Swimming Lessons

In Late June this year we attempted swimming lessons for Mr. Zachary and Kenna. McKenna realllly took to the water this year. She is not afraid, spent many a day in Gramma Rue's pool, and can even jump in and feel confident swimming in the deep end! Zachary had his serious reservations. He was his typical slow to warm up to the idea self, but after the first lesson he was pretty good about getting in and practicing straight leg kicks. He hates putting his face in the water, but next year hopefully we kick that!

Here are some pictures waiting for their turn for lessons! We go to Mandy down the street that teaches in her backyard pool. She does 4 kids at a time and its awesome! She is so good with them!!

Love Zachey's long skater hair :)

You have been boo'd

Here are the boo treats we gave out this year!! Love Halloween!

Fun moments

I love facebook in that I get to keep up with friends and family that are far away. I find myself taking quick pictures and updating quite often on there. What I have not done a good job of is saving those pictures and also updating our fun moments on here! So below is a hodge podge of cute moments that we have experienced the last few months!

Poor josh has to pull 70 pounds of boys and bike trailer when we go for bike rides, but MAN does Grayson love it! He will often say with no prompting or reason "go fir bike wide?"

McKenna made pancakes start to finish! I may have helped her in figuring out the measurements...but she did the rest, they were awesome!

This picture needs no explanation - poor daddy's knees!

Although Z has a big boy bike, he and Grayson still prefer to jet around on their bigwheels

Superman jammies!

Decorated for halloween!

Awwwwwww

Such a handsome boy - this picture makes me feel like I have zero baby left here, and more little man than anything!

Kenna and her BFF Keelin had a slumber party -she is being silly as usual!

Kathy officially retired this year! She has been so busy remodeling her Iowa home and starting her Mexico place!

Boys "driving" the 4 wheelers!

Pretty picture from Spring 

We are giving away our 1903 piano tonight! I shouldn't complain as we got it for free...just been chilling in the guest room as it cannot be tuned. Happy that someone else will get good use out of it!

Soccer

Holy cow has Kennas athleticism blossomed this year, she went from being okay at soccer, just sort of following the group down the field - to this aggressive fast offensive rock star! She is very quick, and gets right to the ball. She has scored or assisted in many goals this season and really done well! I am so proud of her, and so happy that she is really enjoying it!!! Maybe its because we are doing parks and req versus all stars? But she is doing so well!

HORRIBLE windstorm, RIP Zachey Tree

A few weeks ago we had the CRAZIEST storm! It was out of the blue and had gusts of wind pushing 70 mph! It literally snapped Zachey's 6 year old tree in half. All down our road and throughout central iowa the curbs were littered with people hauling branches and fallen trees to the street. The city came and picked them all up - it was crazy! I was driving home from Omaha, and it took me a good 30 minutes longer than usual because of the sheer amount of rain.

We had a good portion of our roof damaged...yay homeowners insurance!

 Split this tree right down the middle!

This is a picture kathy took of our grill that blew over....crazy amounts of wind! That's the midwest for you! We will definitely try to find a new tree for Z, and need to get some for grayson too, now that he is 2, geesh :)

Apples coming out of our ears!

We have had QUITE the apple harvest this year. Our tree that is right in front of our house has really grown. We originally thought it was a crabapple tree when we first lived here. It was out by the mailbox and quite sickly. So, we moved it closer to the house, and it thrived there! The last two years it has had apples, and this year BOY did we get a ton of amazing, delicious apples! 

I made apple puree, cider, cake, bread and applesauce. My mom came and canned applesauce and apple pie filling. And we STILL have about 75 on the tree! They are just perfect right now to take off and eat, no worms, bugs, nothing...amazing! Thank goodness my mom knew what to do with them!

If the wind storm hadn't have knocked about 100 out of the tree - probably would have been this weekend that we had our crazy canning spree versus both of the last ones!
 

 The boys LOVE picking apples and eating them everyday. This picture was taken because grayson ate two apples, two helpings of dinner, two glasses of milk and wanted more....total food baby going on below!

4th of July

Yes it is October - I am aware...not been the best blogging mom the last few months, but sitting down today and doing it!!

We did the typical summerfest this year, parade, fireworks, etc. Kenna even rode her tagalong bike all 9 miles to the carnival and back with me!

We also were so anxious to start using our new backyard area, that we decided to do smores and sparklers, even if the wall was only 1/4 done and it was all dirt down there.

 

 

These pictures make me realize how big Grayson is getting! Eating smores, lighting sparklers...little independent kiddo! Josh has worked so hard on the wall, it looks AMAZING, can't wait to show you more pictures!!

Here are some pictures from the parade this year! Charlene was at a wedding in Texas, so her kids came and joined us! We also brought Ms. Lanie - she did NOT enjoy the sirens and drums :)

Kenna was cold

 Boys especially loved the tractors and firetrucks!!!