Summertime stuff. We did the 4th of July parade. We do it every year while the big boys sell parking at Ron's office which happens to be an ideal location for people to want to park! I actually think the parade is pretty lame (tons of fire trucks, cars advertising their business, stuff like that. Not much in the float department...But they do throw out a fair amount of candy that attracts the kids :). We have only gone to the park once!! this summer. That is pretty sad! I need to do better with that. It is adorable to see the kids interact with Trenton. He is always the star when he is with the kids. I think that is how it will be with all of the grandkids for a while. We also had Luke take swimming lessons with Trenton. I loved the teachers. We had the 3 youngest try out the bathtub with jets in our new bathroom. They had a ball to say the least!! We put a small amount of bubbles in and I didn't realize what would happen with the jets! I guess with the soft water the bubbles went crazy!!

There is something pretty awesome about Uncle and Nephew being best buds :).

Ha! Joe is sowing some last of his oats before he leaves on his mission in about a month. He made this 7 foot dummy and decided to put him on the toilet in the part of the house that isn't quite done. He wants to freak out the workers when they come to work on the house. I wouldn't mind seeing their faces MYSELF!! I think he has wanted to lay the guy near the road and put him on top of his car etc. We have talked him out of that stuff fortunately!!

Sorry, I got the last stuff first.....
I was a little nervous about driving out to Wisconsin for two days and than back but surprisingly it wasn't bad. The kids were really good. (Oh course the electronics helped quite a bit :).) We tried to be relaxed about the drive out. We stopped at Crazy Horse and Mount Rushmore. Ron's great great uncle (or maybe more greats) is Gutzin Borglem that did the Mount Rushmore. Wow, those things are amazing. We actually liked the Crazy Horse stuff better. Another place we stopped along the way was Wall Drug in Wall, SD. That is an interesting place. There are alot of little shops. The boys were particularly interested in a knife shop (no surprise to me).

When we arrived at Tiff and Marks's all of the kids just ran and ran and ran! All that pent up energy....Zach seemed to love it. He went around wrestling all the boys.


I don't seem to be able to figure out how to do the writing to go with the pictures (plus I don't feel like figuring it out) so hopefully things will make sense.


It was interesting to go to Tiff and Mark's ward. The kids were so apprehensive but did fine.

On Monday thru Wednesday we drove several hours to get to a place called Wisconsin Dells. The city is full of waterparks. We stayed in a hotel right where a waterpark was. The kids just ran around constantly doing different things. There were also some awesome rollercoasters. We wore the kids out pretty good!

Zach and I had a WII challenge--need I say who was the loser?? Little kids amaze me with their electronic skills! We also spent several hours at the Mall of America in Minneapolis. That place is huge. There is an amusement park inside the mall.

We had such a wonderful time, it was sad to come home. At least the Taylor's will be here in a month to help us send Joe off on his mission.