Day on the lake!

We had a gorgeous day on Saturday and we were lucky enough to get a phone call from Grandma and Grandpa Kerber to go out and spend the afternoon on the boat. We literally spent the WHOLE afternoon! Kale and cousin, Nic, were buddies the whole afternoon. I think they both appreciated having another boy to hang out with. We had a great time and hope we can do it again soon. It was nice to spend a lazy afternoon rather than working on all the things we NEED to get done!! Now we get to play catch up - oh well, not gonna complain!

4th of July fun!!!

We were so happy to have our nephew, Brendon, here with us for about 6 days because he is leaving for Miami, FL for culinary school at the end of the month. We had plans to be gone during the weekend of the 4th so we missed a couple days with him (but sounds like he found plenty to do!). He was bombarded the very first morning to go out and jump on the trampoline with them (as you can see by the pajamas!) and he put in plenty of wrestling hours!!! It was sad to see him go! Hopefully we'll get to see him once more before he leaves.

Over the 4th we had made plans to go to our friends, Brian and Lisa Renze's, house. He was a co-worker of Chad's at AgriGold and is again now with Pioneer as they are in the same region!! It will be lots of fun to attend Pioneer events and still have them to hang out with!!



I loved this picture of Kale with the girls - the girls fell asleep almost immediately once we left the fireworks but NOT KALE!! He waited until we were almost back to the house...typical!!

The beatings just keep on coming.

Another night of severe storms went through the area last night - dropping 4 inches of rain once again - although with the 40-60 mph winds during the storm, I don't know how accurate a little rain gauge can really be! Luckily we didn't see the tornados that they did to the northwest of us.

The storm moved in around 10 pm and finally moved out about 4:45 am (yes, I was awake through pretty much all of it!!). The lightening was CRAZY! About midnight, when Chad and I thought we could close our eyes, this happened:



The whole house shook when it fell - we thought for sure it landed on the house! Thankfully, someone was looking out for us and spared our home. But, obviously we will be very busy today clearing it out so we can get out of our garage!!! And it doesn't sound good for later today weather wise as, once again, severe storms are looking to hit us again. Hopefully we'll see some nicer weather after this.


This is what the trench going down our driveway looks like NOW!!!!

Enough of this crazy rain!!

Usually this time of year we pray for rain to COME - and while we are glad we are getting the moisture, we don't need for it to come at the rate of 3 1/2 inches every 30 minutes! Such has been the case the past couple of weeks - with every storm! These are pictures of our driveway which has taken a beating. The last rain managed to wash out a trench down part of the driveway about 4 inches deep. Dear Lord, please keep the rain coming, but at a much more reasonable pace. Amen.

Fun in the Sun!

My oldest neice, Desiree, graduated from High School the same weekend as the girls' dance recital but luckily, they decided to have the party this last weekend. After all the rain we've had lately, it cleared up beautifully for the festivities!!! It was so wonderful to see so many family members that we just don't see often enough!!!! I love the pictures I got of the girls with their Great Grandma - I wish many times that I would have done pictures like that with Grandpa before he passed so I could share those with them as well. Congratulations again to my sister who had her son, Brendon, graduate from ISU this year along with Desiree graduating from high school!! She's due for a break now!!!!!

After the party, Chad went to visit a friend for a bit while the kids and I hitched rides with other family members to the Cutty's campground where Grandma and Grandpa Kerber were camping. Thanks to my brother and sister-in-law (once again) for picking up some swimming suits for the girls and letting Kale borrow one of Matthew's!!!! Sometimes it's definitely to our benefit that we had our children at the same time!!!! It couldn't have been a better night to hang out.

We didn't end up leaving until almost 9:30 pm to head for home and managed to stay right in between all the storms that were coming in around us! My knuckles were white by the time we got home, I think!!!! Thank goodness for phones with internet so we could keep our eye on where the weather was going so we could avoid it. Only got rained on for a short bit - missed the hard wind, rain, and hail, thank goodness!!!

Dance recital 2010

WOW!!!! We are SO proud of our little girls!!!! It was a late night, but the dancers danced their hearts out and it was an enjoyable night!! So much so that the girls have dressed up most of today pretending they're putting on a "dance recital"! I always tear up when the girls get on stage and dance - I'm so proud of them and love that they have a passion to want to do it. There is nothing better than seeing the excitement on their faces and how they feel knowing that, for that day, it's all about them. It is truly deserved. We love you SO much ladies and we are so proud of you!!!!!

One more year...

As high as our hopes were that Ana would be given the okay to start weening off her meds, we'll have to be patient at least one more year. She's such a trooper but is tiring of having to take them twice a day. She did a sleep EEG this morning and they found that she was continuing to have seizure activity - both awake and asleep but more when she's sleeping. The majority of the activity was in the right frontal lobe.

The whole gang is VERY tired tonight - we packed up the car to take off this morning at 3:45 am!! The kids did really well getting up that early but they didn't go back to sleep on our trip there!!! It was nice for Ana who wasn't allowed to sleep so she'd be drowsy for her test - I think she really enjoyed the noise of everyone else. Needless to say, our trip home was very quiet!!! Kale was knocked out before we even left Rochester! Now we can look forward to heading to bed early after the girls' softball game!!

Until next year....