Look Ma...no training wheels!

For some reason when I learned how to ride a bike I remember it being very difficult. I especially remember the skinned knees, hands and elbows. Because of this I made sure to buy Nick elbow and knee pads as he is a little sensitive when it comes to getting hurt. He has been riding his bike since he was two and a half. Over the last couple of months we have been raising up his training wheels from the lowest to the highest notch. We finally decided he was ready about a month before he turned 4. This is the picture of him all geared up.



Here he is on his first bike ride without training wheels!

Awesome huh! The amazing thing is since then he has only fallen one time. It took me months of skinned knees before I was as good as he is!

Cowboy Reunion

We had a lot of family reunions this summer but apparently I forgot to get my camera out at all of them except the Cowboy Reunion with the Sorenson's. Thanks to my cousin Heather and all her helpers it was awesome. We camped out in my Grandparents back yard, played a lot of games and ate a ton of food and that was just the first day! The second day my Aunt rented a giant waterslide...it was awesome!!! Even my aunt's went down the slide!

Kyle just loved being around any water at all. This was his dream come true.!

This Video is of Andrea doing a front flip down the slide. She is totally the family daredevil!

This is the video of Nick and I going down the side. Don't judge the white legs...I am trying to bring tan lines back into style!

We will be talking about this reunion for years to come! Thanks Aunt Sue!

Odds 'N Ends

So here are some odds and ends from this summer.

Yes, this summer was exhausting for Mike and Kyle. Lots of projects to do around the house.


Nick and Andrea have loved playing with their baby brother, and Kyle loves them back just as much!


We also added a new addition to the family, and the best part is the beautiful and amazing music already coming from my little concert pianists.

Spanish Grandpa and Grandma

My Dad and Mom are the best! They have accepted a call to serve as mission presidents in South America, and are now our designated Spanish Grandpa and Grandma! We are very excited for them and this new adventure they are going on. We had a lot of family get togethers, parties and dinners before they left, but I can't find the pictures I took of any of them (they probably got lost in the comptuter shuffle.)

In preparation for them to leave for three years many of my family members got together to help get their house ready for renters. It was a lot of work but a lot of fun to be around all the people I love! I have posted a few pictures of our efforts.

We had a lot of painting to do and one of the rooms was my brother's with this giant Michigan M on the wall. My sister and I had the great idea of writing "Ohio" over it. The two schools are friends anyway right?

We also had some fun little helpers in the basement for the painting. It only took us 12 hours of scrubbing to get the paint off the floor after! They were sure good helpers though.

This is Kyle performing his chore of cleaning the sink. He did a pretty good job too.

We were detail oriented when it came to cleaning the house. This is me cleaning the back side of the stair banister, grandma volunteered to hold my feet. I am pretty sure she won't do that again!


This is a picture of the bathroom wall before we painted all of it.


This is the picture after it was painted. Pretty huh!

Finally this is a picture of the kitchen after the sink was replaced, the cupboards were washed, the lights were cleaned, the walls were painted, the floor was waxed, the light switches were scrubbed, the banister was polished, and the carpet was cleaned.

Thank you so much to everyone that helped! I am sorry I didn't take more pictures of all the working hands. We recently talked to the renters who are there now and they said they loved it so much we might have to kick them out after three years! Yay...our hard work will hopefully pay off!

Easter

This Easter (I know...it is hard to think back that far) we caught the easter bunny on camera! Well, come to find out he finances all his candy and eggs by mowing lawns...who knew?

Nick thought the bunny was a little sketchy. It was probably the giant carrot that had him concerned.


Nick and Andi had no hesitation when it came to looking for the candy though.

Kyle and Daddy found this sippy cup the Easter Bunny left for him. We still need to work on his sipping technique a little.

Andrea found an easter snow globe that she loved. We all had a great time watching the kids, they sure bring the fun to every event!

Special thanks to the Easter Bunny for humoring us!

Soccer

This year soccer for Andrea was AWESOME! Last year you could tell she got bored as the season went on, but this year we saw a whole new girl. This was especially the case when she realized she could run faster then many of the other kids out there! (she gets that from her dad) Anyway, she scored 5 goals this season with three in one game all from breakaways! Really though she is the best on defence (she gets that from me). This video is taken of her chasing a breakaway from the other team down.

Several times she also had the biggest cheering section of anyone. Really who could do poorly with all these people around!

Grandpa and Kyle enjoying the game!

Go Andi! can't wait for next season!

The Flood

The best word to describe the last 4 months would be CRAZY!!! It all started in the end of march when Mike left on a trip to Arkansas. An hour before he left we realized something was wrong with the computer, it would not boot. But he didn't have enough time to work on it so it was left not working for a week and what ended up to be a couple of months (more on this later). Anyway, the night before we had both noticed the cracks in the basement getting more and more damp. We had been watching the cracks get water spots over the previous several weeks, and our sump pump was going off every 7 seconds. Well, Mike had to leave so he told me to keep him posted. He left Sunday at noon.

At 9:00 that night I checked the basement...We were flooding! I called all my family and they showed up within minutes! At that point I just had a few puddles at the edge of the foundation and coming in some of the cracks. It was coming in very slowly so we had a chance to move all our stuff to the middle of the room on boards. We couldn't do anything to stop it though until the next day so I just got to watch it come in. I slept horribly that night! I kept dreaming there was 5 feet of water in the basement. I did go down once in the middle of the night, it was soooo creepy! It sounded like small crickets everywhere in the basement. As the water seaped in it pushed the air out which made a whistle noise. It was aweful, and all while Mike was gone. The next morning I woke up to water almost everywhere in the basement. At its deepest it was 1 and a half inches.

My mom came the next day to help me move things around. This is the water in our cold storage. It was almost to the top of the board. Nick and Andi thought it was AWESOME! They had always wanted a splash pool in the basement!

Tuesday morning we finally got a plumber in to dig a 2 foot deep hole in the basement and drop in a second sump pump. This is the sump pump and you can see all the water under our foundation. There was a TON of water under our house. We were pumping about 60-70 gallons a minute!

Eventually 5 of the 10 homes in our neighborhood flooded but we got it the worst. The Mayor of Hyde Park even came and marveled at the water feature in front of our house! Anyway we eventually found out our storm drains in our neighborhood are not tied to anything else so the wet spring we had artificially elevated our water table level. Once the 2nd pump was in we were able to keep the water out of our house. Mike finally came back the following Saturday and by then all the water had been cleaned up. Perfect timing on his part!!! Glad that was over too! Thank you to everyone who helped us get through it!