Nauvoo 2011 Trip

Wow So I got some major catching up to do... Here it is already Fall turning October in a few days and the last I posted it was just turning Spring.. What a slacker... This summer was so busy so I am going to start off with our Nauvoo Trip where we had a little family reunion with Steve's brothers... Sister Amy was at home ready to have a baby any day.. We missed her but this would have not been a good trip for someone in her condition.  So we stayed in this home that had 4 queen beds and a bunk house which had 2 sets of bunk beds.. And 2 bathrooms. There was 20 of us... Needless to say it was a bit crazy having only 2 bathrooms and we had kids sleeping on the floors everywhere..But it was fun none the less...




One of the days we were there we decided to do a little handcart trek.. Little did we know how crazy it was going to be.. It had rained really hard and blew really bad the night before so things were really muddy and we had to cross little rivers several times... Here are a few of the fun spots we had to trek through.




This was one of the better ones...  Sorry but my pictures did not load in the order I wanted them too so you will have to go go with it....

Steve and I posing in front of the Joseph Smith and Brigham Young statues.

Steve's brother Rich and his family in front of the Nauvoo temple.

More rigorous trails.

Waiting to go on the carriage ride through nauvoo.

All the cousins.

Kim and I..

Logan

Logan's shoe got stuck in the mud..

Steve's youngest brother Matt and his family.

We had to stop to move the turtle out of the road...

Our OX.. what team work.

Our crazy group...

Some of the trees we got to hike through on the trek.

Ran into a few obstacles on the path.. There were some tree's down due to the high winds the night before.

allie and Sara were troopers they pulled the cart most of the way...

Talk about steep..

One of the night shows (Sunset by the Mississippi)  Kids had a great time..

My handsome nephew..

At one of the shows (Anna Amanda Amelia Applebe) Logan's favorite show..

Also on this vacation was Logan's 7th Birthday.. It was nice she got to spend it with family and cousins... However she was still dissapointed in not having a friend birthday.. It's hard when your birthday falls in the summer...

The boy's playing with fire again..They cant get together without having a fire to play in..

Jessie's horse cake.. Aunt Chan did a great job decorating it..

she finally got an American girl doll..

The kids broke the tree swing so Steve had to climb it to re attach the ropes. It was very high and he was a bit nervous coming down.

We had beautiful sunsets there..

So after Nauvoo Matt Steve's youngest brother and his family came back to our house to stay with us for a few days and help us with a few things that needed done.. It was so nice to have them stay with us... Well while we were out taking care of the lawn Steve decided to stick his hand under the lawn mower while it was still running.. Luckily he had a good pair of working gloves on and just his tips went in.. He was so extremely lucky to still have his fingers.. Because of the force of the blade hitting his finger's the blood blew out the tips of his fingers causing little lacerations,  but other then that and a small cut through the nail and some bad bruising he was very lucky... However because they are on the tips of the fingers where all the nerves are he was in a whole lot of pain..  Thank heavens Matt is a doctor and was there when it happened and was able to help with the situation..

Well that was our Nauvoo trip.. Lot's more to come of our summer.. Lot's to catch up on....

Spring Time Finally

I just love Spring Time.. It has been so crazy here with the weather.. We have temps in the 80's and 90's then the next day they drop down to 40's.. Welcome to Michigan.. However it has stayed pretty nice since Memorial weekend.. And over the weekend we did alot of working outside in our yard and tried to get some things caught up.. We tilled and planted a garden and found some nests around the yard and this happens to be one of them and guess what had just hatched the day of the picture?  Pretty ugly hu?  They are baby Robins..

This is a duck's nest we found along our water canal ditch.. We ended up scarring the mother off and we havn't seen her come back.. Hope she does and they hatch.

On Memorial day we spent the day tilling the yard and fencing and planting our garden.. Not sure what happened to the pictures I took after it was planted.. I cant wait.. We planted tomatoes, carrots, peas, beans, peppers, onions, pumpkin, watermelon, squash, cucumbers, broccoli,corn plus not shown we planted 10 rasberry bushes 8 strawberry bushes, 4 apple tree's, 2 peach, and 2 apircot tree's..  I feel like we are turning into farmers..

with 6 acre's we have lot's of space to ride the 4 wheeler. Also with 6 acres we had to buy one of those big zero turn riding lawn mowers.. It still takes us 4 hours to mow the lawn.

Steve said we would never get a trampoline for the kids.. Well guess what the kids won.. With all the open space they convinced him they needed a trampoline..

Along with spring comes baseball.. Austin has been having a blast playing this year..

Our new kitten we promised the kids we would get as soon as we had our own house.

Then we had the Mormon Prom.. Out here in Michigan they have a mormon prom which is basically like a glorified stake dance where 5 stakes come together for a dance and they dress semi formal... It gives the youth of the church a nice dance to go to that has higher standards with modest clothing.. Allie had a blast and danced all night..

Along with our house came a Hot Tub and we did not really have any clue as to how much chemicals to use and we didnt have any testing strips.. Well on Easter we cleaned out the hot tub filled it and put chemicals in and thought we were ok but little did we know.. Because of our well water our ph in the water was off the charts and our son got a horrible rash all over his entire body.. We took him to the doctor and found out he had what is called hot tub folliculitis.. He was put on antibiotics and a steroidal lotion.. after about 2-3 weeks it finally went away.. It was really bad... This picture does not do it justice..  His eyes were swollen he looked aweful.. We had to keep him home from school for 2 days just because he looked so bad..

Anyways that is how are spring is going so far although I dont think it is spring much anymore.. The last 3 days we have had temps up to the 80's and 90's

Stay tuned my next post will be on our awesome trip to the Bahamas.. Steve made All Star #1 manager in the country for his company so we got an all paid trip to Atlantis in the Bahamas... It was sooooo great...