Kai had a lot of fun helping peel the apples & make the apple sauce!

More photos of this 2 posts ago.

This video makes Kai crack up every time he sees it...literally, belly laugh hillarity for toddlers right here!

Minnesota: September in Review

We've been having fun in Minnesota!

Kai's Bed (with Train sheets & pillow, Kitty Blanket, and Sunshine Blanket)

One night while playing with Lincoln Logs, Kai, entirely on his own, Kai decided to make a campfire and roast marshmallows! (Note the red fire in the middle...which HE put there on his own gumption!!! Wow!!!!)

We all went raspberry picking, and then went home & made jam! Here's Kai picking raspberries, and then helping mash them, and then eating the jam!

We've been having fun Geocaching, where we go and "find treasure!"

So one day, Kai asked us to write "K A I" on the board (he recites ("K-A-I spells Kai").

So we did.

And Kai (for the first time ever, and without our showing him how or anything) TRACED the letters!

We've also been able to get out canoeing! Yay!!

We got out to Borders Books, & Kai was excited to listen to some music!

We also went apple picking...and then made applesauce!!

Driving to MN (August recap)

A recap on our trip to Minnesota for those of you who hadn’t heard updates through Facebook…we were planning on breaking the trip up 3 ways for sanity/ease of driving. The plan was: drive about 6 hours to Detroit, visit Ashley (Amanda’s sister whom we owe dearly :)) for the day, then drive for about 5 hours, camp in the Upper Peninsula of MI, drive 6 hours & camp in Wisconsin, and drive 1 ½ hours on the morning of Check-in to get there nice & early in the day. A good, solid plan. What we didn’t count on was MORE car trouble (this summer we had already needed to replace 4 tires and some leaky valves in the wheel to pass inspection, and 2 weeks later broke down because the timing belt and one of its pulleys had broken). So we figured that was behind us.

[[Warning: the following narrative may sound cranky. This is not its intention – it is meant only to give an accurate depiction of the trip and all that ensued. Please read it knowing that we are relaxed in knowing that we are here and the trip is done, and it is not done in the spirit of whining. If you don’t want to read this part, no problem, just skip the following paragraph]]

Well, as it turned out, we stalled out in rural Canada (Aylmer, actually), were able to get the car jumped by the guy whose farm we broke down in front of, and had just enough juice to coast into Canadian Tire, who are supposed to be really good. From hearing the description of what happened and looking briefly at the car, they diagnosed it almost instantly as the alternator and stayed opened late to fix it for us. We made it into Detroit late that evening and had a very nice visit with Ashley (Kai got to open MORE presents!!). The next afternoon, we stalled out in the middle of the road. AAA towed us to the nearest shop, and the guy looked at it and literally cursed out whoever installed the alternator – it was visibly installed wrong, with the wire hanging off even. They could fix it for about $150…but it’s under warranty @ Canadian Tire since they had done it YESTERDAY. So we checked & found out there was one about 20 miles away, just over the border. So we took off for there: me driving, with Ashley and Ryan following. We jumped it 13 times to get there, taking about 3 hours.

The last jump, thankfully, was at Tim Hortons & I was able to relax with a Triple-Triple for a moment knowing that we could SEE the location we were going to. They kept it overnight, and fixed the alternator in the morning.

However, the battery was now fried due to their faulty alternator assembly, and even though the battery’s demise was directly due to their shabby installation, they would not have anything to do with covering costs for a new battery, even having the nerve to charge $30 for installation had we gotten it from them! So we found a nice, Pakistani-run shop across the street and got the battery there. At this point it was late in the afternoon, and we decided to stay for another night, and drive 11 hours in the morning. We did, and then had a WONDERFUL time camping at Interstate State Park in WI.

Kai LOVES camping, so it was a lot of fun. Then in the morning we drove the last 1 ½ hours to MN, and were able to move in surprisingly fast. We share a floor in one of the dorms with a married couple with 2 small kids (one 18 months and one an infant) and a married couple from Brazil. It’s basically like having a suite in a college, where we all share a kitchen and 2 bathrooms. So it looks like it’ll be good. :)
Anyways, we hope you are all well. Again, sorry if that came off as rant-like…it wasn’t intended like that, only to tell you honestly about the trip here. Here’s a video to cheer you up: Micaiah and Isaac Moore dancing as Travis Moore and I sing a song that he was going to be playing that Sunday in Fredonia.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JB-klf7rsbQ

Our whirlwind summer - one month after it all ended! Oops!!

Wow, it's been a LONG time since we've posted anything!!! SO sorry!!

So when we last posted anything, we were in Ithaca visiting Tim & Jill and Molly & Grant.

Our next visit took us to CT to see the Ashmans!

The next stop on our whirlwind summer was back in NY to visit Bob in the mansion in which he lived for the summer!

Next stop: Fredonia, and visiting Travis, Amber, and Isaac!

After that, we spent half a week running a table for Gospel for Asia at Kingdom Bound, a Christian Music event at Darien Lake.

During that time, we camped at Darien Lake State Park, where Amanda baked bread for us! Yay!!

Kai also got to ride on his first Ferris Wheel!!

After a day in Rochester, the next stop was camping in Sterling, NY w/Matt & Sarah for the Renaissance Fest! Huzzah!

After all the traveling, we finally stopped at Rochester for a few more weeks.

In that time, Kai had his first Dental appointment!!

And, as a final treat for the Summer: Micaiah's SECOND birthday!!! So that was our summer in a nutshell. Soon we'll post about Minnesota, but we'll give you a couple of days to process this first...it's a lot of info!

...and then we'll start with the trip to MN and why we owe Ashley dearly....