Name This Group

Name this group! We're going on the road. :) We sang special music in my parents' church when we were there. Chad got a little video. Three-part harmony! I was so excited. Katie can totally hold her own singing harmony now. (In fact, she regularly makes up her own beautiful harmonies) And Jenna and Claire are close to being able to hold the melody while Katie and I do harmonies, but sometimes the melody slips. It worked out great with Lea Anne joining us.

Sometime maybe we'll sing the Herman song for you... then you can hear what we're really like! Ask mom and dad, Kathy, and my cousin Ryan and his wife Liz. They heard the infamous Herman song. :)

SD/NE and Heading Home

During the night Tues, there were storms in the area with heavy rain and strong winds. We didn't hear a thing down in Ron and Kathy's basement, tho! Ron was at work, and mom/dad/Kathy were up for a few hours watching the TV and weather since there were tornado warnings. Nice they didn't have to get us up since we were already sleeping in the basement!

The next day we took a day trip into SD and NE. (The makes the total of states 12! :) We saw much water and water damage. In the above pic, the whole railroad bed got washed into the field beyond. Below you can see a truck parked at the end of a driveway-- we're pretty sure both sides of the road are his fields, totally underwater. The man had parked his truck there and we saw him walking to his farm. Had to wade thru water to get there.

Some major wind damage-- not just to one grain bin, but to the whole row.

This is what our van looks like when we're traveling. At least when people are happy. :) Katie does an awesome job of helping Micah and passing food, etc back to the girls in the back. Jenna is fairly neat with her things... and then there's Claire. :)

Katie had an early birthday party at the hotel in IL! This was our last stop with my parents before we split up, so mom improvised with some bakery goodies and a coffee stirrer (no, she didn't light it :). At the bakery mom had gotten from Kathy a bunch of fancy sprinkles and food coloring and tips, etc for cake decorating. Katie loved these-- in fact, she used some last night to make a fancy ice cream sundae for Chad.

Casey's Bakery

We had such fun visiting the bakery! I remember loving it as a child; and now I thoroughly enjoyed seeing our kids' interest in the whole experience. Above-- one evening we watched some of the workers make cinnamon rolls for sale the next morning. Then Uncle Ron let the girls each make a batch of their own! They very much enjoyed making the rolls... and we all enjoyed eating them the next morning. :)

Jenna's painting on the butter-- the more the merrier!

Some racks of sweets... That evening, Uncle Ron gave us a box to fill up with fresh donuts. Then we sat out in the mall and ate them at 9:30pm or so. The girls were noticing that we were the only people in the mall-- that the only people around were the bakery workers. We talked about how Uncle Ron works all night and then sleeps during the day, and one of the girls said, "Then he's nocturnal!" That night, when we made it back to Aunt Kathy's after 10pm, the girls said, "We're getting to be nocturnal, too!"

One of the giant mixing bowls. I think we figured out it was holding about 200 pounds of ingredients.

Thanks a bunch to Ron and Kathy! They were wonderful hosts/private tour guides/etc. :)

These 2 pics show most of the front of the bakery and deli in the mall. I missed the main Casey's sign in the middle-- oops. My mom and aunt Kathy are posing as delighted customers. :) Actually, besides donuts, we all ate a few delightful meals there at the deli. I had a delicious pizatta (sp?) one lunch and an omelette for breakfast.

Here's Amber decorating cakes-- we loved watching this! Up til this time, Claire had it in her head that she wanted to be a hairdresser. Now she's asking if she should be a hairdresser or a baker. :)

All 3 of the girls (and me!) enjoyed watching Amber-- very talented! One cake we watched her do was for a retired electrician-- she used frosting to draw one of those tall power line poles, and it turned out really good. Another time we watched her do a very pink cake... then it wasn't turning out quite like she wanted so she scraped it all off and started over again.

A giant oven with lots of buns in it. The racks rotate like a ferris wheel.


Now, if you've made it all the way thru this far, there are a few videos below. The top 2 are just bakery things for fun. The bottom 1 is of Micah.

Heading Out to Iowa

Chad with 3 of the kids by the Mississippi. We stopped to see the dam and lock right after crossing into MN from WI.

Above is one of the "professional pictures" Katie took-- beautiful!

We saw lots and lots of wind turbines. Also saw lots of parts of these being hauled west on semi-trucks.

Cute one of Micah at a playground. When we got to Sioux Center, Iowa, where my mom's sister and her family live, Uncle Ron and Aunt Kathy hadn't arrived from MI yet-- they were at the same reunion we were on Sat. So we hung out at a park in town for a while-- kids loved it. What a relief after all that riding! Micah LOVED this tunnel-- spent like 10 min in it-- then we found out why... it had a large puddle and he was getting soaking wet. :)

The kids really did very well with the ride. It was long (even longer on the way home!), but they read books and played games and drew pictures and wrote stories and watched videos. Ate a lot of snacks, too. And, happily, Micah and Claire took naps here and there. Oh, me, too. :)

Half Moon Lake

On Sat, we went to my aunt and uncle's cottage at Half Moon Lake for a Tiemeyer family reunion. Katie loved the diving board!

Pontoon boat ride with Uncle Terry-- Jenna and Claire both got to drive... and did pretty well!

Our trip

I'll summarize our trip in several different postings. Had a GREAT time! So glad we did it. Even with all the driving. :) Above is Thurs pm in Holland, MI, with my mom and brother Mike's family. In the summer, Holland has street performers on Thurs pms. We saw several different musicians/mimes/magicians. Below is a juggler. You can see mom with 2 of our girls sitting in the grass. The performers were neat, but it was about 15 degrees too hot and there were about 500 too many people. :) Afterward, we went to ice cream in Drenthe-- great stuff! Ask Chad about the Hog Trough!

This is Lila, my Grandpa Steenwyk's girlfriend. Micah warmed right up to her.

Roses

These pics are from Saturday. We went to Menno Haven. Met Chad's parents there. Visited Gma W. Walked thru the rose garden-- kids always love to pick out their favorite color rose, and so many smell so nice. We tried to get Micah to smell them. You look at the pics and watch the video-- see if you think he got the hang of it. :)
We also went swimming there-- hadn't done that for a while at Menno Haven, cuz Gma W has to be able to accompany us. She did fine in her wheelchair for the 45 min or so that we swam.
Then we went to W's for Sat pm and Sun. Girls had great fun dressing up, as you can see.