Outdoor Animals-Spring 2011

I have had these pictures set aside since this spring:)

Here's Halley

Gizmo(Who recently became and indoor cat due to the other cats picking on her)

Lucky

Sunshine

Sugar

Oreo

Canada-June

I am so embarrassed to start writing on here... Since I have said many times that I am back:) We had a fun, crazy, busy summer/fall. Our internet still isn't the best(working on this with a high speed internet, not at our home).

So our yearly Canadian fishing trip went well. We had a lot of good fishing. A few slow days but who can complain with the scenery...

Jason caught the biggest fish a 40 inch Muskee

We all caught many walleye

ANd we had the most amazing night ever of fishing where we caught our limit in probably an hour and a half.

We ate very well. There were six of us this year. My dad, my two brothers, my brothers friend, Jason and I. We also ended up going to a different resort.

We're having a great summer!

We have enjoyed our time this summer outdoors. As you can tell by my absence here on the blog! The kids have kept me running with both of them on the swim team, Alexis in gymnastics and Brayden in Soccer. We have also made many trips to the parks and library. Brayden has really started to want to be outside, exploring, creating "mouse traps" and riding his bike. Alexis will go outside and read, collect bugs and read some more. Oh yes and play with the cats. The mosquitos and deer flies have really come out the last few weeks and it gets harder for the kids to explore in the grass but they still manage to have a great time.

We have our garden again this year and have enjoyed strawberrys, blueberries, radishes, lettuce and a couple carrots so far.

Our yearly trip to Canada this year was a success. I will blog about that next, when I can get to an internet that has a better upload speed. Next week we are looking forward to our trip to Mille lac Lake we are bringing the kids and my parents are going along too. Sounds like the weather is going to be HOT and sticky. I got an email from school today talking about the school year already. I can't believe this summer is flying by so fast! We learned last month that we will have no busing available for us unless we want to send the kids to the district we live in. We are only 1/2 mile to a mile away from the district line and are pretty upset that they decided to do this. Last year we were able to bring them to a bus stop in the district. I guess we will be doing lots more driving this year. I Hope everyone is having a wonderful summer:)

Brayden and Jason at the Nature Center

Jason took the day off a few weeks ago and decided to go to the Nature Center with Brayden and the two Kindergarten classes. There were 40 kids and a lot of parents too. They had a lot of fun exploring the turtle pond.

Digging and Drawing in the Sandstone
and climbing in trees

I've got a lot of this on my mind:)

The sunfish have moved into the shallows and we've been catching them off the dock. Yesterday I went fishing all by myself because Abby was sick. It was very peaceful! I pulled in the biggest sunfish I think I have ever caught, 9 inches!! Which is very big for our lake. Here is a picture but you can't really tell how big it is by the picture.

This all leads up to nine days from now when we leave to catch even bigger fish in Canada. We can't wait:)

A Very Special Day

Eight years ago Alexis was Baptised into our church. Here she is in our four generations picture, with great grandma Fran, my mom and I.

And here she is Eight years later all grown up and ready to celebrate her 1st Communion
She had been working hard all winter during her classes to celebrate this special day and she had such a great day. We love you lots and are so proud of you Alexis:)

A Day at the Lake

Mother's Day weekend we spent at the lake. It turned out to be a gorgeous Saturday and we got the docks, boats and boatlifts in. The kids spent most of their time playing with

a turtle that I found, while raking up some leaves.
After everything was in we went for a pontoon ride around the lake. The leaves are just starting to pop out on the trees.
Alexis brought on two books, you know just in case:)

But she ended up doing a lot more of this...(and yes we were moving)

The weather has brought out some antsy kids, I guess:)

Spring Music Concert and Art Show

Alright, So I probably shouldn't even post these pictures on here, they turned out pretty bad but they are the only ones I have. We got to the kids concert early and still had to sit quite a ways from the front. Both of my short kiddos are in the front rows.

-The 2 Kindergarten classes and the 1st grade class sang together.

Then the second grade and third grade sang together. Alexis was asked to introduce the song to the audience. She was very nervous but she did it and did an amazing job! She was really one of the only people you could hear clearly.
We were so proud of both of them. Grandma, Grandpa and Aunt Kelly came to the Show with us.

Spring Flowers are popping up

Tulips

and Hyacinth
are being spotted around our home

Last Day of Spring Soccer

Brayden is now done with his Spring Soccer practice. He really enjoyed kicking the ball around. He still wants to play so we signed him up for a summer program also.

-Here he is kicking the ball into the goal

-and kicking the ball across the field

Easter

I've failed to write about Easter, I just sorted through the pictures. So heres a few tidbits.

-We celebrated a quiet Easter with my parents, brother and sister in law on Saturday night

-We celebrated with Jason's family on Sunday at his sister Kelly's with his sisters, brother, niece, nephews and friends.

-The kids had two Easter egg hunts

There were lots of good hiding spots

Brayden and Alexis found golden eggs, which earned them special prizes
and they both got a lot of candy and money
but they both had a great time on the easter egg hunts
Happy Easter a few weeks late:)

Random Sighting

Last weekend after picking up Alexis from gymnastics we looked over and saw these standing in the parking lot. Now theres something we don't see everyday! I guess the circus was in town. We stopped to look and take a picture because Brayden really likes elephants.

A Sunny Day

A few weeks ago the kids got home from school and decided to go exploring outside, because it was nice out. We all went down and collected some spinny minnows and went looking for frogs. The kids had a blast! Here's Alexis laughing at her brother...

Who went into the swamp a little too far:)
Can't wait to do a little bit more of this. It sounds like the weather is suppose to warm up and our spring flowers should be opening any day now. Jason and I put up the fence around the garden last weekend, because the pup was walking all over the strawberrys. So we are ready to get started working outside:) Yeah!

It's May

I guess this weather could be worse, this was in January... The top number was the temperature outside

Spring is suppose to be here but we haven't seen much of it. A few nice days here and there. A lot of rain and a lot of cold...I'm so over it and need some Vitamin D:)

Our Boy...

Has a thing for a girl in his class, can you guess her name...

He's not talking about it but we've heard from his big sis(and the papers he writes on around the house) that her name is Abby...

Happy Easter

We spent a fun night decorating easter eggs. I read on a blog about drawing with crayons on warm boiled eggs. It worked great!

Swan

When I was leaving to pick up the kids from the bus stop on Friday. I saw the most amazing thing!!! These gorgeous pair of Swans in the pond across the road from us.

This was taken with my cell phone so they didn't turn out very well.

Happy Earth Day!

The kids brought home Maple Trees from school today for Earth Day. We can't wait to plant them this weekend.

Soccer

This is the first week I've been able to see Brayden play soccer. He looked like he was having such a fun time. They were playing simon says games, working on drills and had a 3 on 3 game.

Half way through he had a moment... you know the one where he is stubborn and decides for whatever reason he was done and sat down in the middle of the field. But five minutes later he was back up hands in his pockets and kicking the ball around again. He said he had fun and wants to go back.

It was really hard to get any pictures. They turned out pretty dark and blurred because he was so far away I had to zoom in on him. So this video below is full of movement and a bit blurred at times. But he passed the ball to his teammate who then scored a goal. He got a big smile on his face:)

And the results