early fall

Well, we've been catapulted into fall! We had temps in the 90s on Thursday and today we are in the 50s and it's rained since about 1 this afternoon! Quite a difference! I am excited for fall but am not quite ready to give up on summer. We need a few more warm days on the boat swimming and and having fun!

We accomplished something huge today! We finished putting the playhouse up at church!!! Except for a few finishing touches, landscaping, and the swingset, we are all done! We went over there about 1 today and we spent until 7:30 this evening working on it. Yes, it started raining about the time we started working! :) We put on the porch, put the slide on and put the stairs on! What a job! It looks absolutely incredible sitting there on it's legs with the forest behind it. The slide off the side just looks so cool!

Kylie and Macy started dance class this last week. They were incredibly excited! They got new ballerina outfits that they wanted to wear every day until class. Here's a couple shots of them in their leotards!

Levi and Dan took the opportunity to shoot their bows while we were gone. Levi is becoming very good at hitting the target and he loves the time spent with his Dad. I'll get some pictures of that soon!

We spent the Labor Day weekend with Dan's sister, Jill and her kids. They came up to visit and we spent one day on the boat swimming, playing and having fun! It was so good to spend some time with them!

Love you all!

camping

Our camping trip was successful and fun this time around! We left for Lake Winnebegosh after Dan got home from work on Friday afternoon. It takes us about 2 hours to get there from here so we didn't get there until about 9 p.m. We sat up out tent in the dusk and ate some supper and sat around the camp fire until midnight or so.

The next morning the kids got up early because they were so excited! Yay! We basically stayed around the camp most of the day swimming and sitting by the fire. The kids played in the dirt and invented all kinds of things to do. We wrapped up the evening with chicken terriaki, rice, corn on the cob and smores over the fire.

We packed up by lunch the next day and then took the kids fishing off the dock for an hour or so. Shelby and Kylie caught fish, everyone had so much fun!

We didn't get any rain but we did have biting flies and a few hornets to contend with.

It's been a really dry summer for here. All the lakes are down "inches" and that's a big deal, here. We did have a wonderful thunderstorm in the middle of the night last night and we did get some rain out of it. There was lightening and thunder that rolled around the sky. All of this at 2 in the morning so, needless to say, we had 3 of 4 kids in our bed for several hours last night. It was a cramped night! :)

Please keep us in your prayers as we make some important decisions the next few months. We love you all!