A day of fun with friends

We spent a fun day with the Dixon's at Worlds of Fun on Monday! It was perfect because my two boys each had a boy the same size to ride rides with! We would all stand in line together and Jen and i would take turns riding with the older boys while the other would stay with the little ones and then hop on the next train and send the little ones across with the other.

Always fun to catch up with friends that you don't see very often but can pick up right where you left off!

here are a few pictures of our day...

Camp Gramma Day 3

Well, it only took me about a week to get around to posting day three :) Last Wednesday finished off our last full day of Camp Gramma. We had a very full day...we went to the Rolling Hills Zoo and wildlife museum in Salina, then we went and visited Grandpa Tucker's grave. We finished off the day with the kids singing and doing some talking at church. I don't have pictures of it but it was very entertaining (at least to us parents)! :) We made one last trip to the highway 61 bridge (we have a tradition of taking the kids up there so they can get people to honk their horns) What was i thinking when i said finished off the day...we THEN finished off our day with the bonfire and last camp meeting. All of the kids did awesome learning their memory verses and were rewarded with a Mcdonalds gift card (the kids love getting these, for mine it's about the only time they get a happy meal :) They also each got a plaque with one of their memory verses for the week Deuteronomy 5:29. Our theme of the week was "Thou God Seest Me" and Grandpa talked to the kids about the fear of the Lord.

It was a great week! Here are some pictures of our last day...

i think the zoo caught a new wild animal!

a sweet moment that i caught between my youngest two

raegan and hudson taking a little play break at the wildlife museum

grandpa taking a little sleep break at the wildlife museum

at kids country at the rolling hills zoo

the boy cousins

the girl cousins

the seaba kids with grandpa and grandma

grandpa tucker's grave

grandpa neir took the opportunity to talk to the kids for a minute reminding them where grandpa tucker was now! I love the looks on their faces and how they are listening so intently! i would like to know what was going on in raegan's little mind!

highway 61 bridge getting lots of honks from cars below!

i love seeing the older cousins interact with the younger ones!

bonfire time! maggie, avery, meryn and malia

owen, micah, trey, evan and trevin

My wonderful parents! Thank you so much for making this such a special time for the kids!

Camp Gramma Day 2

Tuesday morning the kids went fishing at Dillon Nature Center. It was a lucky fish catching day for the Seaba kids...Avery caught the first fish, Trey caught one and then Ethan caught one on his first cast out!

Later in the afternoon we went out to a farm and the kids got to go on a horse ride, feed some goats, chase chickens, go for wagon rides, chase some more chickens, play in a tree house and more. They had a great time!

I do have pictures of the oldest two riding the horse but they are on my sister's camera, so i will have to post those later...

Camp Gramma Day 1

Camp Gramma is underway! We headed to Hutchinson this morning in pouring rain the whole way with a winshield wiper that didn't seem to like my side of the windshield and with kids that asked 339 times "how much longer till we get there" so our 3 and half hour drive FELT all of six hours!

our 22 campers! my parents backyard is flooded right now, which is where the crew was supposed to be tenting...so the garage has turned into the boys dorm complete with carpet padding. The girls are "roughing" it in the basement. The youngest two (raegan and hudson) are not sleeping with the rest of the group, they are with their mommy's...we need some sanity!

We went to a gym and a football field to play some games. The older kids had a great game of dodgeball going. we headed over to the football field then and all took our turns trying to kick a field goal. Susan and i had to borrow one of my mom's tennis shoes...i didn't make it, for the record...i know, so surprising. ha!

ethan giving it his best shot! he ran all the way around the track without stopping. i think he will sleep well tonight!

gramma gave it a shot too, go gramma

!

trey got pretty close a couple of times!

swim time!

the boys had a good ol time in the flooded back yard, the boys were dragging each other around

pizza dinner the first night...the little girls' table

the group at the football field

we were doing some individual family pictures, so i got one with me and my kiddos

ethan and eli during prayer after our camp meeting

It's going to be a fun week, i'm sure i will have tons more pictures in the next few days...i should probably go get some sleep...

The Niangua

This past Sunday we headed to the Niangua River for our second annual canoe trip with some good friends of ours. We left Raegan with Grandpa and Grandma Seaba because we are not quite ready to take her on the river!

We had great weather! The water is spring-fed so it is FREEZING even when it is hot hot hot outside! Your body only goes into shock for a few seconds and then you adjust!

On Sunday we just rented some tubes and went on a 1-2 hour float down the river and then on Monday we were feeling ambitious so had them take us to the 8 mile drop off...this time we had two tubes and one big raft. We opted for no canoe this year, so really saying we went canoeing is a lie. We went rafting... we were rafting on Monday for about 7 hours! That last mile, we were ready to get back!

We had a great time! I only got dunked/full on tackled, i think it was two times and only fell off the raft backwards by accident once! Ethan did a flip off right after i fell off so we must have had a slick part we were sitting on :)

I wish i was brave enough to take my camera on the raft, we had so many photo ops on the river...daddy, trey and avery all jumped from a huge tree up in the air that went out over the river. I was called a chicken and bawked at but that's ok, i can take it...i have a phobia about jumping into water when i can't see what is under the water ( i had a hard time letting my kids too, but i just had to trust daddy, and cringe while they jumped!)

It was another fun trip, we always have lot's of laughing, lot's of good food (if you know the Hinkles, you know jason can cook!), lot's of kids squealing(boys) and even some bickering (girls, go figure). We already look forward to next year!!

Here are a few pictures from our trip...

Mile' and Ethan dragging one of the tubes down to the river

johnny was super excited to get this "treasure" off one of the tree limbs, that i couldn't quite reach! we always like to see how much stuff we can find

"but i want to squirt him right in the face!" -this is another "treasure" we picked up along the way

daddy dragging ethan through the current so they could go swim down the current

trey was always first to just get right in the water...it took the rest of us some courage!

last year we wore flip flops (obviously we hadn't gone to the river much) this year we all were sporting water shoes!!

I considered myself fortunate that we did not end up with any craw-dads in the van with us on the way home!