sand dune, we enjoyed the sun and the water. We packed up around 6 or 7. We stopped for dinner in a cute harbor town, New Buffalo. And we even got ice cream afterwards. We didn’t get home until after 10:30. It was a great day!

Our "camp"

Digging and building

Hauling supplies

Excavating

Serious discussions

Sisters!

Ok folks. I want to start posting again, and I’m intimidated because of how far behind I am! So, we are going to catch up. We’ve had a lot going on around here.

Unfortunately, I don’t have a lot of pictures from Christmas!! No one was manning the camera. Well, Christmas was awesome as usual. I get caught up in the excitement just like the kids. On Christmas Eve, the boys had a lot of fun with the beverages…

And the kids just had a lot of fun.

Jeff built a kitty condo over the break. The Kitties LOVE it. It is like a playground for them, and it is so fun to watch them.

We had a birthday in January. My baby girl turned 8. I can hardly believe it. We celebrated with family, and her “friend” party is this weekend. She’s just getting too big, too fast!

We said goodbye to another beloved four legged family member. Sam was Jeff and I’s other baby. We had gotten her about a month after Emma and she was fifteen years old. It was a hard day, but she was sick.

And later on that afternoon, we went out to get our mind off of things.

And last, but certainly not least, we have the blizzard. It did indeed turn out to be a crazy amount of snow! It was pretty cool. Now it is literally pretty cold!

And I think that about brings us up to date! I can feel free to post at random now. I do have some new pictures of the kitties to post. They are getting so big. I can’t believe how little they were when we first got them!

This post was delayed because I just had too many pictures from this trip to sort through. Ridiculous, I know! Weeks ago, we spent the afternoon at a local pumpkin patch with some of our good friends. The kids all had an excellent time!

Quinn was a little (okay, a lot) scared of feeding the animals. I will say though, the goats were a little over zealous.

There was a huge hay bale mountain to climb. And the boys were getting in plenty of trouble for chasing and trying to scare the girls.

Next up, the big bouncy thing. It was super cool. Set in the ground, it was like a huge bouncy pillow. These kids were moving targets, hard to get a picture of!

Tricycle races. Quinn raced that tricycle just like he races on Mario Cart. He kept crashing off the course!

The big corn maze…

Finally, the corn kernel pit? I’m not sure what it was called, and I’ve never seen one before, but it was pretty cool. There was a place where you could guess how many kernels were in there. Seriously. I think the number would be beyond comprehension. Billions? Trillions?

Next post, Starved Rock I think.

We recently had the pleasure of enjoying a day with the two of them. The kids love the undivided attention they get when Grandpa Baxa and Grandma Barbie come over. Unfortunately, they were here to say good-bye, before they head back down to sunny Florida. We sure do miss you guys when you are away!

But on this sunny day, the boys threw around the football. Madeleine and Quinn had fun playing legos and house with Grandma Barbie. Then they headed outside and pretended they were on a boat!

I managed to snap a few good pictures.

Grandpa Baxa and Grandma Barbie, have a safe trip!

I’ve been a total slacker. Again. My days just seem so hectic. Once I finish my work in the morning, I don’t seem to get back to the computer. So here it is. The post to get us up to date!

Quinn had his first sleep over at our house. His cousin Myles. They slept in Madeleine’s bed, since she was sleeping over with Ella. And she didn’t know about it till she saw this picture. Oops!

And as you read on April’s blog, we had a get together to make blueberry jam. It turned out fabulous. And it gave me such a sense of pride to make something of my own, instead of just eating the stuff that April makes! Here is Quinn enjoying some of Aunt April’s peach jam. It got a big thumbs up.

And with all the other goings on around here, we had the first day of school. The kids were ready to go back, and so was I! My baby is in first grade this year, can you believe that?!? And him and Madeleine ride the same bus. I love it.

Sorry, I couldn’t get a picture of the big fifth grader. He goes out for the bus all by himself now, and heaven forbid his MOM should be seen out there!

And finally, we went to a birthday party for Jake and Luke. It was huge fun playing soccer!

And with that, we are up to date. I will try harder to stay caught up, I really will!

We recently enjoyed another great set of concerts at the Commons. We saw Fastball and Survivor. Survivor was the best. They were so eighties, it was comical. The lead singer was doing the jumping jacks clap over his head, and he kept dancing and swinging the mic stand over his head too. I wish we had a nice picture of one of those moves! It was a great time.

One more concert left before summer comes to an end!

Living in the midwest, we don’t make it to the beach very often. Especially one where the waves make it seem like you are at the ocean. The day started out cloudy, with a little drizzle and ended up very sunny, hot, and without a cloud in the sky.

We started with a hike up the sand dune. It was huge.

Then the kids played in the sand and the water. Had some lunch and some snacks.

One more thing to check off the list of “Things we want to do this summer”.  It was a great day.

With the big wedding behind us, we’ve just been up to some regular old summer fun.

We went blueberry picking. 26 pounds of blueberries to be exact. So far we’ve had blueberry pancakes, and April baked fresh blueberry pie. It was hot out the day we picked.

We also spent an afternoon at the local carnival. It was darn hot out that day too. But, the kids had a blast.

Quinn has learned to ride a two wheeler!

We did a little bit of school shopping. These are two of the things that Josh picked. I think he was meant to be growing up in the 1980′s. Jeff asked me if we were shopping at a resale shop, because he thinks he once owned this shirt:

And this is just a random picture of Ella and Madeleine. They were trying to trick the boys into thinking they were someone else. It didn’t really work.

So, that’s what has been going on around here.

The kids are ready for school to start. Especially Quinn. He asked me today if school starts tomorrow or 2 days? I said 18 days. He told me he hates 18 days!

*all the above pictures were taken with our phones (except the last one), please forgive the lack of quality

A day to sit back, relax, and soak it all in. Although, I do feel like April and I have to move heaven and earth to make it happen. Especially when April is working the day before, and I am watching her kids. Jeff has a beer club meeting and Ella has dance the night before and Jeff has a haircut that morning. Boating is always a last minute thing, but it is always well worth the hectic stress that it takes to make it happen. The experience never lets us down.

When Quinn tells me “I love this water”, “I love this lake”, “I want to come back here” – it is all worth it. It’s always nice when we can do something that everybody enjoys. And I’m really happy that Jeff drives home, because by the end of the day, when we are doing the two hour drive at nine o’clock, I am done.

This year Josh got up on skis. Finally. Thank you April for having patience with him. You are great.

Thank you April and Greg for inviting us. It is always truly a pleasure.

In our never-ending quest to find new, fun and interesting things to do, we recently took a trip to the Morton Arboretum. They have a beautiful Children’s Garden, with tons of fun stuff for the kids to do.

They had a special exhibit called Steel Roots. Sculptures. They were cool. But kinda freaked me out. They reminded me of those alien things that came out of the ground in the movie War of the Worlds.

We’ll see what’s next.