School Begins again

Jenna's 1st day of 8th grade

Claire's 1st day of 6th grade-- middle school!

Micah's 1st day of 2nd grade

Starting his 21st year at Grace

Here's my wonderful husband, starting his 21st year at Grace, speaking in front of the Back to School Night assembly.  He's been going to school his whole life!  Ever since age 5.  Wow.  That's a long time!  He's very good at it by now. :) 

First Day of her Senior Year

Amazing!  This is Katie's last year of high school!  Whoa!!

In a way, it's her first year of college as well.  Katie's going to Blue Ridge College and Technical School, getting high school credit while also getting college credit.  She has 12 credits this semester-- English, Math, Music History, American Government.

She's doing a fantastic job with the responsibility and loves the independence. I'm so proud of her!

Jenna's card for Katie

Isn't this amazing?  Jenna drew this from an online idea

Happy 17th birthday, Katie!

One benefit of living a distance from family is getting to celebrate your bday many times each year.  To celebrate while in MI, we met the Steenwyks for dessert at Fuzzy Peach and then went to Lake Michigan.  When we got home, we had a party with the Wingerts in town (Gpa, Gma, Jer, Dani) at our house.  Besides Katie's ombre cake, we had her requested backed macaroni and fried chicken.

Backyard

We were so happy to be home.  Great trip, but, there's no place like home!  We had a picnic the next day.

Trip Home

Guess we tired him out.  He tried to tell us later that he hadn't slept.  Good thing I had the picture to prove it!  Plus we told him (sorry no pic :) about how he drooled on his belly.

Chad had flown home earlier in the week so he could get back to work, so Katie and I drove the whole trip home.  Went very well.  Nice to have the kids older!  It's so much easier to manage.

In MI-- Lake MI

We always love going to Lake Michigan when we are visiting my family.  This time we squeezed in 2 trips: one during the afternoon for a couple hours and one in the evening to see a sunset on Katie's birthday.  It still was pretty neat to be at the lake, but sadly there were so many clouds that we didn't see a sunset on Aug 6.

Think he needs some sun? :)

Love the clouds here

Happy 17th birthday, beautiful Katie!  Our sweet girl is such a joy.  Thank you, God, for putting her in our family!

In MI-- soybean reading

Katie and Jenna both worked pretty hard on some jobs for Papa.  He wanted some volunteer corn removed from the soybeans, so they spent some hours roving through the fields with hoes.  

Can you see Katie?  She's in the picture above AND the one below

And we always find some books to read while we're there...

Because our home is so surrounded by trees, we don't often get to see sunrises very well.  Jenna got up early to enjoy a sunrise over the fields

In MI-- Co-op Picnic

Dad, Lea Anne, Liz, and I took the young cousins to a free picnic.  (Can't resist free, right?) So funny that the big attraction was a few straw bales and a bag of corn cobs.  The kids had a great time rubbing corn off the cob, some of them til their fingers were rubbed raw.

In MI-- Gma T's 90th

Nothing like really stretching your birthday out... Grandma Tiemeyer's 90th birthday will be in October, but we had a grand party on Aug. 1!

Almost all of my aunts/uncles/cousins/spouses and my cousins' kids were there!  Maybe 70 of us?  I forget the number.  At mom and dad's for a picnic, bounce house, hayride (complete with balloons launched at the wagon-- don't try it!)

Happy birthday, Grandma T! 

The next week she moved into a new home.  We are looking forward to seeing it on an upcoming visit.

License Plates

Micah has just loved keeping track of license plates as we travel.  We have a flip game from Uncle Jer that he uses to keep track of which ones we've seen.  This Alaska one was so exciting, that he had to have his pic taken with it.  And, if you look closely at the background, you can see that it was taken in my parents' driveway. :) 

At the end of the whole trip, I believe we still were missing Hawaii, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Louisiana?

This is the first trip where he himself got into looking out the window for the license plates.