September and October quick update

Zak on his first day of school. Crazy that I have a first grader that is gone ALL day. He loves school, he loves his teacher and he loves playing with his friends. It has been a great year so far. He can read chapter books on his own and finally loves to read to himself and others. His favorite subject is math and he thinks it is easy. He still wants to be a biologist and he loves having a pet chinchilla in his class. It feels like he is seriously gone the whole day but he loves it so that is good.
We got leashes for our bunnies and the kids loved to PULL them around.

Random pictures of the kids posing.


Zak on his first field trip and first bus ride. I got to go with him and we rode the bus to the Falls of the Ohio and looked and learned about fossils.

We love fall because we get to have some free entertainment at Montgomery farms. We love going on tractor rides, feeding and petting the animals, swinging in the loft and picking out pumpkins.

Zak in his Peter Pan Halloween costume. The batteries died before I could get all of the kids pictures. Even though there isn't pictures to prove it the kids had a fantastic time trick or treating for the first time. We only went around the block but they got tons of goodies.

last week

I'm finally up to my last week of Indiana. My mom came to visit for my last week, and then we both flew back to Utah. I was happy to see my mom since it had been a couple of months, but I was also so sad because I knew that I had to leave when she left. I had such a great summer with my niece and nephews (and John and Ashley) and I am so lucky that I have had the summers off to spend with them.

While waiting for Grandma we played at the park. Her flight got delayed a few hours, so we had lots of time to get excited!
Since it was my mom's birthday when she arrived, we made her a minion cake (Despicable Me is her favorite). Makelle helped me make the cake, Zak helped John frost it, then Lantz stuck his fingers in it while we made the minions. Zak was responsible for the cutting of the cake a little later.

We took a trip to the zoo and saw the new baby giraffe and went to the sea lion show. It wasn't quite Sea World, but we still got a show (right Ash!?).
One of the mornings we played at the park. We were having a great time playing on the spider web, until Makelle and I were both climbing out and I stepped on her "favorite finger". She cried and cried and told me "you want to know the worst part? The part when you were stepping on my finger". I felt so bad, luckily she forgave me!
We had a very exciting trip to the Science Museum. We had been there for maybe 45 minutes when the fire alarm went off and we all had to evacuate in the middle of a huge rain storm. We were soaked through by the time we got to the car. Before we had to leave we were playing at the water station, and Zak turned the PVC pipe the wrong way a couple of times and looked like he had an accident. Luckily after going out in the rain the rest of his clothes were just as wet! We also had a sleepover movie party in the living room, made a family mural, and read tons of books.


At the park we found a fort that someone had built. I tried to get Zak to say he built it, but he told me that was dishonest because he didn't make the whole thing! They did make some improvements however, and Makelle swept all of the surrounding dirt so that it looked nice.

For our last day we played at home. We tried to fit everything in one last time. Zak and Makelle painted my nails, we played lego's, did tricks, played with play dough, colored and just spent the day together.

One day we watched Charlotte's Web and we all loved Templeton the rat. Lantz loved him so much that he made up a song for him!

Zak climbing a tree at the park. He is getting so tall and can do everything on his own!

No trip is complete without a game of Hopscotch, and Makelle is a pro!

Well that is the end of my summer in Indiana, so now I will finally turn the blog back over to Ashley. I had a wonderful summer and miss the family all terribly. Hopefully I will be able to get to Indiana again soon!

Virginia

I know it has been over a month since I left, but I still have things that I haven't posted that are awesome and need to be seen! A couple of weeks before I left, we took a trip to Virginia to see Ashley's dad and Joan. We had a great time. We went swimming, ate great food, went to the Little Debbie store, swam some more, ate some more, ate some more, and did some more swimming!

We had so much fun in Joan's pool. It was stallow enough at one end to play in, and deep enough at the other to practice our dives. Plus she has a million pool toys. We spent a lot of time "just sitting on our noodles minding our own business"!
When we weren't swimming, we were eating. sometimes we didn't even get up from the table between meals, we would eat lunch, snack and chat, and then eat dinner! There was also a never ending supply of Little Debbie snacks, and homemade salsa from John.

Here is a video compilation of Lantz singing. They were all so hilarious and adorable that I couldn't decide which one to put on the blog, so put them all. Enjoy!

Thanks for the great trip Richard and Joan! and thanks to John, Ash, and Kiddo's for taking their trip while I was there so I could join them!

more summer

Here are some more pictures of our summer. Most are just us at home, but they are my favorite part of visiting John's family. The pictures are pretty random, but mostly in order. Hopefully the descriptions aren't too confusing.

We had the chance to go to the Mullin's house and Zak and his cousins rode their horses in their pond. I am terrified of horses, but did pet one (mostly so it wouldn't get any closer to me). The horses were really good, and even let the kids jump off of them into the pond. Zak had a great time.
Playing at the Science Museum and in the water. John and Ashley were at Youth Conference when we went to the museum, so LaDonna took Ashley's pass and ID because they look a lot alike. The guy at the museum asked her to see her ID three times before telling her the pass was expired (I handed her the wrong one). Oh well, makes for a funny story.
For the activity for Family Home Evening one night, we played the flour game. The purpose of the game is to cut away at the packed flour without having the penny fall of of the top. If the penny falls off of the flour on your turn, you have to dig it out with your mouth. Naturally I was the first to make it fall (in my defense, it was my first time playing). We all took a turn digging out the penny, except for John, so Ashley decided to just put flour in his face. It didn't turn out so well for her, and Lantz was just disgusted!
We went to a new lake (well the lake isn't new, but it was my first time going), called Hardy Lake. It was beautiful and not too hot, and we had the beach pretty much to ourselves for a couple of hours.
We went to the Fair one night to look at the animals, and Zak and Makelle wore their cowboy boots. They looked too stinking cute! Lantz fell while playing by the window and smacked his eye on the window sill. He got a nice goose egg and a little black eye. Have I mentioned that he is a nut?!
There are always silly pictures in forts when I come for a visit. Some of these pictures truly terrify me, I went into the fort with my niece and nephews, and somehow got pictures of three little monsters!
One day while the older kids were watching a movie, Lantz and I built a "tall tall tower". He told me what face we should make in each picture. I love this kid!
For the 24th of July, my mom sent the girls Pioneer bonnets (and Makelle a matching apron). Makelle wore hers to church, and Ash and I wore ours to dinner at a friends house. Makelle looked adorable. Ashley and I looked a little ridiculous, but we had fun. John and Lantz love chips and salsa! Ashley and the kids reading a book on the computer. Ashley will be mad that I put that picture on, but I think it is funny! Before doing our nails one day, the kids had to organize all of Makelle's nail polish. I don't think we ever actually go to the painting part!
More fort fun. This was our most amazing fort, we could all lay down comfortably in it and we watched Madagascar 2 while we were in there.
Lantz eating yogurt is almost as messy as Zak eating yogurt. Makelle's church smile. She is super shy at church, and won't smile or talk to anyone one, so we came up with the church smile. She has no trouble showing that off to people! Zak, Makelle, and I went on a date to see Ramona and Beezus and out to lunch. Makelle accidentally bit her finger while eating her french fries, so Zak bit his so that she wouldn't feel bad. What a good big brother!

Summer 2011

We've had a great summer with lots and nothing to do. It has been great! We spent the week of the fourth with Ashley's sister, LaDonna, and family and stayed pretty busy the whole week. Here are three of those days (more to follow).

For the 4th of July, we went to the Sellersburg Parade and then went to Waterfront Park for activities for the kids and fireworks over the river. Kentucky puts on a great firework show! The Old Navy flag shirts were courtesy of my mom. The entire Gerhauser family had them. It was a real "Somewhere Out There" kind of day!
It was a super hot day at the zoo, but there were mist sprayers every so often and lots of people to carry kids or push the stroller (thank you Austin and Brayden), so it was a fun day!


We went to the bat museum and while the Madsen's went on the factory tour, Ashley, the kids and I hung out by the giant glove and in the little batting cages. I took probably 50 pictures of the kids posing on the glove. They had a great time and were hilarious!

Later we had our own firework show. The Madsens went a little crazy at the firework store! We started the fireworks at about 8:30 and were done by 10. After they set off the first two (of many) big fireworks, one of the neighbors came out and angrily asked how many more fireworks we had! I think someone eventually answered with "um, a few"!

science and a game

While Ashley was at girls camp, John and the kids took me (Lindsey) to the science museum and a Bats game.

There is a new exhibit at the science museum that takes your picture and then uses age progression to show what you look like in 20, 40, and 60 years. Unfortunately the 20 year screen wasn't working, but here are Zak and Makelle now and a ways in the future. There was a super long line the entire day so we only had time for Zak and Makelle to try it out before closing, they pretty much had to kick us out!

Zak went first and I'm pretty sure that his 20 year picture would have looked exactly like John, and I think we are seeing how John will look in the not too distant future! Zak's not sure he wants to look just like his dad when he gets old.
Makelle was not too thrilled about how her pictures turned out. She said that when she is old she is going to look like a freak and she will be a fat old lady. I made sure it was okay with her to put the pictures on the blog. She cracks me up!

The Bat's game was fun. We had seats on the second row on the left field line. We didn't know we would be so close or we would have taken our gloves. There was one foul ball that came pretty close to us and the left fielder picked it up and tossed it right to me. So we came away with a ball. We had a super fun day!

Tennessee

So this is Lindsey writing. I am back to Indiana for the summer and have once again taken over the blog. I have been here for about a month and it has been crazy busy. John, Ashley and family came to Utah for Anna's wedding, then I drove back to Indiana with them. The week we got back, Ashley had girls camp, so I got to play mom for the week. The next week we went on vacation to Tennessee, then the next week Ashley's sister and her family came to visit.

I am blogging about the Tennessee trip first, then I will try to catch up on other things. We went to a time share in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, near the Great Smoky Mountain National Park. Thank you Richard and Joan, we had a great time! We had high hopes going into it, panicked a little when we were almost there, then were relieved and pleasantly surprised when we arrived. We left Indiana at about 4 pm Sunday afternoon and arrived at our hotel at around 9 pm.

As we got closer to our hotel, we passed by Dollywood and a million signs for what could be some really cool places. About every other billboard had something about Dolly Parton on it. Then Mapquest sent us up a dark, small, winding, partially paved road. There was a house every now and again, and we were afraid that we would be kidnapped by hillbillies. We thought we were going to a resort, but it wasn't looking good. As we were discussing just going home if this place turned out to be super scary, we turned onto a larger road and found the check in office to the Sunrise Ridge Resort.

It was just a small building with nothing around it. John checked us in, came out with a map, and we drove up another road. All of the sudden there was a huge resort hidden away in the mountains. It was awesome. We had our own little three bedroom house with a full kitchen. The kids slept most of the way and were super tired and grumpy when we got there. At first Zak and Makelle were ticked that we weren't staying in the normal hotel part of the resort. Then once they realized that what we had was much better, they were angry that they didn't have their own fireplace in their room!

Quotes:

Lindsey: "What do you think they have a Dollywood?"
John: "All kinds of wood"
Zak: "Um, chicken tenders and underwear."

John: "Thanks for hanging in there when we thought we were going to get taken over by hillbillies and made to do things we didn't want to do."

The next morning we got up and went swimming. There were also complimentary doughnuts and orange juice at the indoor pool (that somehow I missed, but that is another story). There was a big pool, a little pool (just for Lantz) and a hot tub. John slept through the entire thing. We found out later that he woke up with allergies and took some allergy medicine (then slept pretty much the rest of the day). After nap time for everyone, Ashley and I went to the outlet stores, then the whole family went for a drive through Pigeon Forge, Sevierville, and Gatlinburg. There were a ton of crazy things to see, like the giant replica of the titanic, the upside down building, and more pancake houses than you can count. All was very touristy, but very cool.

The next day was John's birthday and he decided that for his birthday he wanted to go hiking in the Great Smoky Mountains. Lantz was up sick through the night, so Ashley stayed home with him while the rest of us headed out. We drove all over the place, got lost twice, and went on a couple of really cool, long hikes. The first trail we went on was more of a nature walk, but it was really pretty

Next we drove to North Carolina (not that far away) to hike to Clingmans Dome. The hike is a paved trail that was about .5 miles and pretty steep, then ends with a ramp to a tower. By the end of the hike, Makelle was on my shoulders and Zak was on John's. We were all exhausted and had to sit at the bottom of the tower to rest for a while.

Apparently we stayed at the bottom for too long because by the time we got to the top it was super foggy. From the top of the tower you can see (on a clear day) the mountains in Tennessee, North Carolina, and Georgia. We couldn't see much of anything, but we had fun.

The kids were more than ready to be done hiking for the day, and after much complaining John said we could go home after a short detour. The detour turned out to be another hike, this one was almost three miles long. The hike went to Groto Falls, which was a hike that went under a waterfall. It was a normal dirt trail and the kids had a blast. Zak walked the whole thing by himself, and Makelle walked over half of it! The fog had cooled down the temperature quite a bit and it was a great hike.

The next day we started off the day at the Red Rooster Pancake House. John made me choose which one to go to since I had pointed out every one on the drive through town. It was delicious! We also swam and played at the playground. Zak, Makelle and Lantz are all very good at tricks. John, not so much! Then we went to the boot store where they had a buy one get two free sale. The kids boots were a good price, so Zak, Makelle, and Lantz all got new cowboy boots. We also went to Hillbilly village, not that impressive. There were no hillbillies in sight!

For our last full day of vacation we decided to go hiking again, this time Ashley and Lantz got to come. We decided to go to another waterfall, Laural Falls. It said it was an easy hike. Makelle and Lantz didn't think it was that easy. Zak did great and did the whole thing by himself. Makelle got stung by a bee and Zak was such a great big brother and found her a dandelion to help the sting go away.

After the hike to Laurel Falls we decided to go back to Groto Falls. The kids were excited, until we got there and it ended up being much hotter than the first time. They still did great and getting to the waterfall was totally worth the hike. The kids stuck their feet in the water and threw rocks. While we were driving out of the park we saw a black bear with thee tiny cubs. They were just off of the road walking around. The pictures aren't great, but the experience was! After we were all done hiking, we figured we had hiked about ten miles. The kids did most of that themselves. What good kids!

We ended the day with more swimming and went to Bennet's BBQ for dinner. It was AMAZING! Ashley and I weren't thrilled that John wanted BBQ for his birthday dinner, but it was great. The waitress thought it was hilarious how much Zak ate, but he and John were in heaven!

We slept there one more night and drove back on Friday. We went back out the way we had come in, and it turns out the rode we had been so scared of, wasn't scary at all. What we thought were hillbilly houses turned out to be small, nice houses. We were nervous for nothing! Our drive home took two hours longer than the drive there because of traffic, but we had a great trip and I am so glad that I got to go with them.