BFF

Even at 48 years old Dan still likes to play. Now that they boys are grown the only one for him to play with is Daisy. And she LOVES the attention.





footnote-these pics are taken with our new camera-thanks Bri and Heather

A couple more pics from "vacation"

My friend loaned me the bounce house she has for when her granddaughters come to visit. The bouncing wasn't what they liked though. All of them loved crashing into each other on the slide.


Even though we have tons of toys the favorite things to do was smash rocks. One morning all 4 kids took hammers and went down to the rock pile and started smashing away. Megan and Paige loved it so much they continued when the little boys went down for quiet time. Do they still have chain gangs?

We're on vacation

They boys played army guys in the shot put area while we watch Nate at practice Watch practice from the top of the bleachers Nate taking a break from the first day of pads.

For years we have been taking the Roden girls, both the Texas girls and the Jackson girls for a little R and R. This year we have included the two Chicago boys, Ben and Neil - ages 3 and 2 - at Club English. The boys came here on Sunday and are going home on Saturday. It has been awesome. We work out, swim, play, have parties, watch movies, go watch football practice, and play with the dogs. They love their vacation (what we call it every morning). Yesterday Joanne and her kids came over for the day and tomorrow Busia, Papa, Al, Sarah and Kate are coming over to help celebrate Ben's 4th birthday before they all head home on Saturday. The other day Matt taught the boys how to do cannon balls - their new favorite thing.

Weekend wedding

Three of the four of us traveled to Traverse City for Maureen and Rob's wedding. It was beautiful. Mary Ellen and Randy were gracious enough to offer of their beautiful backyard for the event. Maureen and Rob, surprisingly, had a live band playing. They were AWESOME. They played lots of classic rock, blues and jazz. Even though there were no single ladies for Matt, that didn't prevent him from cutting a rug.

Football Camp - day 1

Today is the first day of football camp for the Hillsdale Chargers. Generally the day is spent in meetings and testing. Nate had his first round of testing this morning. He was so excited about his results he called Dan as soon as he had a minute.

Weight - 228 (he worked hard all summer to put on 10 pounds-ahh sweet youth:)
40 time - 4.7 seconds. This is down from his usual 4.9. For those of you who do not know speed testing-this .2 seconds is HUGE!
Pro Agility - a personal best even though he fell down.

He was so excited about how he tested. There are other areas of testing, but I'm not 100% certain on the numbers, and he gets mad at me when I misinform readers.

Dan did ask Nate how he stacks up against all the other linebackers. Nate's response was that his numbers put him toward the top of the entire team!! I hope he continues to have a good showing.

First day in pads is Thursday.

One down one to go

Nate is off to football camp today. I remember 4 years ago when we took him to camp. We spent days getting things together; Dan and I both went; we helped him get his room all set up, and we made sure he was all situated before we left. After 4 years things change.

Nate got his stuff together (in about 2 hours); he loaded up the truck(while Dan and I sat and watched a movie), and left while Dan and I were at the gym. While part of me was a little sad that he didn't say goodbye, another part of me was happy that he is back where he belongs.

There were a few things he forgot - luckily we do live close enough and dropped them off for him on our way to lunch. No we didn't go in to see his room. We sent him a text telling him to meet us outside. As we waited for him we were watching all the parents helping their freshman sons. Four years ago I was not ready for my boys to launch into their own lives. Now everyone is ready. The boys want to be on their own and we WANT them on their own!

Family Dinner??

As summer winds down it is getting harder and harder to find time to eat as a family. We decided a few days ago that we would have a smoked turkey dinner on Sunday. Well, along comes Sunday and Matt informs us he has to work, and Nate is doing some things at the college. So our family dinner turned into dinner for two.

With Nate leaving for football on Thursday and Matt ever so close to going into the Navy we don't know how many family dinners we have left.

Dan cooked the bird outside - as you can see it came out picture perfect. The rest of the meal: twice baked potatoes, green beans with almonds, crescent rolls, was equally as good. And it will eventually get eaten.

Fun in the sun

Usually once a summer we head over to Napolean to hang out with Al, Sarah and the girls. This year Friday was the day. The weather was beautiful - we just hung out on the boat eating, drinking, and swimming. This was one of the few days that both Matt and Nate could be there.

After about 4 hours on the boat we headed in for pizza and cards. Busia and Papa joined us - congrats- to Kate for winning the pot. Just as a coincidence it was someone's birthday, but we aren't talking about that.

Great Trip

In addition to switching the drain fields Dan and I went to Mackinac Island for our anniversary. Neither of us have ever stayed on the island, and we decided to stay at Mission Point.

We had nothing keeping us in Hillsdale, so we decided to become tourists in our own state. We first headed to Frankenmuth and lunch at Zehnders. We had the traditional meal - chicken with all the fixins'. And yes, for those of you wondering, they still put the little plastic animals on top of the ice cream. We got blue monkeys.

After that we headed up to the island. We are lucky enough to know someone, Jeff, who works for one of the ferry companies, and then we were lucky enough that he was working when we got there. He saved us $50.00 by giving us free boat passes.

I will admit, I am usually a vacation planner, but with this trip I planned nothing. When we got off the boat I felt like we were unloading the ferry to Amity Island (from Jaws) We had no idea where the resort was and headed in the direction of the hotel taxi. Neither of us wanted to pay $5.00 a person if it was close enough to walk.


Once we got to the resort it was like being on Nantucket. The weather was great; we checked in, got drinks and sat in two of the many Adirondack chairs overlooking Lake Huron, reflecting over the last 24 years (26 if you count the two before marriage). We had dinner on the outside terrace, where Alexandria, our Polish waitress, served us.

There is no air conditioning in the rooms and we were afraid it would be too hot. The rooms were so homey and comfortable. The breeze from the lake really made it nice to sleep. I couldn't get over how quiet it was. It's quiet at our house, but it was silent on the island. I didn't realize why the difference until the drive home-we didn't hear any birds.


We wanted to bike the island and go on a catamaran ride, but it was raining. We are definitely going back!! Don't have any pictures of the two of us-that's kind of hard when there are only two of us.

Because of the rain we left the island around noon on Monday. We had no place to be, so we decided to head to Petoskey and check out the scene there. We had lunch at a really nice pub, overlooking Traverse Bay. After that we walked around a bit -Petosky has a very quaint downtown area and then headed home.

In the past we have not really celebrated our anniversary-we enjoyed ourselves so much we decided that from now on we need to take a day or two and honor our time together.