6 in the Sticks

We did something everyday while we stayed with my mom. Jeromy had a conference in ND and was just two hours north of mom so the kids and I figured we'd make a trip out of it since we only make it to mom's about once a year.

We arrived on Friday, did hugs kisses and catching up. Brian arrived that day too.

Saturday, we all headed west 2hrs to Storybook Land in SD. Mom had taken the girls with her years ago on one of the senior trip tours she arranges at work. I would highly recommend that place to families of all ages. It is an amusement park that is mainly operating due to donations. There are all kinds of houses from different stories like Mother Goose, Wizard of Oz, and they are set up so the kids can slide out of them, climb around, and make noise. There is an awesome putt putt course with a volcano that really spews fire, go carts, bumper boats. We went on the HOTTEST day though and weren't able to do everything we had planned so we made it a mission to do it again some time. Jackson and Jeromy were terrorizing the tame chickens and turkeys they have running around the park, Charly was on a mission to get as close as possible to a peacock. Brian got to tap a nice little ass. Sorry. That was such a cute little donkey though. I got to take a pic from a prairie dog hole, it hurt my knees crawling through the tunnel but was well worth the fun. We all took a little train ride around the park and got to see all kinds things. We had the worst concession stand food but didn't mind too much because we were hungry. Then managed to squeeze a couple of rides in. Jeromy is always so good about going on big kid rides with Ashley and making them spin as fast as possible the whole time! I am surprised he hasn't made her puke yet.

Sunday, Ashley stayed home with the kids and Brian, Jeromy, Mom, and myself went fishing on Big Stone Lk on mom's boat. That was a blast. We all caught some fish. I caught my first sheephead. For a garbage fish, they sure are beautiful. I can't remember too well now, But I am pretty sure we all caught walleye's except for Jeromy. He seemed to keep catching the fishheads, sorry SHEEPHEADS..."rolley polley fishheads". Wish I could show pics but they are all on mom's camera. We weren't very smart and filled our card after the first day there. We should've gone with a couple of camera cards.

Sunday evening, Brian headed back home. Mom bought a double slip and slide and we introduced it to the little ones. They weren't sure what to think but I think by the time we left, they thought it was pretty cool. Mom had lots of water guns too so everybody could have one. Although, Jackson and Charly ended up with most of them tucked into their swimsuit bottoms. We went to Watertown for shopping and chinese food.

Monday, mom worked until noon and then came home and went fishing with Jeromy and Jackson and Charly. I can't remember if they got any bites or not. They had a great time either way.

Tuesday, Jeromy headed to ND or I should say, pimped his way to ND in mom's sweet ride. I think she sold him on her decked out jeep with all the gadgets and leather seats.
Mom worked until noon again and we did more fun in the sun and visited. Then mom babysat while Ashley and I went to Millbank SD and saw the movie Ocean's 13. Mom took the kids fishing, they didn't get a bite but they had such a good time fishing with Granny.

Wednesday, mom came home a little early from work and took Ashley to watertown again for a couple of mean games of miniature golf and a few races with go-carts at Thunder Road raceways. Granny kicked her butt and decided that we need to that again but only if more of us come along to help her get back out of the go-cart. LOL. I love you mom, you are awesome!
I took the kids to the playground at the elementary school in town. Jeromy had mom's Jeep, I let mom use our van to go out on a date with Ashley so I decided to walk to town with the kids in a stroller. I don't know how many miles that was but let's just say, I am glad Jeromy met us at the park when he arrived in town again so I didn't have to treck back to her place in the heat. I am really glad it doesn't get so humid where we live. I know when we have a humid day, it is probably worse down south. Then Jeromy, the kids and I, went out for dinner at Pizza Ranch. Yummy pizza!
After mom and Ashley got back, we went outside for our own firework display. One of the perks of living next to the border I guess. I think Jeromy was in awe at the fireworks mom had picked up. She doesn't mess around, a few steps higher from the bottle rockets and firecrackers hon! :)

Thursday, we headed home. Just in time to take Ashley to band practice and prepare what was in store for us the following week.

Meanwhile, back at home. Roofers were sweltering through the heat to put our new beautiful roof on! It looks fabulous. Pics later.

"Leeches"

Ashley played one of Beauty's vain sisters. She did a great job. This play was amazing too because, auditions were last Monday. Ashley made cast. By Tuesday, she knew most of her lines. Wednesday was off for the holiday and Ashley was in the 4th of July parade for band, mind you she had band practice and play practice. A little busy for us, the younger ones get a little more crabby when there is more running around. And I get more loopy and frazzled. I know, you thought how is that possible?! It could happen.

Play practice Thurs, and again on Friday when kids were given costumes. Show day Saturday. It was very well organized and we were pretty impressed at how well all of the kids ages 7yr and older knew their lines and places and so forth.
Ashley is top row,dressed in green, just right of the kids dressed in black.

Very hot band costumes. Ashley is in the center, not sure if you can make her out.

It was SO hot and sticky as we waited for the parade to start. The kids were in no mood to even look at the camera, let alone smile.

Life was so grand once the kids were given flags to wave around as we slowly melted in the heat while waiting for the parade to start. Charly managed to smile for a moment.

Charly is saying, "Happy 4th of July" here.

Okay this is funny. I'm sitting on the computer and the whole house is asleep. I was getting ready to get off the computer and go to bed when Jeromy woke up and told me about his dream he just had and how weird it was and then slowly drifted off again. Thought is would be funny to blog as I'm sure he won't remember in the morning.

He said that he was at our house and someone was trying to break into the house and kill him. But it wasn't our real house. Jeromy had baracaded the door and this guy somehow broke in and was coming to get him. So Jeromy somehow managed to stab him in the stomach with a bone. (not sure what kind) And then a lion came in and grabbed the guy and started to eat him. The guy looks at Jeromy and keeps saying, "I'm still alive! I'm still alive", while the lion is eating him. The lion looks at Jeromy and says, "Mmmm, this is pretty good. Not as good as dark meat, but this white meat kind of tastes like chicken."

LOL!
Always good to have a bad guy eating, talking lion around the house just in case.

Another miserable day. The kids had fun running through the sprinkler. Except they weren't used to such cold water as Jeromy has spoiled them silly with filling their swimming pool with warm water EVERY time they swim. So you can imagine how they couldn't believe how cold the water was when I filled the pool the other morning and told them to wait until the sun warmed it up. Poor children, it's too bad they are stuck with such a wicked mom.

Ashley moved into Jessica's old room. I finally started on Ashley's old room with patch work and preparing for a new paint job for Charly. She chose light pink for a princess room. Jackson had a chice on which room to choose from but he said he wanted to stay in the room he was in. Once I'm done with Charly's room, I will start on Jack's. He's decided he wants to have a hunting and fishing room. Go figure.

This is so sad. I debated whether I should blog it or not, but this a journal of some sort for the family, and maybe a good source of blackmail as the kids get older. Hehe.

This pic I took yesterday. It is a shot of Jackson and Charly with Jackson's new pet, "Thorby"...may he rest in peace. He is the second toad to actually get through the doors with parental permission. I know...Suckers! So maybe a 4 1/2yr old isn't quite capable of handling a small living creature unsupervised for a moment or two. Poor Thorby.

Jackson caught him yesterday and when he approached his dad to see if he could keep him...you guessed it. Dad said, "Go ask your mom." Thanks Dad.

Keep in mind, Jackson had already caught a small toad not so long ago. I took pictures, put them on this lovely blog, and then the very next day he passed away. Death due to overhandling of retiring toddlers in a sense. I was going to journal that, but was kind of freaked out by the situation. Jackson was gently carrying the fist little toad in his hands around the house, and was kind of cute how he had to check on him frequently if he was in his cage. Well, I was on the phone with my brother when I glanced over to Jacky holding his toad and pulling something sticky from his head. I'm sitting there trying to listen to my brother as I'm thinking, that can't be his lip could it? What on earth is that sticky thing he's pulling away from his head? Basically I called out to Jackson to ask what he was doing and he looks at me and says, "Look! This is his tongue!" I am not kidding you, it was stretched out about four inches from the little thing. After hanging up the phone and talking to Jackson, (who likes to hide things now that he's hip to time outs) and Charly,( who, unfortunately for jack, tells all before he can run over and make her not say a word.....and who, watches him as if he's her hero and awesome entertainment for the moment), I found out that the little guy, Goopy, was probably squeezed too hard and died. And it was once he was dead, that they did, in fact, decide to open his mouth and see actually how far a toad's tongue can reach to maybe snag a fly.

So, after I got past the feelings of am I raising some real sick freaks, but hoping that this is just an age thing, and 3 and 4 year olds aren't capable of understanding how to be considerate to living creatures kind of deal. I thought maybe jackson learned a lesson in that.

So when he asked me if he could keep this toad, we went into depth on what happend to the previous toad, and how that can never reoccur, we agreed we'd give the pet thing another chance. And I was so fooled. He was so gentle with this guy, who was bigger than the last one. He constantly cheked on him, brought him outside to hop around, Thorby even ate mosquitos off of Jackson's fingers as he held him. We put enough dirt and grass into the cage so he seemed pretty happy burrowing himself into the dirt during the day.

Well, can't remember what I was doing, but realized that once again, things were pretty quiet. When I asked the kids what they were doing, Jackson immediately piped up, "Nothing. Everything is okay." I'm thinking yeah right, my Dennis the Mennace, what are you trying to hide? I asked, "Where is your toad? Is he okay." Immediately the coverup came. First it was that he didn't know where he was, so I asked if he was dead, then Jackson shook his head yes, then no. I asked to see him, so good old Charly had to run and show me immediately as Jackson is shaking in his boots. So he must have felt compelled to confess because he said, "He's right here" and lifted a mangled toad with intestines dangling from the belly. When I asked how he died, Jackson was pretty unclear on how it had happened. Meanwhile, Charly runs to the edge of the garage and pulls a tool of Jeromy's out that looked like a box with wires hanging from it, maybe to check electrical voltage on stuff, and she says so innocent like it was all a game, "He killed him with this!" ,as she held it up like a proud show and tell moment.

I tried not turn around because Jeromy and Ashley were silently giggling to themselves while they were also in disbelief. So I was on my own to discuss what had transpired and what to do, and what NOT to do sort of thing. Then I told Jackson that we will let toads go from now on when we find them and we will maybe rethink him having a pet toad when he is six.

I am very new at this raising little boys kind of thing, but then again, not so new at the discovery of things as a child as my brother just reminded me by saying, "Oh. He's just like his mom! You were always bringing animals home and killing them." Thanks Brian. For the record, I never meant to! I was very sad when they passed away. Especially if it was one of your pets!

On that note, kids will be kids.

But I can't help and hope that my son will grow out of his, When Mice Were Men, character stage.

"I'm ready! Let's go."

I forgot to put these pictures on here before. These were from the day before we were supposed to leave for my mom's house. I had told the kids that we were going to go visit Granny Jannie. Charly was so funny because she had gone to her room, dressed herself, put her sandles on, backwards. Packed two pairs of pants in her suitcase, then packed her doll case with her toy cell phone, and a few more odds and ends of toys that were extremely important I'm sure.
Then she came back to the livingroom and said, "Let's go."

Ashley went to Valleyfair on Wednesday with the youth group at our church. She and her friends had one of these pictures taken for fun. Ashley is on the upper right.

I've been slowly but surely getting the painting done in Charly's room. We will enjoy the girlie girl color while this phase for her lasts. I'm sure it won't be long and she'll not want to touch a dress and want a style that we can't seem to understand.

Took the kids to the doctor yesterday. Ashley had a bike accident about a week ago and was complaining of chest pains. She was riding her bike home from the beach and her towel slipped down into the wheel and brought her bike into a complete stop. She flipped over and landed on the street, then the bike landed on top of her. She was a tough cookie about it and said it hurt but that she was fine. But her wounds were pretty gross and I was a little worried as she was moaning in her sleep all week. The doc said they thought it was a pulled muscle on top of her ribs and gave her some stretching excercises to do.

The little ones and I went to our library for a live raptor presentation. That was pretty cool, and educating. We now know how strong a chicken egg is with the proper amount of calcium, we got to see a real grey-horned owl eat a whole mouse, a falcon, another small owl, and a rooster.
After that, I took the kids into the library to stock up on more books. Jackson and Charly were sitting by themselves at a table in the kids corner playing with the toy animals they have there, while I selected some books for bedtime stories.

About three or four more kids their age came over and I about fell to the ground when jackson suddenly spiked a social bone and asked them how old they were and what their names were. Even though I was ready to go, I stayed back and let them talk. That was so cool to see. And funny. One boy looked like he might be a year older than Jack if not his age, asked Jackson and Charly,"Did you guys get hail damage too?" Isn't that crazy?! It was so funny to step back and see these little people socialize with no grownups around.

July is the birthday extravaganza month! We were thinking about all of you and hoping your birthdays were and going to be wonderful!

Happy Birthday Harrison on the 6th!

Happy Birthday Emily on the 13th! Friday even, Oooooooo...spooky, and really weird that your John Dear, hit a John Deer, after all of this time you thought you were "steering" away from John Deere. I know, so bad.

Happy Birthday Linda on the 14th!

Happy Birthday BUD today, the 16th!

Happy Birthday Les on the 21st!

It was great seeing all of you yesterday. We hope all of your birthday wishes come true!
Love you all,
Jeromy,Kim,Jessica,Ashley,Jackson,&Charly

No, they didn't dress themselves, Jeromy did. At least he tries.

We got skunked. But we managed to get around the lake a little more. Always fun to get out and about.

This morning was Jackson's day for fishing. I told him if he was good for Ashley while we were gone yesterday, I'd take him fishing. Well, it got to be a little late before I had the chance to take him out and Jeromy headed out of town with work for the week, so I told Jack I'd take him in the morning.

I got up at 7am, and about 30 seconds later Jackson was wobbling beside my bed rubbing his eye, while the other eye was only half open. He said so softly as I could tell he was half asleep, "Are we go'n fish'n?"

We went to the bait shop and I told him that today is his day. He could choose the bait, and then he could choose the fishing spot. He chose some shiners(minnows), and he wanted to try some wax worms. Then we went to the access that is not very good when it comes to depth, but the kids like it because there is never any people around, and we released our pet turtle, knocko, back into the lake there.

Jackson caught two perch. One he kept and one very itty bitty one, he took off his hook and gently released back into the lake. The air was still, and the sun was hot so after an hour and a half, we headed back home. I told him he could fillet the perch by himself. He did a pretty good job too. He listened pretty well, especially while cutting with the knife.

I love you Bubba Lewis, my sweet little man! I am so proud of you and I had such a great time fishing with you!

Well, here we are, almost the end of the week again and I am wondering if my lists are just too long, or if time is actually speeding up without us knowing.

Jackson is so obsessed/addicted to fishing. We created a monster. It is the only thing he actually can sit for a couple of hours and not lose interest. He got to go fishing, Sat,Mon,Tue, Wednesday was just too busy, and hot and humid to boot. He woke up and asked if he could go fishing again, I told him not today but maybe tomorrow morning. Later in the day he walked into the kitchen where I was and was crying a little bit. I thought he had hurt himself somehow by the way he was crying. I asked him what happened and why he was crying, and replied, "I am so sad because we can't go fishing. I wish we could go fishing today." Poor, poor little Jack. Hope he grows out of this by the time he's a man. Can you imagine? A grown man crying because he can't go fishing? Well, now that I think about it, there was this one time Jeromy was pretty upset. I'm just joking. But it is silly how he spazes during any hunting and fishing season. I see why Jackson is the way he is. I suppose destined that way, he's got spazy men on both sides of the family when it comes to hunting and fishing.

Jeromy is having another interesting trip for work. He's been gone all week. He had to drive with one of his new employees. A young lady in her twenties. Jeromy called me that night after he got checked into the hotel. He said he was pretty exhausted because, "She talked. The.Whole.Way.Here. I got maybe two sentences in! And she was telling me stuff I really didn't want to know!" LOL. He's had to ride around with her every day, all day, and try to sell together. It's part of the program they have this week, they team up all agents and work an area pretty good.

So after a couple more days, Jeromy is frustrated because he has to share a room with a young guy, maybe 21, but lazy and very cocky. He brought his playstation with him and had it hooked up to the tv 24/7 until he wasn't in the room one day and Jeromy unplugged it. The kid also complained to his boss about Jeromy's snoring. I can relate to that, I've slept pretty peacefully this week. The kid ended up purchasing ear plugs and I think things have been okay there since.

Jeromy has determined that the girl working for him is strange. He said one day he asked her to check the map to see where a road was and she suddenly broke into an english accent. And while she spoke with her english accent describing how she would check the map, she said, "Don't I talk good with an english accent?" Jeromy is sitting there thinking to himself, what the heck is she doing? He replies, "Uh, yeah, now can you check the map and find 21st ST?" He said she's been doing that all of the time now, and sometimes when she is speaking to policy holders! LOL.

AND, she belches, often and loud. Like she just chugged a six pack. She told him that she thinks she might have an irregular bowl system because she has to hold them in all of the time, and so it ends up coming up and causes her to belch so loud. LOL. He said they just rang the doorbell to one house and he heard a little one slip out and it must have startled her because she said, "oh" kind of quietly surprised but probably thinking Jeromy didn't hear it. He did. And then he got a good wiff of it! He was happy that nobody came to the door. They would probably think it was him, cause ya know, girls just don't do that. LOL!

His starter is going on his car as well, he's hoping he makes it home okay too. He'll be happy when he's home. And we will be too.

And we ended our day with a car wash

I'm just sorry that I didn't think of snapping a picture until after Eddy left for work. I realize now that I don't have one picture of Jessica with Eddy. Here is Jess, annoyed that I wanted a picture,Charly, petting puppy, and Jackson holding Jessica's puppy, Taco. Yes, she is wearing a tu-tu.

So happy to visit Jessica AND HER PUPPY.

We went to Jessica's for a little visit.

We saw another snapping turtle on the road. Ashley was with this time and said it was the first time she saw one so close. I didn't want to get too close because this one wasn't laying eggs so I didn't want to get snapped!

We started our day out fishing. Jackson caught six fish and kept two. Not sure what the size needs to be in order to keep a perch, but they were wormy so I figured it didn't matter if he kept the two he did. All six fish were perch. The sun was shining bright and you could see into the water pretty good so you can imagine how exciting that was for Jackson.

Grandma Hernke sent up a battery operated vacuum. It has been WONDERFUL, the kids vacuum ALL of the time now. Just in time for another season of Moose dog sheds. I love how I'll tell them to vacuum a room or rug, and their reply is, "Okay", because it is fun for them.

Charly got the kitchen cupboard from Grandma Hernke's house. She has been having a great time cooking and organizing the drawers. We have to work on sharing with Jackson though. She has picked up kind of a Diva attitude now that she has her "Own. Big. Pink. Room." Even though, about half of the dishes are Jackson's, she doesn't want to share. I'll have to get going on changing his room while he's gone this week so his dishes can be in his hunting shack in his own room.

Grubby boy sucking on a minnow on a hot day. He did it just to mess with me, little terd. See the evil eyes.

Monkey see, monkey do. Anything Jacky does, you can pretty much bet that Charly will do as well. "Anything you can do, I can do better...", kind of thing I guess.

"Watch me! Watch this!" I think the heat had gone to their heads. They were acting a little goofy one hot day last week. Bait isn't just for catching fish anymore.

All four monkeys together. Jessica stopped by for dinner one night last week. I said I wanted a picture of all kids together. But just one with all smiling nice wasn't going to happen.

Charly was telling me all about what had happened when she plugged her nose and tried to look under water. She didn't close her mouth and had surprised herself. Jack fishing on the left after taking a dip in the water, Ashley is the splash floating on an innertube out a ways on the right.

"Okay. ready, set, go!" Charly had to try out her new Shrek goggles.

The weather has been icky sticky for a while now. We spent a lot of time in the water, cooling in the house with our new air conditioner from Bud and Abbie. Thank you guys!!! Really, you are a life saver. We got it just in time. I think we would've melted if you didn't send it up to us!

We've been doing a lot of fishing too. Mostly for Jackson because he loves it so much, and it is so fun to see him enjoy it. Lucky for him, the rest of the family enjoys it too.

Last Sunday was the blueberry festival. Wild blueberries were excellent this year, so we've had blueberry shakes, blueberry pancakes, blueberries in salad, cereal, and martini's last Sunday. Yummy. We had raspberry martini's too. Very satisfying on a hot summer day. Nothing like sipping a cool, delicious cocktail by the lake. We were at Laurie's and had a BBQ, and cajun crawdads to boot. So good.

Rub a dub dub, two kids in a tub. Ashley and Jackson.

We are missing our little guy already. He went to Grandma & Grandpa's farm yesterday for "five nights", like he's been telling everybody. He was so excited, and looking forward to going fishing with Grandpa. This is the first time he's been down by himself since he went down when Charly was born. He was feeling like quite the bigshot. We met Grandma and aunt Tammy and had lunch with them at Applebee's. Tammy was talking to Jackson about the ocean, and scuba diving, and how Holly traps crabs in the ocean. I was surprised that Jackson didn't start informing her on all of the creatures that live in the ocean as he pretty much knows more than me. He has always loved books about creatures in the ocean and lakes. And don't get me started on Dinosaurs. We have the dvd, Deep Sea 3D, and the kids watch it all of the time. For the record, it is a really cool movie.

It's so fun to see how much the kids have grown and what their interests are and such. It's also funny to see how their knowledge of things work too.

Last week, mind you, it was hot and the little ones were crabby. Charly was whining to Ashley about something, Ashley was frustrated and was telling Charly that she better be nice to her, or else she was going to take back some of her little Braatz dolls Ashley had given to Charly, and give them to a friend of Ashley's that she knew really wanted them. Jackson was so mad at Ashley, thinking she was serious and stepped in to defend his crabby baby sister.
He said to Ash, "You're not going to do that Ashley! Or I am just going to go over there, and get the braatz dolls and bring them home, and give them back to Charly!" You could tell Ashley thought that was pretty funny and piped back in a teasing way, " Nah, uh. You don't even know where my friend lives. Do you?" Jackson replied, "Yes I do!" Ashley said, "Oh yeah? Where?" Jackson said so firmly and serious, "North America!" Ashley was speechless. I guess he told her!