Making Breakfast

Steve invited sister Maria to spend the night and they enjoyed helping make Sunday morning breakfast. Maria helped with the smoothies and waffles while Steve did his scrambled eggs with the secret ingredient as he calls it, a splash of milk.

Well rounded skill set?

This afternoon at the store Steve picked out a pair of shotgun style dart guns (the shell casings fall to the floor after the dart is discharged and before a new dart-shell is moved up into the barrel.) So he needed an ammunition bag. We went into the fabric box and I helped him make a shoulder strap bag. Now he is running around the house shooting at windows because he is a sniper.

happy father's day

Jeff was greeted this morning with the Sunday paper, his favorite coffee, and breakfast in bed.

We spent the day with family and had fun time playing yard games.

nine months old

Douwe turned 9 months old today!

Recovered photos

The most important part of the camera, the memory card, survived the flooding, so we still have camping photos, and more importantly, the photos of Steve with his second grade class and teacher. Congratulations to Steve who has accomplished the 2nd grade with all M's and E's! (For Meets and Exceeds grade level benchmarks.) Steve had the most wonderful teacher Mr. Sinwelski and we are so thankful for all of the outstanding teachers and staff at Kenwood School.

Weekend in Holland

The lack of photos in this entry is proof of the adventurous weekend that Jeff had with Douwe and Steve. If camping solo with an 8 yr old and 9 month old were not challenging enough, it turned out that Jeff had joined Western Michigan's high school graduates who had the run of the Holland State Park for post-graduation "beach week". The first night was regularly punctuated by the noise of M-80s and airhorns. On the second evening, after hobo pies and before s'mores, a huge stormfront rolled onto land and hit the campground in Holland State Park. Jess was a few miles away at a college girlfriends' reunion, getting a weekend's worth of respite. After we girls' heard on tv that everyone was being urged to take shelter in a sturdy structure because of the intensity and duration of the storm, Jeff took the boys to a friend's cottage. Next morning he returned to assess the damage and heard from site neighbors that flash flooding the night before had put the tent and all contents (including camera, maybe even that plugged-in box fan?) into the middle of a temporary pond.

Jeff said the weekend was generally enjoyable but for that storm. Steve made sure I knew that a few curse words were uttered by Dad during site cleanup time. Jess has learned that can be tricky to be on "semi-available" mode. We'll see if the memory card in that camera survived the flooding.