Family Time

We went to Grant, MI this past weekend to spend some time with the DeLange family. It was a wonderful weekend away from school and work, and we had so much fun seeing the family again!

We left friday morning (Alec took the day off and I went to my first morning class) and went to Calvin to see Travis' dorm room, Bryant's dorm room (yes Bryant is back on campus as a 5th year senior!!! what a loser.....lol. Just kidding, he is only there for one last semester so it made the most sense to live there), and then we went to my sister's house where she is living with 3 other Calvin girls. After a pizza dinner with the DeKruyter kids, we headed to Grant where we spent the remainder of the weekend hanging out with the DeLange crew!

There are a lot of exciting things happening in the DeLange family. Two of Alec's younger sisters (Emily and Lauren) got engaged a couple months ago and are busy planning their weddings. Emily is getting married in June, and Lauren is getting married this December. So there is lots of planning going on and ideas floating around! It was fun to be a part of it all. The whole family got together for Sunday lunch, so it was great to see everyone and all of our quickly growing nieces and nephews! Another exciting thing in the DeLange family is that Alec's brother Aaron and his wife Audrey are expecting a baby this April! We are looking forward to welcoming our 8th niece or nephew this spring!

While we were in Grant last weekend, Alec's mom (who does photography as a side job, and is clearly AMAZING at it) took some updated pictures of our little family. The pictures turned out so great. How am I going to pick only ONE?!

A Wedding to Remeber!

A good friend of mine, who I met in nursing school, just got married this past weekend. I had the honor of being her personal attendant and was able to stay by her side for the whole day and help her out. It was such an amazing wedding, everything was absolutely gorgeous and turned out perfect! Here are a few pictures from my camera of the day.

The gorgeous Mr. & Mrs. Michael and Amie Gaspar



So happy I was able to get my picture with Amie, and by the professional photographer no less!

At the reception

The nursing school girls!

The reception was at the Harley Davidson Museum!

Garden Update

Our garden is doing great! We currently are picking cucumbers, green and yellow beans, and cilantro like crazy right now! Pretty soon we will have corn, green peppers, and tomatoes. This is totally Alec's project, the only credit I can take is the occasional watering and picking the veggies. I am thankful he has a super green thumb!


This is the garden in june...

And now 2 months later, this is the garden...

Tomatoes

Corn

Cucumbers

DeKruyter Camping Trip 2011 Edition

Every summer the DeKruyter family does a camping trip in west Michigan. We typically go to Hoffmaster state park in Muskegon, which is where we returned to this year! The weather was pretty good, we got a little rain here and there and it was pretty hot. But since we were really close to the water and our whole site was in the shade we stayed plenty cool.

We had a really great time though, it was fun to hang out with the family again and have lots of beach time. Josie of course loved it, she was filthy by the end of the trip from digging in the dirt all week.

Always have to go to Wippie-Dip and get some ice-cream.

We broke the rules and brought Josie down to the beach, she LOVED running up the dunes and even went for a swim in the big lake.

Its not a camping trip unless you have a hotdog roast!

I think Lake Michigan is so amazing.

Grandpa covering the little cousins in sand

Watching another gorgeous Lake MI sunset

Catherine and Aaron came out for a day to visit and hang out!

Summer Pictures

I realized Alec's iPhone had tons of pictures on it from this summer so I decided to update the blog with some of them!

This is the country club pool I hang out at with the kids I babysit.

Alec did a landscaping project in the corner of our yard, it looks great I think!


Josie does NOT like it when there are dogs on the TV...

This pretty much sums up Josie's life.

Our garden is kicking butt, I have to take an updated picture though this one is from a while ago. We are picking beans, cumbers, cilantro like crazy right now. Soon we will have tomatoes, green pepper, and corn!

Josie loves playing in the yard, her favorite is chasing her tennis ball

All snuggled up after bath time, after we release her from the towel she runs around the house like a total psycho

4th of July fireworks

New tree that we planted, we now just have to wait 100 years till it looks big enough to actually be called a tree and not a twig (Josie tried to dig up the tree for the next few days after it was planted....ridiculous)

We have been to a couple brewer games this season, this one we had awesome seats for

At summer fest seeing Maroon 5

Camping Fun!

We went camping this past weekend with a bunch of friends here in WI. We camped at Pike Lake State Park, which is only 30min north of our house. We had so much fun hanging around the fire, playing countless games of bags (cornhole), going for a hike, and having some beach time. This is our second annual camping trip, and we plan to keep the tradition going every year!

Travis' Grad Party

This past weekend we made the trip to Dearborn for my littlest brother's high school graduation party. It is SO hard to believe that all the DeKruyter kids are done with high school, I feel so old....

The party was a huge success though, but it sure was a lot of work! It was predicted to rain the day of the party, we had a few party tents set up thankfully in case of rain. We set up the morning of just praying and praying that there would be no rain, well prayer works because there was NO rain! The sun was actually out for the entire party and it was gorgeous weather!

It was a little crazy getting ready for the party the morning of, there was some definite chaos getting everything together and all the food ready to go out on the table. My mom catered in some chicken, which Allyson and I went to go pick up. I watched the caterer put the pans of chicken in the car, so when we got home I did exactly like he did to bring them in the house. Well that did NOT work, as I was walking up our front steps the pan of chicken I was carrying bent in half! I quick cradled everything in my arms and held it all up against my body. As I SCREAMED for someone inside to come and help me, I could feel the hot chicken grease just flowing down my body and legs....and of course I was wearing the dress I was planning to wear to the party all day. I only managed to lose 3 pieces of chicken total, but the dress was a total loss :( Despite that little mishap everything else went great! It was so good to see friends and family again in Dearborn!

Travis will be going to Calvin College this fall, he plans to major in biology. The unique thing about this coming fall semester is that all four of us DeKruyter kids will be in college! Bryant still has one more semester left at Calvin, Allyson is going to be a junior at Calvin, and I have one more semester left of nursing school! CRAZY!!!

After the grad party Travis' had a soccer game. He is on a U-18 team. They won the soccer game 12-0....although do not be too impressed, they were playing a U-14 team!!! Those poor 14yr olds, they didn't even stand a chance. But it was their last game, so after the game we boomed the whole team with water balloons!