August Vacation

We spent a week in August at the cabin we've visited the last few summers.  The boys looked forward to this all summer.  They had big plans of fishing, swimming, tubing and boat rides!  Unfortunately, a couple days before we were leaving, Mason caught his shin on the corner of the front door.  

It was a pretty significant cut...2.5" long and very deep--through his fat, almost to his muscle deep (thank goodness it didn't cut his muscle too).  He came home with 18 stitches, 3 deep and 15 on top, along with strict instructions of no swimming.  Poor Mason's vacation water plans were ruined.  

Thankfully his obsession with fishing meant he really didn't mind not being able to swim!  Sure, there were a few moments where you could see he was pretty sad he wasn't in the water with the rest of the kids but he was more than happy to fish for 13 hours a day!!

Other than that "little" setback, it was a successful week!

Kade getting some reading minutes in with Lillian, who was more than happy to listen!

Kade and Lillian

Felt like all we were doing was feeding these hungry little monsters!

Can't swim?  

No problem!  

We were in good hands with this boat driver!

Kade seems a bit too relaxed with his brother at the wheel.

1 of 10,000,654 fish that Mason caught.

I promised Mason I wouldn't swim (pretty easy promise to keep on my end).  

I also promised to watch him fish.  

So this is 1 moment out of 900 hours I spent fishing with him.

In sticking with the Fish themed week, we found ourselves at the fishing museum in Hayward!

That is ONE GIANT FISH.

Violet and Mason in the mouth.

Just what Mason needed to do...practice his casting.

We also took the boys to the Lumberjack show.

They LOVED it.  They both said it was their best part of vacation and have asked multiple times if they can go again.

Mason and Isaac trying their hands at lumberjacking.

An official lumberjack certificate.

Kade and Violet with their autographed wood chips.

It's time to remove the stitches!

Thank goodness we vacationed with a trained professional, 

Nurse/Aunt Sarah!

Mason liked to pretend he was hosting his own fishing show.

He was so excited to be able to take the kayak out on his own.

Hand lining.

Success!!

Kade caught the most bass on the trip.  

Which is funny because he only fished maybe 1/4 of the time Mason did!  

Luckily Kade likes to have Mason take it off the hook for him so everybody wins.

Sleepy boys.

Love this handsome little man!

Can't get enough of this little fella either!

Family picture time!

Back to School

Before we get too far into the school year, and I'm still playing catch up from our whirlwind August, I need to skip ahead and post the back to school pictures!!  

Kade is an old pro at this.  

So he was a 1 and done picture on his first day of 3rd grade.

His teacher is a huge Duke fan, so of course Kade wore a North Carolina shirt to give his teacher a hard time!!

Mason, on the other hand, started Kindergarten!!!

So he had to suffer through LOTS of pictures.

On his first day, they started an hour later than the rest of the school and their parents joined them to help ease the transition as well as help out with their first time in the lunch room.

That meant we had ample time to take pictures with our buddies!

Gunnar and Mason

Ashtyn, who is in the same classroom as Mason, and Gunnar

Mase was so excited to be old enough to ride the bus home with Kade.

Erik and I were both home for their first day so we met them at the end of the driveway.

First of MANY walks up the driveway for these boys!!

With both boys officially in school full time, that means we are done with daycare.  From the time Kade started to daycare to the day Mason finished, we went through 4 daycare ladies.  They were all great but due to various reasons we could never stay at the same place.  

I'd say we ended our daycare journey on top though!  Amanda is the first person I called when we found out we were getting Kade!  I contacted her multiple times through out the years but she just never had openings.  I was so excited when she finally could take the boys!  

Although we'll hopefully still be able to go to her on snow days and during the summer months, there's a chance we won't be able to, so it was a sad day on the last day of summer.  I can't believe our 9 year journey of daycare is over!  Time is moving too fast!!

It's not goodbye when everyone at the daycare is either family or close friends!!

Saying goodbye to Amanda, our last daycare lady

Saying goodbye to Michelle, our first daycare lady (back in 2016)

The boys are in school now, football season has started, fall weather is just around the corner but here I am still WAY back in August!!!  Kade's birthday, to be exact.  

We made our annual trek to Lady A's neck of the woods, where we were spoiled and the boys were even spoiled-er.  Where most little boy's (and big boy's) dreams are made a reality by playing on every possible farm implement you can think of.  The weather was perfect and so was the company.  Of course, I didn't take many pictures, I was too busy soaking it all in but here's a few that were sent to me.

We went into the DNR tent where Mason regaled the DNR dude with his knowledge of fishing.  The DNR guy was pretty flabbergasted at the accurate fishing conversation he was having with a 5 year old.  Mason sauntered on up to the guy with his hand on his hip, poked him in the belly and said, "I see you have a short nose alligator gar in your aquarium.  What bait did you use to catch it?"  The guy's jaw dropped, he pulled up a chair so he could sit at Mason's level and they proceeded to have a 10 minute conversation about fishing.

Kado's dreaming big!

9 years old!!!

But never too old for a spanking and kisses!  Grandpa C. had to play it cool for awhile because Kade was pretty on guard to run from the spankings but he let his guard down and grandpa went for it.  He got him down and Grandma H. took care of the 9 spankings, kisses, hugs and pinches.

Time for daycare celebration!

And lastly, a mini celebration at the pool with friends.  

The 2 kids in front of Kade and to his right are twins who were born the day after Kade so it worked out well to celebrate them all!