Absolutely Worth Celebrating

We were invited to the baptism of one of the young girls from within our small group. It was a fabulous day for celebrating such a important decision. We were thrilled to have been invited and honored to be involved. She is such a sweet heart and loves giving attention to Brianna and the other even younger girls in the group. We are so blessed to have them in our lives, and Brianna simply adores them!

They had yummy food and dessert! Here is Carl showing off the delicious gluten-free cupcake that they made. If memory serves me right, I think he had more frosting than actual cupcake... but it was all still really good!

What do you do with 2 year old boys... follow them and make sure they don't get into trouble! It wasn't worth containing him anymore so Jon just started following Carl, then his buddy came over and they were just hanging out. Carl kept counting noticing all the boats on the lake, "One, two boats. One, two boats."

When Life Pulls You - You WoBoKaMc

It all started with a simple conversation in the car about friends keeping in touch no matter where life brings us. Then a name was created to easily recognize it from other weekends in the course of our everyday lives. And so, a yearly WoBoKaMcKi weekend began! (the name is a combination of the first two letters of each of the couples last names... it just sounded the best!)

I believe this year marked our fifth year of getting together. A lot has changed but we still manage to have a lot of fun! We are all at the stage where we have little kids, so organized chaos was our goal.

We were able to go swimming and get the boat out to take a few joy rides. The guys decided to take all the kids out once... that was fun!

Get the fishing poles down to see if we could catch some fish.

Built a fire so we could enjoy yummy smores.

Played, played, played.

The guys even were able to get out and have a few moments just for them! They are, after all, the reason we all know each other; friends through high school and even before, it's amazing.

Such a fun tradition and yearly hangout. I look forward to the years we adults will no longer be entertainers, yet I treasure these chaotic moments of just being together. Especially since our kids (6 under 5) all play so well together. Ahh... good times and good excuse to get away!

A Collaborative Masterpiece by Brianna and Carl

August 1: We headed outside after nap to have some creative time with paint, crayons, dry erase markers, and even some face painting crayons. They each took turns painting different things on different papers, but at one point they were both working on the same piece of paper. This was the finished creation...

I looked at it right away and couldn't believe that their random markings together on this one page actually turned into something so visually interesting! I took it upon myself to share their great work with the world, or rather the "friends" I have on Facebook.

Perhaps none of the strokes were intentional, but... you never know!

Reading Stories

Brianna loves reading books. She loves listening to stories and she loves sharing stories. Frequently I see her encouraging Carl to sit down and listen while she "reads" a book to him. Or there are multiple times where I've seen her cousins come up to her and ask her to read them a book. She gladly accepts!

One evening she read Carl the entire story of the Three Little Pigs, Disney's version, one of Carl's all time favorite books. It was almost word for word, she's got it memorized! It was so hard to decide which of the three videos to share of her reading so... I combined them into one really long video. If you feel a desire to catch up on your children's stories, please... enjoy the Three Little Pigs read for you by Brianna Bonkoski!

(Recorded on July 31)

ECC Warriors

Jon has been playing softball with our church softball team for a few seasons now. At the end of July was their tournament; the kids and I packed up and headed to the ball fields to watch. It was a chilly morning, but when we got there it was blue skies! Carl loves baseball, so whenever there is a chance to watch, he's happy to go. However, he loves running too, so that posed a fun challenge when trying to sit and watch a game! We stayed for one game then went home for lunch and naps. By the time we left, the clouds had already rolled in and it looked like the rain was coming.

Later that afternoon we went back out to watch the other ECC team play their last game. It was even colder and we could tell we might get rained on! Jon ran out to grab some dinner, and when he got back, sure enough, it was raining! Thankfully there was a large shelter with picnic tables on the second level and a large overhang. We ate dinner and still had a good view of the game. It was so much fun to get out and cheer on our teams! Although we didn't come home champions this year, it was still fun getting out and being in community!

The Epitome of Comfort

Every time pillows have taken residence on the floor, Eko takes the opportunity and confiscated at least one of them... if not more!!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Three Days of...

Day 1 - We were in the process selling the Tahoe, so I finally took care of the pesky crack in the windshield. Brianna woke up from nap just in time to catch the guys replacing the windshield. They were very nice and didn't mind us watching. They even complemented me on look of the vehicle, saying that they never see a chevy with a drivers side seat in as good of condition as our car was, let alone the rest of the car. Made me feel good about my recent detailing job and huge compliment to my dad's handiwork on the seat. Pro's couldn't even tell a difference!

Day 2 - Carl was perfecting his surprised face. Totally awesome if you ask me!

Day 3 - It was hot and getting to be a long afternoon. What better way to end the day than with water. I was too lazy to get out the kiddy pool, but as it turned out, they had just as much fun in these buckets anyway! B & C also asked if they could use ALL the water toys from the bag. Usually I just give them a few, especially with being such small buckets, but this time I decided why not! The toys went back and forth from tub to tub many times. Eko was also happy to have the water on and try to get in the buckets. It's too bad I didn't catch that on a picture. Eko LOVES water too!

Then to round out the day, daddy was kind enough to build this awesome train track before bedtime! My tracks never work out that well, so I'm sure they were ecstatic!

For Holly - Do You Camp?

It all started with one simple question - Do you camp?

A new friend at church, Holly, came up to me one Sunday morning and asked me if I camp. It was out of the blue, completely random and yet I loved it! Her boldness in asking was inspiring! Turns out it helped with what I was wearing that day at church, but she had a hunch. One thing lead to another and I was researching possible camping grounds for a small contingent from church to go camping!

It wasn't as simple as asking the first question, but we figured out a weekend, found a group campsite available, and reserved the site for 17 excited campers and one happy dog!

Prior to the actual weekend, we all got together for a back yard BBQ to plan out who was going to bring what. What's great about group camping, is that we were all able to contribute the best of what we had supply-wise and all able to provide one meal to lighten the load of any one family. Plus, we were all camping on a group site, so one central location to all come and go from.

Photo from Heidi!

There were first time campers, experienced campers, and an abundance of mosquitos. Poor Eko was covered in bug bites. Once we all were lathered up with bug spray and a little more dirty it wasn't as bad - you just had to get beyond that initial swarm.  In spite of the our shady spot with too many mosquitos (thanks Brady's for your awesome screen tent!), we all had so much fun! The kids loved exploring together, collecting firewood, and finding bugs that they could contain in one of the big cooking pots. Adults were outnumbered by one, but we had some amazing older girls that were willing to share in some of the kid watching duties.

We had two total nights reserved at Father Hennepin State Park on Mille Lakes, with some people only staying for one and some staying for both. It is a smaller state park, but it has a swimming beach and a park which can be hard to come by I noticed when searching. The Park too, as part of their programing, was offering fishing poles and bait for those that wanted to try out fishing on Saturday morning. So we cleaned up camp after breakfast and headed to one of the docks to try our hand at fishing. It was fun to see all the little eyes light up with the idea of catching a fish, even though no fish were caught while we were there.

Other fun things about our camping trip:
1) The group campsite out-houses were out of order. We did have a couple of port-o-johns but those disgustingly filled up quick and ran out of toilet paper. We made sure to know where the "luxury" bathrooms were, (you know, the ones with sinks and showers) in the regular camp ground. Into the evening on Saturday, I made a trip to the office to let them know there was no more toilet paper, and even though it had been missing for quite some time, no one had gone and told them yet. Funny how that works!

2) Since it was a group campsite, you had to unload and carry your gear from the one main parking area back into your campsite. We had the furthest site, so when Jon and I arrived we loaded up our arms and started carrying stuff back. A little while later, after we had most of our things, a guy from the neighboring campsite goes, "oh, here, why don't you use one of these handy little carts that belong to the campground to help haul stuff." Oh thanks guy. Thanks for keeping BOTH carts at your campsite longer than you actually needed them, keeping others from being more efficient. Thank you, I will take that from you and do your job of bringing it back to it's rightful waiting spot! The kids loved the carts. Especially when they were allowed to take a quick ride in one. Except perhaps the time when the girls were trying to be sweet and take it back for us, with some kids inside, and it went down a slight hill, tipped backwards, and the kids inside took a little tumble. They loved it all but that time!

3) Carl was not ready to go camping. The last time we went camping with him was September 2012, when he was still mildly containable in a pack-n-play. He was now 2 with ideas on where and WHEN he would sleep. I think it was just too much fun being out with friends and then there was always mom and dad's air mattress that makes a fun trampoline when no one is watching. We took a short trip into town on Saturday for a couple things and Carl, who came with, was out within a minute. Seriously!! Saturday night, Brianna ended up asking to go to bed before Carl. We put her to bed then just held Carl for a while. Finally, Carl told me he wanted to go to bed, so we put him in his spot and he didn't move. Ugh... Let's just say, when Sunday morning came, we were ready to pack up and make the drive home. It wasn't just his sleep that he was sacrificing it was his sisters and his parents too. They fell asleep pretty much right away once we got in the car.

This was Carl before deciding it was time to actually go to bed.  Just give in!!

 

We enjoyed conversations with new friends, long nights of hardly any sleep, fabulous weather, and fun evenings around the campfire. Pretty sure we'll do it again - I can barely wait!! All thanks to one simple question. It's a good lesson on opening up and putting yourself out there - look at how much fun it can lead to! Huge thanks to Holly for getting it started and for everyone else who helped to make it such a fun weekend!