Okay so here is the untold story about the canoe actually tipping!

So we were heading to the other side of the lake(away from the start of the river). Well Aunt Laura started shaking the canoe while Joey and Katie were in it. Well that made them get really mad. So Maddy and I switched canoes with Katie and Joey.

So now we were with Aunt Laura. Well she let the 2 of us jump in a couple times. Well whenever we would jump in we would first bang on the bottom of the canoe to scare the fish away. Well both Maddy and I were out of the canoe and there was an eagle in the air, so everyone was paying attention to it.

Well I decided that it was the perfect time to get in the canoe. That was not a very good assumption. Well the extra weight in the canoe made it kind of tip. So everyone except Aunt Laura got in the good canoe. So once we got to shore Dad and Aunt Laura emptied the canoe of water and the day ended happily.

I won't go into detail about Joey crying. Also we were wearing swimsuits.

Lake Itasca - the start of the Mississippi River

The first few days of our summer camping trip were spent at Grandpa Z's sister's house - Mary Zajicek.   She was celebrating her 80th birthday and GPaZ would be celebrating his 75th birthday later in July.   So all of GPaZ's relatives turned out for the big party.   We had a grand time but I'm sorry to report that I didn't take any pictures as Grandpa was taking the pictures.   Once I get the pictures from him, I'll post a few.  We really enjoyed meeting Grandpa's family.

After the weekend, we headed to Lake Itasca.  This is where the Mississippi River begins, and this was Joey's choice of a vacation spot. 

Look at those cute kids getting ready for another Kreiling / Little vacation!

Here's the gang at the headwaters of the Mississippi -

And of course one must be able to say they have walked across the Mississippi River -

while the kids took the shortcut across...

I'll let Nicky tell the rest of the Lake Itasca story!

So you know how when aunt Laura posted the thing about the canoing on our camping trip? Well she said she wouldn't say anything about the canoe tipping. I feel like it is important for you to know. So here it is. Maddy, aunt Laura and i were trying to fight the wind so we could get back to the dock. (Dad, Katie and Joey were near the shore.) Well we were paddling as hard as we could (we had just found a rhythm ) and Maddy noticed some foam in the water. Well then she starts to cry because this is where the boats go and were going to get run over. Which makes me stop paddling. Then the canoe starts drifting backwards!!! Aunt Laura starts telling us to paddle or else. Which makes us both paddle and while where pushing as hard as we can to get it turned around, I start to lean to get more leverage. And what do you know the next moment the three of us are almost in the water!!!!! But in the end we all end up safely in the dock. YA

So this is my first post ever ever ever so catch anything that i do wrong.

This is a picture of one of the Arctic wolves from the wolf sanctuary.
I can't tell witch one it is. But i think it looks really cool. :-)
So this one over here is all 4 wolves.
The leader is an arctic wolf named Shadow than the other arctic wolf is Malik. The only girl wolf is named Maya witch is a gray wolf and the other gray wolf is named Grizzer.

SOOOOO i hope you liked my post. :-) :-) :-) :-)

A week at Nana's house

 

After our week in Chicago, we headed to Nana's house for a week.  We had lots of fun making cookies, golfing, swimming, sliding, playing croquet and just hanging out.   Here are a few pictures -

Making yummy gooey chocolate cookies

 

The annual flag changing ceremony

 

 

 

 

 

Tractor riding & driving (much to Mom's dismay...)

And 4th of July at Nana's house

The much awaited grill!

The gas still is not connected so we can't grill just yet. With all the rain we are getting, I'm not sure we could grill anyhow....





When the sun comes back out (hopefully not too soon since the A/C is out - another story for another day) and I get the pool cleaned up, I'll post some more pictures of the whole thing.

Sailing the ocean...err, Lake Michigan blue

So, first, I'm using Microsoft's LiveWriter to make this post.  It's a new blog editor that's supposed to be really cool and make blogging easier (to add pictures & stuff - wysiwyg - etc.)   We'll see how it turns out.

I'm horribly behind in posting pictures from the summer, so with much prodding from Walter, I'm going to post some entries about our summer, the kids and the dogs.   Enjoy!

On to the subject of this post...

While the boys and I were in Chicago this summer, one of our highlights was going sailing with Mr. John.   Although Joey got a little seasick, we had a great time.   Mark & Karen joined us, too.

Here's the sailing vessel, Leander...

And a few of its passengers...

Finally, who's that steering????

Thank you, Mr. John, for a great day!

Shield your eyes - below you will find the offending house! :) Can you get more "sublte" than brown???? Maybe we should appeal the HOA based on that fact that we are not exactly sure what "sublte" means. Maybe the HOA should spend more time learning how to use spell check and less time harassing home owners. I think my next plan of action will be to knock on the 5 other homes that have the exact same color on their house and see if the HOA is making them re-paint those homes to a more "sublte" color????

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MADDY!!!! Ten years today - how did that happen?????









Ok - here are the promised forgotten vacation photos.... We usually spend time hiking, biking, canoeing, and having fun in nature. But there always seems to be one memorable moment/activity that always makes the vacation memorable for the kids.... Who can forget the begging last year for the gem mine? And it was fun wasn't it Uncle Wally????

Here is this year's memorable moment:
















How many of you have had the opportunity to ride a walleye???




And the trivia question for the vacation.... Can you name Paul Bunyan's home town???? The answer is in this picture.

As summer is winding down for you northerners, we are just getting ready to be able to enjoy the outside again! :) Here is a picture of our latest project - the outdoor kitchen. Aren't we trendy?????

Because our gas line is by the back door, we had to put the grill there....








And because it is right by the door, there was no room for a counter to eat at, so we had to build a counter seating area on the other side of the lanai (for you northerners - that's the Florida way of saying back patio...)








This is the grill area up close.... Betcha Walter is just dying to get down here to grill something!





This is the counter where Craig will be mixing all the fruity/slushy drinks for Amy and me..... Anyone else care to join????





Also, just for GpaZ (who happened to be chatting with me when I found out I forgot to turn off the hose while filling the pool this morning and it is now 4pm.....) Look at the picture with the pool and you will see it is full to the brim. I am now draining my pool. Let's hope I don't forget to turn off the drain because I understand that is worse than overfilling - with the water table so high, your pool can pop out of the ground! Anyone want to play guess what my water bill will be this month????


Tune in to my next post for some forgotten vacation pictures that some may wish remained in the forgotten pile!

Look at Lucy! Hasn't she grown since our last photo? And check out her stick - the bigger, the better!

More camping tales....



This is a picture of us biking. Maddy & Nick completed a 17 mile bike ride - yes, I said 17 miles! They rode around Lake Itasca with Walter and me. They are troopers! (And just because there always has to be a Walter story....) And Maddy even got right back on her bike after Walter ran her off the bike path..... :)






On the biking adventure, we stopped to climb a fire tower. I asked them to look like they were about to jump for this silly picture. I'm not sure if it is pretend or real fear on Nick's face.... You can see from the next picture how high the tower is. When you climb up, it is all metal grating so you can see all the way down through the stairs and to add to the fear, it shakes in the wind a good amount. Both the kids and I were a bit squeamish going all the way to the top, but the view was awesome.

Ahhhh.... vacation..... A time of relaxation, rejuvination - being able to enjoy the slow life with family you love....

Unless you happen to have the misfortune of having to vacation with Walter! :) You know there has to be some adventure and new lessons learned in every camping trip....

So here we were entering the Boundary Waters in Upper Minnesota. A beautiful area of gorgeous lakes and great wildlife. Looks like we are having a great time eh????















Do you notice in that last picture how the waves seem to be bigger???? For those of you that don't get out to enjoy nature much, that means that the wind is picking up. Doesn't look that bad some of you may say, but when you mix strong gusty winds coming at you, waves on a large open lake and (the killer) small children in the front of the canoe (meaning all the weight and rowing strength is in the back of the canoe), it spells disaster! :)

So after enjoying lunch on an island, we headed back to the dock. Walter had Joe and Katie (and the map) and I had Nick and Maddy. The kids and I take off to the other side of the lake going across the wind. With Nick and Maddy's awesome paddling we make it. Shortly after Walter makes it as well. I then verify where we are going and take off. Walter (who can paddle harder than I can) gets ahead of us and then proceeds to head back across the lake we just paddled across. Without the map and cursing him because I have no idea where he is going we start to follow. When we got close enough to shout where on earth is he going (that is the edited version...) I find out that the wind just carried him over there and we needed to keep heading into the wind.

Do you have any idea what happens to a canoe that is lighter in the front and doesn't have any paddling strength up front when heading into a wind??? It spins backwards - over and over and over again - and then when you paddle to turn it the right way again, you find yourself further from your destination since the wind carried you backwards during the whole fiasco... I finally realized the only way we were getting back to the dock was for me to become a drill sergeant and push Maddy and Nick to row their little hearts out. (I won't mention the part about almost tipping the canoe....) They performed admirably! Walter on the other hand went into the reeds of the shore and basically pushed his canoe home.

Ahhhh another enjoyable, relaxing day of vacation with Walter..... I will let Amy tell the rest of the vacation story since she is so good at doing the vacation summaries!

Diving Camp was a success! The girls went for an entire week, staying at the University of Florida dorms. (Mom did stay in Gainesville in case there was a melt down...) They had lots of fun and learned a lot. They were a bit surprised by the "conditions" of dorm rooms - I think they thought it would be like a hotel... :)







But the favorite part by far was getting to eat in the cafeteria - with no Mom telling them what to eat! Maddy was on the all "white food" diet... White bread, turkey, pasta with no sauce, english muffins.... Katie was on the all pizza diet and every now and then had some cereal for breakfast if no pizza was available! :)












No actual diving pictures.... have you ever tried to take a diving picture with a digital camera with a delay???? Not pretty. But Katie is doing well on her inward and even surprised the coach by doing it off the 3-meter board. Maddy is really getting more height on her back dive - working towards the back flip and they both are almost doing a front flip. Both also went off the 5 meter board and I understand that Katie walked up to the 10 meter, but decided against going off! I can't blame her - I don't think I could even go up and look over!

Lucy sure has gotten big! She's almost as big as Duke now. She gets to run in the backyard and she loves to chew sticks (& the occasional 2x4).

Congratulations, Lucy - you graduated from puppy school!

CRUISE PHOTOS!!!

Here's the front of Tante Laura's new house in Jacksonville, FL. Walter is standing next to our car that didn't start the morning of the cruise. So we took Uncle Craig's car, which is the red one in the picture!


Can you say TITANTIC?

This was Uncle Wally's first, FIRST, cruise. We sailed from Port Canaveral to the Bahamas for a 3 night cruise over Memorial Day weekend. We had a lot of fun, and Uncle Wally survived even the turbulent waters we encountered. Did you know he was a closet karaoke wannabe? We went to each adult karaoke show but alas, the slots were always filled before Walter could add his name! hee hee The dueling pianos were a big hit with us - it was how we'd close out each evening. The snorkeling in Nassau was great although the water was really cold; we didn't get to stop at Coco Cay Beach because the winds were too high so we just sailed around the Atlantic until it was time to come home. We're looking forward to our next cruise, whenever that may be!










Here we are at dinner - we were at a table for 6 but we were the only ones who showed up for dinner each night. Oh, well - we were fascinating conversationalists on our own! ha ha



And just to prove that we really were in the Bahamas...