More Summer Updates

We continue to enjoy our summer, despite being constantly busy!  It has sure been a hot summer, which is exceptionally enjoyable when you are pregnant.....not.  But we have been having a great summer so far!

Our friends Preston and Jennifer's dog, Sophie, had her puppies just a couple weeks ago.  This is a picture of them just a few hours after they were born.  There are 9 puppies total, 5 of them are already spoken for!  They still have 4 more looking for a good home.  So cute though, we have already been to see them again and they are starting to open their eyes already.  They certainly are going to have their hands full when the puppies are walking around and more active!

Here is a random picture I took on my cell phone at work, its a bad picture but you can look out at the horizon and see a water funnel over Lake MI.  I took it from a patient room at work.  It was very cool!

The last weekend of July our friends Brad and Becky Jansen who moved to Dearborn, MI a year ago from Milwaukee came for a weekend visit!  They now have a 10mon old little boy, Stephen, he is just SO cute and so fun!  He absolutely LOVED Josie, he would crawl after her and constantly keep his eyes on her.  He would just laugh and laugh at her, he did get a few nasty doggie kisses in the face but he didn't seem to mind at all.  He would give a surprised look and continue laughing, too cute. 

Josie was so intrigued by Steve in the bathtub, she almost even jumped with him a couple times!

Josie just had her annual appointment at the vet, poor doggie hates going.  She behaves very well at the vet, she lets him do everything.  She just looks very sad the entire time and tried to stay as close to me as possible.  She had to get a bunch of vaccines, and just like a kid she slept the entire rest of the day after getting her shots.

Exciting things in baby land, we are moving right along with getting the nursery ready.  The furniture we ordered arrived this week and Alec spent a significant amount of time putting it together.  'Some assembly required' really means a LOT of assembly required! The room is coming together really nice, I'll share pictures of it once it is more complete. 

 We did have to make sure the crib was able to withstand 19lbs, Josie was less than trilled that we put her in there. 

 Our garden has been doing great this year.  It has been a constant battle with the heat and even worse.....the bunnies!  Oh those rabbits are testing our patience....they have chewed threw the fence we put up and are attacking our beans. 

 Thankfully though we have still had a great harvest so far! 

This picture (taken 8/3) marks 31.5 week pregnant.  Can't believe we are in single digits for the count down.  Overall I am feeling great; battling swollen feet and hands though (I can't wear my rings anymore....); back pain; and just feeling a little bit like I can't move around all that easy!  But still able to work with no problems, just have to watch out because I tend to bump into things with my big belly.

Here is another picture of Josie, she LOVES her tennis ball.  We stand on the deck and just throw it over and over for her, she is great about bringing it back up and putting it right between your feet for you to throw again.  After a bunch of throws though she is panting so hard and her little pink bacon tongue just hangs all the way out, such a weirdo. 

Well that is our summer thus far.  We are looking forward to camping with the DeKruyter family coming up in August.  Also I have 2 baby showers in August (one in MI and one is WI).  I will be sure to update when I have more pictures!

Friends Camping 2012

It has become a yearly tradition to go camping the weekend after the 4th of July with some friends here in Wisconsin.  This is the 3rd year we have camped with this group, and it has been so much fun!  This year we camped at Devil's Lake on one of the group camp sites.  It was a perfect site for our group; the site was private, offered shade, and was big enough for all our tents and stuff!  We had such a great weekend.  Tent camping 28 weeks pregnant was ok, I was a bit nervous but I had no issues.  The only thing that was really difficult was having to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night with the bathrooms being far away. I just embraced my woods-woman self and peed behind our tent in the woods :).  Worked out pretty well!  The weather cooperated for the most part, Alec and I and one other couple arrived a little earlier on Friday and we knew there was a chance of rain but just started setting up.  Well.... half way through getting our tents up it started pouring rain!  We quick set them up, and then Jennifer and I ran and sat in the car while Preston and Alec finished up setting up the tents.  They were completely drenched!

This isn't the best picture, took it from sitting in the car.  But you can get a pretty good idea of how pouring rain it was and how completely soaked the guys are:

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This is a few of the guys having a speed walking competition: 

Saturday morning we moved our breakfast into one of the covered picnic pavilion areas because it was supposed to rain again (never did).  Oh well, better safe than sorry: 

We went for a hike around the lake, I was only able to do the first half of it since the second half was going up that huge hill pictured behind us.  Here is a picture of all the girls that went:

Group picture!

Later that afternoon it got really hot so we hit the beach!  All of us girls brought blow-up rafts to float in the lake, we had rope and tied ourselves together so we all floated together.  It was heaven!

Our area we claimed at the beach:

Relaxing at the campsite:

It was a great weekend where we made tons of new memories with our friends here!  Can't wait till 2013!

4th of July

I had a few days off around the 4th of July so my mom and dad came for a visit!  Like in the rest of the midwest, it was HOT.  Like ridiculous, over the top, sweltering hot hot hot.  It really was a bummer though because it kind of put a damper on our plans, we couldn't do anything outside really.  But it was still a really fun time together and it was so good to spend time with my parents.

This is at the fire works, it was still 100 degrees at 9:30pm.  Brad and Jessie came with us too!

Poor Josie did not like the heat either, she had to have some Gatorade to cool off :)

We went to the beach on Thursday, it was a great day to go to the beach.  It was SO hot in-land, but it felt great on the beach.  There was a nice breeze and the water was so refreshing (i.e. freezing cold but felt good since it was SO hot).  Driving back from the beach the thermometer in the car read 110 degrees.....are you kidding me?!

27 Weeks pregnant on the 4th of July!

Our garden is definitely doing well despite the heat!  The corn is far more than 'knee high by the 4th of July'!  We just harvested our first cucumber yesterday.  I LOVE fresh veggies from our garden. 

Beach Day

Alec and I had a RARE Saturday where I wasn't working and we were in town with nothing going on!  It was so so so wonderful.  We decided to head to the beach on this gorgeous day.  It was so relaxing just to sit in the sun and do nothing.  The water was freezing cold (numbing actually), but it got so warm sitting in the sun that I had no choice but to dip into the ice water!

Oh HAPPY summer!

Alec and I went out for some lunch on a Sunday downtown.  It was fun to walk around with Josie downtown and then get some lunch at an outdoor restaurant that allows doggies! 

 Here are a couple pictures of our Josie:

Our brand-new grill we bought in March.....yeah it broke.  This is Alec cooking burgers on our camp grill when we had friends over and the new grill died half way.  Don't worry we returned it and have gotten a new/different one!

There is a quarry in Brookfield, you aren't exactly allowed to go there.  I guess it is technically trespassing, but oh well.  It is SO gorgeous.  And by the amount of beer cans and booze bottles we saw back there we aren't the only ones that have gone back there to check it out.  

Alec went to New Mexico with the youth group for a mission's trip.  They taught bible school at a local church and got to see the amazing sights of New Mexico!  He had a great week there, I was so bummed I couldn't go.  Right when all the commitment was happening for this trip I was starting my new job at the hospital, so I didn't feel right asking for a week off right off the bat.  

We finally repainted our bedroom (it was an awful blue color that we picked for some stupid reason back when we bought the house....).  We painted it a nice neutral color to match our NEW furniture!  We finally bought real big person furniture, we have arrived into the adult world.

Scholtens Weekend!

Anne (Alec's sister), Rob, and their four boys came to visit us for a Milwaukee weekend!  We used Rob's expertise to install a new shower upstairs, it looks great!  And an added bonus.....doesn't leak anymore!

This was my prep for the weekend, probably the fullest shopping cart I've ever had at Pick n' Save!

They came over on the Lake Express Ferry, it was a pretty rough ride on the ride over.  But they reported that the ride home was much smoother!

 We went to Culver's for dinner the night they arrived.  Here is a pic of all the boys, they sure love their Uncle Alec!

While Alec and Rob were working on the shower on Saturday, Anne and I took the boys to Discovery World.  It is like a children's museum but for older kids.  They really liked it!  We had a picnic lunch before going inside, it was SUCH a gorgeous day.

Cotter and Gage checking out the Great Lakes display:

The walk-through fish tank was super cool, they really like it!

All good things must come to an end :)