First Day 2017-2018

Here comes 5th, 3rd, and 1st!

Bus stop kids!  Man, it's early!

Eclipse fun

We finished up our little vacation before school starts by chasing the FULL solar eclipse!  We ended up finding this GREAT park in basically the middle of no where.  We of course were not the only ones with this idea.  But it was a great way to spend several hours waiting.  We were able to do a little walk next to a stream, the kids had a GREAT playground.  There was a rock wall, little zip line, tire swings, tons of stuff to climb on.  We had lunch.  And we watched every once in a while as the moon started to cover the sun with our fancy little glasses!

As it got closer to the full eclipse, we saw clouds.  And lots of them!!!!  We were not too excited about the potential to miss the full eclipse actually happen because a cloud covered it.  And by the looks of the clouds where we were, they were coming from the north.  So we hopped in the car with about 30 minutes left and just drove south!!!  We drove for about 15-20 minutes.  Hopped out of the car to check out the progress, I think we were in a CVS parking lot.  And we still had a little bit of time.  So we hopped back in the car and went a few more minutes.  We found a grassy hill next to a high school, put our some blankets and watched the end of the moon covering the sun.  And then it went DARK!  It was soooo totally work going to the full eclipse!  An experience I know I won't forget and hopefully at least the big kids won't either!  Seeing the night sky, hearing the birds and crickets, seeing the stars!  It was incredible!  And within a couple minutes, we saw the sky getting brighter and brighter!  Then we hit every back road possible to try to avoid mass chaos from everyone else who also chased the eclipse!  Our drive should have been about 2 hours and ended up being 3, but it was worth it to not sit in some traffic that didn't move for 4 hours!  OY!

GREAT EXPERIENCE!!! 

Waterfalls on vacation

Riding down the COLDEST WATER EVER in the top pictures....and playing in the water in the bottom.  Just enjoying nature on our little vacation before the kids go back to school.  It was a blast for the kids to just be kids in nature.  I'm pretty sure they could do this forever!

Horseback with the family

We decided to go for it and did a 3 hour horse back ride with the kids on our little vacation before school started!  We were a little worried how it would go, but the kids LOVED IT!  The 3 big kids each had their own horse and Rinley rode on a horse with me.  We stopped after about an hour of riding to have a snack and we got to play and dig in a river for gems!  Then back on the horses for another hour of riding.

Martial arts

The boys have started something new!

Stop in Indiana!!

This just makes me smile!!!

Family at the lake

Water ski show

Water park with cousins

Amusement park with cousins

Another super fun and long day!  Lots of fun...oops, not lots of pictures!

Lake swim up north

Since our lake had a no swim advisory, we traveled about 30 minutes north and swam in a great lake.  Super fun day with cousins!

Fun with cousins

Weeeeellll....this wasn't the highlight of the trip!  Started off great, with a great visit and happy kids in the visitors center.  Everyone found their thing that they were interested in.  We were ready to hike and here they were all into it!

Then...the bugs found us!!!  Ahhhhh!! 

Mini golf put everyone in a better mood!

And go carts!

The kids are flying

Seriously, how cool is this!?!

Sutton in red...flying!

Brookston in green...flying!!

Kaisley in blue...flying!!

Sutton flying high!!

Brookston Flying high!!

Kaisley took some convincing, but she got up there too!!

Yiayia's 90th!!

Plans may have changed and the party may have had to be in the hospital, but we had a great time visiting Yiayia and celebrating 90 wonderful years of HER!

Boat with neighbors

Love all of these kiddos!

Our family on the boat with our neighbors

We found the beach!

Happy kids with their ice cream...gotta love the ice cream boat!

Daddy tubing with the big kids

The boys waiting for their turn