Fish and goats and maybe some kids too

We met some friends at the farmstead last week. We spent a loong time fishing...i think the worms were multiplying in the bucket for goodness sakes! Trey agreed to do all the worming of the hooks and taking fish off the hooks, but i don't think he realized just quite how many he would be doing. An older guy that was there with his grandson must have really enjoyed helping kids catch fish so he joined trey in helping worm hooks and putting the kids in the right spots to catch one and even went so far as to hook a fish, throw it in the water on the hook and have Ethan pull it in. Ethan was ecstatic..."i caught another one!!" My non-existent mad fishing skills must have been shining through that morning, ha!

former small group buddies...so fun to get together!

watching Ethan try to get a tractor (forgot to mention all of KC was at the farmstead this day) was comical. I felt so bad but tried to let him fight it out on his own. He would run to get one to either have it be broken, have a bum tire or get beat by another kid. It didn't help that a few select kids were being fed their lunch piece by piece while doing the indy 500 on the tractors


Raegan and the goats. I may be an easily amused mom but i could watch her feed goats all day. She is such a sassy thing anyway and watching her boss them around, get after them and go for the baby ones is just so sweet and funny at the same time in my mommy eyes

I've got this goat feeding thing down mommy...

I always laugh a little thinking about the first time we bought a bottle to feed the goats with Raegan. It hadn't been that long since she had FINALLY given up her own bottle and as soon as i handed it to her she stuck it straight in her mouth. Thankfully we don't have to worry about that anymore! :)

Oh and i started a new blog for all things related to running if you want to come over and visit me over there too at Mama On The Run

The fancy car

The kids love Grandpa and Grandma's "fancy car"! They always tell me about "we got to go here or there in the fancy car". Grandma and Grandpa Seaba kept the kids for us while we were in Mexico and i snapped these pictures the day after we got back...

I think the most exciting part of it for the kids might be that there are no seatbelts, oh the freedom!....no wait, that might be the most exciting thing for Grandpa :)

I don't think i like the thought of Trey in the driver's seat of a car...i'm glad we have a few years before that!

A little history

We went to Iowa over the weekend for a Neir family reunion. My dad grew up on a farm in Iowa. This was the farm land that he lived on when he was in high school. The house is gone but this barn still stands...

We went to Marcus and visited my grandparents graves

My Grandpa and Grandma Neir (George and Alice)

These two stones are my grandmother's (alice) parent's. They both came from Sweden as teenagers not knowing each other and then later met and married.

Learned a lot of family history this weekend. Neat to hear stories and visit places that my dad lived when he was a boy. Thankful for the Christian grandparents and great grandparents that gave me a godly heritage that i can pass on to my children and i pray they will pass on to their children someday!

Conquering the fear of the mini detonator

Last year we got her on the mini detonator one time and one time only. She has refused to ride it ever since. I try every time we are out there. One of these beautiful days this week the kids and i went out for a few hours. It took mommy bribing her with two quarters, Avery doing some convincing saying she would sit beside her and she finally all of a sudden said she would do it...i was just waiting for her to back out (she has gone up there numerous times and walked straight back out the gate). She didn't back out...

still feeling very brave...

giving me some looks like what am i doing but still putting on her brave face...

she looked terrified...i had to yell at her that she didn't have to hold her hands up, she could hang on

she did it! she conquered her fear...and i think she enjoyed it in the process. we will just have to wait and see if she rides it again next time or if this too was her one time of the year.

Yay Raegan! Her big sis was pretty proud of her too!

One two three FLY

Avery has begged and begged and begged some more to do the rip cord at WOF. Her cousins Brendon and Caleb were going to do it when they were up here so she finally got to fly! I had to leave early that day to go to work so i missed it but i stole the video and pictures from my sisters...

This girl seems to have daredevil blood...nothing scares her! She screamed "this is awesome!" on the way down





Thanks Brendon and Caleb for letting your cousin fly with ya!

First job

Trey has been mowing our yard this year and we pay him (a little) so that he can earn some money. The house next door is vacant so we talked to the landlord and offered Trey's manual labor for a small fee to keep his yard looking nice or at least short and trimmed which is a huge improvement from years past...it's a win win, Trey earns money and we have control of keeping the place looking decent! He is doing a great job and working hard...

We had to go get some grass shears since there is no power in the house and we don't have an extension cord long enough to use our trimmer (plus it was a good excuse to get some since i have wanted some anyway). Raegan thinks she has a new job...

her words before this were "don't worry mommy i won't cut my swimsuit or my skirt!" I was thinking more along the lines of fingers and toes, but as long as you don't cut your clothing...

Angels

I believe that God uses angels to help protect children or any of us for that matter. Yesterday i believe was one of those days they were protected. Daddy was charging his motorcycle's battery because someone was going to come look at it to see about fixing something that is wrong with it. Daddy was cleaning out the garage so was letting them sit on it while he was out there. He went inside to do some things and the kids got back on the bike. Ethan got up on it and jumped off (according to ethan) and then Raegan climbed off and then it fell over. Thankfully, the opposite way than the kids had just gotten off so it didn't touch them. It broke the blinker and scratched a couple of things up but Daddy didn't even care...he was just so thankful the kids were not hurt! I had taken this picture before any of this happened...

We have gone to the pool two days in a row and the kids are just getting wiped out! Last night Raegan wanted to sleep in Ethan's bed so i said "the first time you guys are messing around and not going to sleep raegan has to go to her bed" I never heard anything and so went in after awhile and they were OUT!

Ethan learned to write his name within the last 6 months or so, you know getting ready for kindergarten....we had to get after him and tell him we were proud of him that he could write his name but that he wasn't allowed to write it in permanent marker on the walls, appliances or anywhere but paper...but as you can see, he labeled his wall before our little speech.

All they brought me was this shirt

Final Mexico post

We decided not to do any full day excursions as we didn't want one of our days to be used up. We just wanted to relax at the resort. Johnny went scuba diving for most of the day on Monday. He did two dives and loved it.

johnny picked another winner of a salad yet again...

the cocoon hammock

i was so looking forward to taking a nap in the hammocks that i saw on their website and so nap i did, although after the day of the heavy rains they had taken them down and when they were put back up they seemed really low to the ground...

We went on a tour bus to Playa Del Carmen to go shopping. We had 3 hours to shop which sounds like a lot but it went very fast. Johnny got asked if he wanted a "bump" to which he replied "what's a bump?" the guy said "cocaine man, you live a sheltered life!" We moved quickly away from that guy!

We walked down to the beach and could see Cozumel. We found some really pretty shells in this area and i just had to get a picture by this car for Avery. She loves slugbugs, and this was one unique slug bug! :)

We were sad to say goodbye to the Caribbean! We will go back for sure someday if we get the chance!

Mexico cont...

On Saturday night we went to one of the theater shows that they had each evening. I saw that it said participation show and though "hmm, maybe we shouldn't go, don't want to get pulled up on stage". What are the chances?? I ended up on stage thinking "what on earth have i gotten myself into"! I hate being in front of people, let alone on a stage having to do a sexy walk with a book on my head, learn a choreographed dance and repeat it and run into the audience and kiss as many men on the cheek as i could in 1 minute (i did win that one with 26 by the way, i don't know if that is something to be proud of) Johnny's face was hurting when i got back down off stage because he had been laughing so hard for so long. The pictures he took were very dark but here is one of me running around for one minute...

We could eat at the buffet breakfast lunch and dinner and then we also had 3 dinners at the fancier restaurants in the resort. We went to the Italian one on Sat. It was very hard to understand what you were ordering. I seemed to do well with my picking, johnny had a little trouble in the salad picking department...

it was 4 course dining and they just kept bringing food. this was my soup that freaked me out a little only because of the color. (i am a very picky eater and rely a lot on the looks of food to deter me) I tried so many things that looked "questionable" this week. By the way the soup was fantastic, it was a spinach soup and i ate the whole bowl! :)

we read a lot!

these animals were everywhere around the resort. they were so cute.

had to do a feet on the beach picture

i missed my kids obviously, i of course completely enjoyed ou time alone but had a little meltdown one night after seeing a little girl raegan's age...just felt so far away from them

loved the beach beds...

only things about a vacation alone together is that you don't get many pictures together unless you snag someone to take one of you which we did every now and then

we walked or ran on the beach every morning except for one while we were there. i have run on beaches before but this one was particularly hard to run on because the sand was so soft

on Sunday it rained...all...day...long! They were saying there might be three days of it. We were feeling a little depressed.

we hung out in the lobby and played cards, we took naps, we ate, we read while it rained and rained and rained...

it rained sunday and then monday morning and then that was it...the sun came out and it was beautiful once again!

i went barefoot for a day and a half because the walkways were so slippery!