Catching Up--Mother's Day

Trying to catch up on a little blogging, but shouldn't it be Mothers Day everyday!! 

We had a nice one visiting family.

Kellen started out just looking at the water

Then started throwing a few rocks in.

And then the next time with looked Papa had his shoes off and he was wading in the water!

We love great-grandparents getting to spend time with Kellen.

I can go by......

Trike,

Jogging Stroller,

Hiking Backpack,


Wagon,

Car,

and finally...

Bike.

I haven't decided which one is my favorite yet but I am excited to keep trying them all out! -- K

Wordless Wednesday

Rock and Roll Number 3-- Nashville

We headed to the Country Music Capitol of the World to complete leg three of the 2011 Marathon Challenge. When we were selecting races for the year we knew that we wanted to participate in the Country Music race because we had never been to Nashville and because we had heard so many good things about the race. Obviously word had spread to others as well as there were over 33,000 runners signed up.


Since this was our first trip to Nashville we decided to take an extra day and a half off so that we could make sure and get everything in. This turned out not to be a problem though as we found that we were able to quickly hit what we had been told were the highlights of Nashville. We felt like we were able to experience the city fairly well in a day and so we then started looking at the surrounding areas. One of the best things that we found on Saturday after the race was a small festival being held in Franklin, about 20 minutes outside of Nashville. It was great to be able to enjoy the small town and visit the small specialty shops as well as the booths at the town fair.


Grammie did a lot of this (chasing after Kellen)
Neat old print shop in Downtown Nashville

Sunday was a day that was reserved for travel as we had to make the 8 hour trek home. If you live anywhere in the Midwest then you know that we have been inundated with rain lately and on this day it certainly felt as if we were dumped on for hours on end. After stopping over for lunch in Memphis we were packing up for the last 5 hour stretch when we were greeted with the tornado sirens and the warning that they may close the bridge on I-40. So we loaded up as quickly as we could and then drove right into the storm. For the next five hours we were in a constant rain storm and our conversation was often interrupted so that we could listen to the emergency warnings on the radio but we all made it home in one piece and we are thankful that we were able to check off yet another race.

Great ribs in Memphis




What a great day!!

Wordless Wednesday

Oklahoma is OK!!-- Bar Induction Ceremony

It’s not very often that we are able to take off mid-week for an adventure but we recently had an opportunity to travel to Oklahoma City for a Bar Induction Ceremony. We were gone just a little over twenty four hours but we squeezed a lot in that very short amount of time.

We started the night with the best pizza from "The Wedge" if you are ever in Oklahoma City you must try it.

They have a nice area called Bricktown to walk around

Congratulations Daddy!!

It was a challenge to keep little man still during this part - but he did great thanks to lots of animal crackers and pretzals.

What a cute little man!!

If you have ever traveled with Jill then you know that she researches and is able to find some great things to do. On this trip she may have reached an all-time high as she found a museum on homing pigeons. At first, I was very hesitant and was thinking of about a hundred other things that we could have been doing instead --- but then as we started learning more and more about the birds it quickly became an experience that we will never forget. By no means is this a comprehensive list of what we learned but we will provide some highlights:

· People buy pigeons and pay to have them trained so that they may race against one another – the typical cost for this training can be several thousand dollars.

· Pigeons can sell for as much as $75,000 or even more depending on their ancestry. The highest priced Homing Pigeon was sold for $225,000.

· Racing Homing Pigeons have been clocked flying 92.5 mph average speed on a 400 mile race.

· Pigeons are the only bird in the world that do not have to lift their head to swallow water.

Kellen loved all the birds!

Arn't they so clean looking?-- for a bird

3rd Annual Branson Getaway

It’s always nice to get away with friends. Recently we were able to take advantage of an open weekend at my aunt and uncle’s rental in Branson for our 3rd annual getaway. So we loaded up four families, with all of their baby/toddler items and took over the place. Thankfully it is large enough for everyone to have their own space and for the kids to run as wild as they would like to. However, we had five kids, all under the age of two, so even with all of the space it is understandable why the place was a madhouse at times but overall the weekend was a great success.

2011 Crew -- Amazing to see how this group will grow in the future!!

Flashback to 2009

Flashback to 2010