Dad's New Toy

Last week, Dad bought a Yamaha Super Jet stand-up jet-ski....
I guess once you've had one it never get's out of your system so this is bringing him back to those old days on Lake Michigan when we lived up north and he and his friend Steve Frody would head out for those 10-20 foot swells, with water just above freezing and try to kill themselves on their skis.... even if they didn't know they were trying to kill themselves. ;)

The Old Days

The New Days

Getting the feel again...

Completely DONE OUT after fifteen minutes.... ;) I could also lable this: "Missing the old, young days..." ;)

Derek giving it a try... I missed mom giving it a work-out and of course the photographer never gets his or her picture taken... sadly in this case, as usual, I was the photographer...:)

♪ Happy 4th Birthday Kelly Joy!!! ♫

This is a bit late in posting (as I'm always forced to say seems like...) but Kelly celebrated her birthday on July 6th, turning a whopping 4 years old.
Actually, I should say ONE of the times we celebrated for Kelly was on her birthday but we ended up celebrating it multiple times. First, some lake neighbors down the road invited us over for dozens of birthday cupcakes they had made with help from their (several) 4th July guests that were visiting for the weekend. Nineteen people sang a loud Happy Birthday for the bashful birthday girl. Then, on Kelly's birthday we, of course, had our own family party with a huge Dairy Queen icecream cake and again...8 people sang Happy Birthday. When we got done eating, we looked at 3/4 of the icecream still sitting there and since our other neighbors were having a family reunion next door and there were many hot volley ball players, we decided to bring bring over the left overs. AGAIN, Kelly had MULTIPLE people sing her a very Happy Birthday song.
Finally, Aunt Kim and the cousins came down a couple weeks ago and we had another birthday party for all the recent birthdays they had missed...including Kelly's....and AGAIN
--- ♪ Happy Birthday to YOU!!! ♫
What a big birthday for a sweet, little 4 year old!

Yes, yes... Happy Birthday to YOU.... :)

The best part....

The best toy!
(At least... until the 4th party...and then her new Pish-Posh pony from the Dryer's took it's place!) :)

We finally had to get the book after watching the HILLARIOUS movie countless times!

Pish-Posh..Name chosen by a special Aunt* with love...☺♥

*"Aunt" must be related to Ruth Ymker!? ☺

Driesenga Visit -- Long Over Due!

If this post were a library book, I'd be paying a big, fat fine right now! To be honest, I honestly was POSITIVE that I had posted this fun day on here but my mom recently pointed out that if I really had, it had disappeared!
The last week of June Dad, Me (Abby), Josiah, Brady, and Kayla, all rolled that 11hr drive up to MI. Dad the first night we arrived, we met up with our Driesenga cousins and Aunt Sandi at a local skate park and caught up on the last several years. It was lots fun..(of course)!!!!
After eating out with the Dryer cousins and Gramps and Gram Y., and stopping in to see Grandpa D.at his house, we spent the night at the nearby Best Western Hotel with a heated pool where the kids burnt off the rest of their energy. If that wasn't good enough, Aunt Sandi kindly offered to have us kids all over the next day while Daddy was in his meetings. We spent the day getting to know each other, hiking the nearby horse park and dog walking (which was maybe my favorite part!). It was such a wonderful day and it deserved to be posted promptly. Next time I'll do better! :)

Brady and Luke! Brave Boys...

Caleb being awesome...

*Brittany*

You should have seen this girl go on the rip-stick once she got started!

Zachery...on the right... :)

All of us...<*together*>

It was FUN!

Frog & Toad

Well, there is a first time for everything and it is my first time posting! This is Colleen and I wanted to share some of Abby's work that she just finished. These cute little guys....Frog and Toad, to be specific, are Abby's creation from the books Frog and Toad by Arnold Lobel. I thought she did such a good job and wanted to share them. She's also in the middle of making an outdoor house for them for the girls to play with. I happen to think that she is very creative and pretty too.


The above picture is from a Frog and Toad video by John Clark Matthews; Abby's main inspiration.



This is a picture of the house in progress. It sits in the crotch of a tree in our backyard. She's using plaster of Paris and then plans on painting it and sealing it.

Summer Fun

Those crazy Dryer Girls came down for another crazily short visit (Fri 12am - Sun 11pm :P ) but of course it was still tons of fun. This time Aunt Kim and Maggie came too to add to the fun!
I didn't have time to load up all kinds of pics but JUST for record, Aunt Kim is awesome at skiing!

Amie learning to ski... We should have gotten pictures of her up on the wakeboard!

Annie.... I'm jealous.

Maggie Liz...

Katie learned to ski and wakeboard within two days! Yahoo! :D

Katie.. lol..not shown are the pics I took soon afterword of her faallllinggg.... down into thhhee water.... :)

We had tons of fun on the waverunners. Above was the "sedate" group while Annie, Amie and I (Abby) took the other one out. I flipped it once and Amie twice (I think) sending all three girls into the water. Man! I don't think I've laughed so hard out there in a long time!