B93 Birthday Bash!

Kyle and I along with Nick, Sarah and Krissy went to the B93 Birthday Bash at the Ionia Fairgrounds the weekend of June 19th! Emily stayed home with her Aunt Julie and James, Brayden and Hannah were still at Camp Barakel. We started out by camping at the fairgrounds on Friday night and it was raining very hard for about 8 hours! Luckily we have a pop up camper and we all stayed dry. I felt sorry for everyone camping in tents! So Saturday morning it had stopped raining but was really muddy! We waited in line for awhile then got into the fairgrounds where the concerts were going to take place! It started at noon and was suppose to be all day long. The performers we saw on Saturday were Frankie Ballard (a newbie), Bomshells, Julianne Hough (Dancing with the stars fame), The Lost Trailers, The Zac Brown Band (my absolute favorite), Craig Morgan, Michelle Branch and Blake Shelton! This is a free concert, you just pay to park. So half way thru the afternoon they start making announcements about flooding in some of the parking lots! The fairgrounds is located next to the Grand River and it's very low. They ended up cutting the day short because of the flooding. We were lucky, our camper and cars were not in the water but tons of people (over a 1000 cars) were stranded. We packed up our camper in about 10 minutes and left to find another campground! We were set up right next to the river and it was rising fast, I was not going to sit and wait for it to flood! We ended up going into Belding to the Double JJ Ranch! It is a great campground and we plan on taking the kids there in July. It offers river fun, 2 pools, camping, horseback riding, volleyball, playgrounds and golf! The plus is that it is only a little over an hour from home! So we spent the night camping and they ended up cancelling Sunday's concerts due to the flooding. We had a blast and have a great story to tell! We plan on going back next year! Hopefully we will get to see Sunday's Concerts too!
Craig Morgan, Michelle Branch and Blake Shelton! They only got to perform a few songs before the concerts were cancelled!

A self portrait of Kyle and I!

The stage and some of the crowd! There were over 40,000 people there!

Camping at the Double JJ Ranch.

The Ionia County Fairgrounds under water!

The river rising next to where we were camping!

Surgery went great!

Everything went well yesterday! I was home around 5pm yesterday and slept for about 3 hours! I was really struggling with coming out of the grogginess. The doctor said I only had one gallstone in my gallbladder but it was huge like the size of a boulder (bigger than a marble)! I am feeling pretty good today, slept well last night and eating better today. Thanks so much for every ones thoughts and prayers. I am really hoping to be feeling much better after I recover. Kyle has been great, waiting on me hand and foot and taking care of Emily. I struggle with letting people do everything for me, but decided it was nice for a change to just sit and do nothing! Now I feel a nap coming on, pain meds make me drowsy. Talk to everyone soon.

Kids are home from Camp!

James, Hannah and Brayden are home from a great week at Camp Barakel! They have a lot of great stories to tell so if you see them ask them how Camp was!!

Our cutie pie Emily Ann!

Just posting a few pictures of Emily that I of course find very adorable!! Enjoy :)

Our Day at the Race Track!

I'm a little behind, but on Friday, June 12th we took all 4 kids to Michigan International Speedway to watch the ARCA Race. We all had a blast! Emily loved it! We watched Nascar Sprint Qualifying first and then walked around and checked out all the merchandise trucks, ate the lunch we took in and checked out all the cool race cars! The race started at 5pm. The weather was beautiful. We all picked a car at the beginning of the race and my car was the winner! #77! So it was a great day and we all had a great family day. It was the first time for all the kids to be at MIS and they want to go back. We told them that hopefully in the next few years we would take them to an actual Nascar Sprint Race. It's not cheap! The kids got in free (Kyle and I were $15 each) for the Arca Race and we took our own food and pop in so it was a pretty inexpensive day. I look forward to going back next year.

Happy Father's Day! A little late!

Kyle giving his baby girl a ride at the racetrack last week. She of course had cheese in her hand! She LOVES cheese!



Just wanted to wish my hubby, my dad and father in law and all the other dad's out there a Happy Father's Day! This is a little late since we were camping all weekend and just got home a little while ago! I have a great story to tell about the flood and concerts that we were at and I promise I will update very soon and post some pics!

So Happy Father's Day!!

Surgery is now scheduled for next week

I have a new date for my gall bladder surgery. I am now having it done in Lansing and it will be on Thursday, June 25th in the morning. I am again nervous about everything but excited to have it done so I can not have to worry about being sick every time I go somewhere. I appreciated all thoughts and prayers! Thanks, I will keep everyone updated.

Snapshots of the past couple weeks!

Been busy, busy, busy, but here are some snapshots of the past couple weeks! I finally got around and loaded all the photos from my camera! There were a ton. Enjoy!

Emily got into my makeup! Isn't she lovely??!


The beautiful flowers my husband gave me for our 3rd Wedding Anniversary! I love it when he buys me flowers or plants that I will have for a long time. I kept these in the house for a few days and now they are planted in our new flower bed in front of the house!


Emily loves playing in the water and the hose! She gets wet everytime the hose is on!


We celebrated with Kyle's sister Katy on her birthday!
Emily loved the cupcakes!


James' 4th grade class!
He graduated into the 5th grade on June 11th, 2009! My how time flys!

Kids are off to Camp!

I am so excited for the kids this week! James, Hannah and Brayden are at Camp Barakel starting today until Monday the 22nd! This is James' 3rd year, Hannah's 2nd year and Brayden's 1st year! I know they will have a blast. Please keep them in your prayers this week. They are in a great place and I pray they will come home with a renewed love for Christ! I went to this very same camp as a kid, starting in 3rd grade. It is so awesome to see them going to the same place so many years later.

Heading to Camp!

Emily wanted to get on the bus with the kids! I held her up to the window to say goodbye to Hannah! She wanted to climb in the window!

Surgery is being Rescheduled!

I just realized I had not posted that my surgery that was suppose to be on Monday is being rescheduled!(insurance issues) I am hoping to have another date set here in the next week or so! I will keep everyone posted. Thanks!

Happy 3rd Anniversary Kyle!

Today is our 3rd Wedding Anniversary! Like I always say, time flies when your having fun! We have accomplished a lot in the past 3 years, with the biggest being our daughter Emily Ann! I love seeing Kyle with her, he is such a great Daddy with her and our older children as well! Nothing better than seeing him interact with them. When I think of all the things that I have done since Kyle and I have been together I am amazed! He brings out the adventurous side in me. I now hunt, kayak, camp, and snowmobile! The best thing about all that is that we do it together, as a couple. It's quality time spent together as a married couple. I know this only makes us stronger. Having a husband who likes to be home and spends so much time with his family is awesome. He does have his own hobbies too! He plays on a golf league every Thursday. I know that it is still important to have "me" time in a relationship. I am looking to growing old together! Some day we can retire and move Up North!

We were suppose to be going to St. Sault Marie this weekend to stay at the Kewadin Casino and Hotel but we decided to postpone for now since I am having surgery on Monday. I also did not want to get 5 hours from home and have another Gall Bladder Attack like Memorial Weekend. So I'm sure we will do something fun locally this weekend, maybe dinner and some miniature golf!! :)

I love you more every day Kyle. Grow old with me, the best is yet to be!

Our newest additions to the family!

Friday night we took the kids to some friends of ours house to see their new kittens. They were only a week old and so cute and tiny. We are going to be bringing 2 of them home in about 5 weeks. We are getting both of the orange kittens, the other 2 kittens they have are female dark tiger. We only wanted males, don't want litter after litter of kittens running around our house. Although if you ask Hannah she would have to disagree with us on that one! She could have 100 cats and be oh so happy. I was the same way when I was her age. We always had a lot of cats running around since we had a dairy farm and people would drop them off randomly and we would have a few litters every spring. I use to dress them up in clothes, those poor things! Anyways, Hannah picked out the one she wanted and named hers "Jake". The other one is our family cat and I think we all decided on naming it "Magglio" or "Maggs" for short! Yes, after the Detroit Baseball Player Magglio Ordonez! So Maggs and Jake will be joining us in late June. They will be outdoors cats since Kyle is allergic to cats and I really don't enjoy pet hair in my house. We will make them a nice home in our garage and I can hardly wait for Emily to start torturing them! She likes the grab them around the neck! Yikes.

Field Day at James and Hannah's School

Last Friday was Field Day at James and Hannah's school. They have so much fun with this. It is all day long and their classes go from event to event all day. They really love the water events. I missed seeing them do those and Hannah was very bummed when her class ran out of time and did not get to do the Water Limbo! I remember our Track and Field Day when I was in school, it was always so much fun, but I think they do so much more and a lot of cool events that we did not have. Gosh that was over 20 years ago when I was in Elementary school! Wow, time sure does fly by. I can't believe it's already time for summer break!

Jumping over the disk! That looked like a lot of fun!

Working together as a team to keep the balloon from hitting the floor!

In this game they split the class up into 2 teams and one team had to pick up the cones and the other team had to knock them down. When the time was up they counted the cones to see what team did the best!

Celebrating! His team won!

Surgery date is set

I had an appointment with the surgeon this morning. He agrees with the results from my ultrasounds I had done in Grayling Memorial Weekend and wants to remove my Gall Bladder. He said I will continue to have attacks and they will become more frequent! I can handle them occasionally at home but when your on vacation or at a special event it is no fun. I am scheduled for Surgery next Monday afternoon at 3pm. I have to be at the hospital at 1pm. I am relieved that I have the surgery on my calendar, but very anxious and nervous too! I have only had surgery one other time and that was when I was 11 and had my tonsils out. I am having it done laparoscopically (just a few small incisions in the abdomen) so it should be an outpatient surgery and I will be home Monday evening. This type of surgery is a lot easier and should be feeling like my old self in a week or so. When my mom had hers removed back in the 80's she was laid up for 6 weeks! Yikes! I would appreciate your thoughts and prayers over the next week or so. I would like to go in for surgery and not have a sky high blood pressure reading because I am so nervous and worked up. Happens to me every time I visit the doctor. Usually have to take it twice and it comes down to more normal readings.