A Few More Pictures

I took several pictures when we were in IN, but I don't really know how to catagorize these, so I'll just group them all together, so you can see them.



This was taken as we were getting ready to go down to Warsaw on Sat morning. The Schmids all left earlier that morning, so we were stopping by to say goodbye to Micah, Cara, and the boys. I wanted to take a picture of mom and dad. Dad was barely smiling, so I said, "Smile!" and this is what he does. Such a dork!! :-)

Here are the Drexlers. Caleb had gotten hurt earlier, so he had to sit in the chair, so his poor little skinned knees wouldn't hurt too much.

And, the original 5 Drexlers - before the brood expanded exponentially...

The grandkids - with the exception of the ones still in Em and Cara's bellies. I tried to convince them to border this picture with their bellies, but they looked at me like I was crazy. Just wanted to get all 8 grandkids in the shot, ya know?

This was taken on Thurs night when we all had pizza and stuff. The guys had gone golfing, so they got back late to eat. We had all finished and had moved on by then.

This was all of us on Thurs night, hanging out in the courtyard at mom and dad's.

Here's Amy and her dad. :-)

And, the 3 Schmid women. And if you look right between Karen and Amy, you'll see my dad peeking through. ;-)

Aunt Phyl was outside for a while with both Livie and Isaiah as they drew cool pictures of fish.

Yes, that's a fish.

This was taken when we first got to Goshen the previous Sat. Noah had SUCH fun with his cousins! They wrestled and ran around and just had a great time!

Sweet little Mason, watching some 'toons.

As we were walking out the door at Em and Jeff's on Monday morning, I found a little tree frog hanging out on the side of their screen door. The kids were SO excited! Livie, as many of you know, LOVES frogs, so she wasn't wanting to let it go for a second.

She finally gave in and let Madie hold it for a little while. When we finally got the kids loaded, Livie cried halfway back to mom and dad's. She wanted to keep it. But, it's a good thing she didn't. That little frog now has a buddy and comes out every night at Em and Jeff's house. Too fun! So, that's basically the rest of the picture I took. Like I said, didn't know what kind of category to put these in, because they spanned the whole visit. But, it was a great time and I'd do it again in a heartbeat! Nothing quite like having time with extended family. Especially when it's been 16 years since you did it!

Our 4th of July Bash (on July 3rd)

All the Schmids and all the Drexlers were in Goshen by Thurs afternoon. So, we planned for a big picnic thing at Em and Jeff's for Friday. It was going to be our 4th of July, since everyone was leaving early the next morning. Everyone was bringing a dish, while Em and I made the meat and homemade ice cream - yum!! The day started with Em, Cara, Karen, and I going garage saling. Always a great way to start the day! So fun! Then when Em and I dropped the girls off and headed back to her house, we had just enough for all of us to eat lunch before Jeff, Pete, and the kids went BACK to mom and dad's to go with Micah, the boys, and dad to Build-a-Bear in South Bend. I had 3 hours just to myself!!! It was fantastic! And, much needed in order to get the house and everything ready for the 19 guests that were coming.



While we were gone garage saling, Pete and Jeff got his fire pit ready for that night. Pete had so much fun helping Jeff. He loved it! Here's a picture I took of Livie helping them with the coolers of pop. :-)

Shortly after the kids came back and showed me the Build-a-Bears they got from nana and papa, everyone started arriving. Here's Papa with Livie and her Bat-cat. Dad's holding Caleb's karate bear.

Once the chicken and pork roast was ready (thanks Aunt Judi for the chicken recipe - it was awesome!!), everyone started eating. We had so much food and it was all delicious!

Uncle David sat at the kids' table and entertained them. He's such a great uncle! He was for us as kids and he is for our kids as well. They thought he was awesome!

After we all ate, we were waiting for the ice cream to finish up, so everyone gathered around Em and Jeff's giant tv and watched "Wizard of Oz". As I looked around at all of us there, it reminded me so much of how we'd get together when we were kids. It warmed my heart to see us all grown, with our own kids, doing this same thing. I know this opportunity may never present itself again, so I cherished the moment while it was happening. It was wonderful!

This is a partial shot of Em and Jeff's backyard. They live down a long gravel lane and are placed in a big opening between the woods. It's fantastic!! Pete and I both agree if we ever find another place to move, we want it to be in the country, just like theirs. This is only their backyard too. Their side yard is twice this big. Loved it!!

Then the boys got out the fireworks and explosives. Here's Pete showing the girls the snake thingys. Micah was setting off firecrackers towards the side of the house, by the shed. Eventually those firecrackers were used to try and blow up a variety of things. We discovered that Aunt Phyl's deviled eggs were the best things to explode. It went for miles! :-)

Of course, we got out the sparklers for the kids. Noah's scared of fire, but seems to be warming up more to the sparklers.

Mason loved them!

Livie took us quite literally when we told her to hold them away from her body. ;-)

This old stump was used to set off the fireworks. The kids loved to dance through the smoke bombs.

Livie got a little too close to the snakes Pete had burned earlier. She was covered in soot the rest of the night.

Here we're gathered for the fantastical fireworks display that Jeff and Pete set off.

OK... maybe not FANTASTICAL, but for first-timers, they weren't bad. The "solar flare" was not quite as awesome as we had hoped. The kids boo-ed. ;-) haha

All the fireworks disturbed a little snake that lived in that stump, so dad got it out and showed the kids. That's one thing that's very cool about where they live. They get to see little critters all the time.

We had such a wonderful time that day with everyone. The kids didn't even go to bed until after 10. We all just sat around and enjoyed each other. Laughed and laughed and relished our short couple of days together. It was a great way to end our visit. :-)

Royal Center

On Sunday morning we (and by "we" I mean mom, Micah and his family, me and my family) all went down to Royal Center to see Aunt Phyl and Uncle David speak. It was so good to see friends from down there. Dale Calloway got up to do something during the service and said, "I see there are several Drexlers here today and I just want to say Welcome Home". How sweet was that?! Baptist Christian always feels like home to me. Even if we've been gone for 16 yrs. We all might be older, but we still feel a love there where it just feels like you're with family. A lot of them hadn't seen Micah for years, so they were all excited to meet his family. Dad had to speak at church in Goshen and Em and Jeff had responsibilities there as well, so they didn't come down for church, but they came later that day around 1pm.



After church, we had a cookout at the pastor's house, but we took about a half hour, after church was out, to take the kids to the park. This is the park that Micah, Em, and I would ride our bikes to as kids and play all day long. Every SS picnic, every baseball and softball game was here. So it was fun to take our kids there. Granted, most of it has new equipment, but some of the same tried and true ones were there. This merry-go-round was there and the kids LOVED it!! They don't have these things anymore at parks. So, the fact that it was still there was awesome! I remember as a kid thinking the merry-go-rounds were the best things there and obviously our kids felt the same thing. I don't think the boys got off of it the entire half hour we were there!

The girls played on it for a while, but they migrated towards other things as well.

After our short visit to the park, we headed over to the pastor's house. We had a cookout in their backyard and boy has that backyard changed!! They've made a beautiful new patio area and surrounded the whole yard in flowers and stuff. It was fantastic!!!! A totally different yard from when we lived there, that's for sure. And the pastor and his wife couldn't be nicer! So funny and so sweet. :-)

The Calloways came over (that's who Aunt Phyl and Uncle David spent the night with), as well as our beloved Betty Smith from next door. She's getting ready to celebrate her 91st birthday next month. She was thrilled to see the entire Drexler clan - especially to find out Em is pregnant!

The kids discovered an ant colony and created an "ant restaurant" with bark and leaves and things that they gathered throughout the yard. This kept them busy for quite a while. It was a beautiful day filled with wonderful friends. We couldn't ask for more! Or, could we.......

Yes, the one thing that made this visit complete was a visit to Bruno's Pizza!!! Dad took mom, Phyl, and David home. Micah took his family home, but I made Pete drive the kids and Em and I over to Logansport, a good hour out of our way, to pick up 3 of their delicious pizzas. Or, was it 4? I can't remember. I do know that not all the pizza made it back up to Goshen in one piece though. ;-) After 6 yrs of not having it, we couldn't make the 2 hr trip home smelling that pizza without taking a bite.......or 20.

Noah fell asleep on the way back to Goshen and was NOT happy when we woke him up to come inside. He decided he would just finish his nap on the stairs. But when that proved to be difficult, he went up and slept in dad's office. On the wood floor. With no pillow or blanket. Guess he really wanted to finish that nap!

And to finish our terrific trip to RC, we finished off our Bruno's pizza with some jerky that Tom Adams picked up for us. He went out and bought a few slices of it at a place in Logan and gave it to us that morning. Yum!! That evening, after all that travelling, we still managed to have enough energy to play a rousing game of wiffle ball. All of us played - except mom of course - who watched from the sidelines. It was just such a fun time!!

Down to IN We Go

When I posted about our MI vacation, I posted it all in one day so that everything would be in order as you scrolled down. Not doing that this time, because it took forever to type it all up that day and I have lots of laundry and stuff to get done, so I'll post a bit at a time.



This was us driving down to IN as we left St Joe. Noah decided to take the pillows and create different arrangements of forts. This one left him just enough eye space to watch the Star Wars DVD the girls were watching. :-)

When we got there, we were greeted by my nephews. The kids had just come from playing for 4 days with the Thiry kids and now got to play again with their cousins! They were so excited. This is mom and dad's courtyard area. They loved riding their scooters or playing frisbee. We later played a couple wiffle ball games in the side yard of the church too, which kept us all busy for hours. Too fun! This is a picture of Isaiah and Madie. Isaiah is their middle boy. He's 4.

Caleb and Noah are only about 3 months apart in age and they bonded immediantely. They just had the best time playing together. Noah liked playing with all the boys, but Caleb was his buddy. They cracked each other up!

It was a bit wild with all the kids running around, so we popped on some cartoons to get them to calm down before supper. Here's Madie with Isaiah and their youngest, Mason - who's 2.

Here's Caleb and Olivia. Hanging out on the lift chair (aka "rocket chair"), watching 'toons.

When we got there, Micah and Cara and their boys were there, as was Aunt Phyl and Uncle David. But, they only stayed a short while, because they went down to Royal Center to spend the night, because they were speaking there the next day. We all went down to Royal Center on Sunday to see them speak and hang out. I'll post about that later.

HOME!

We. Are. Home. YAY! As glad as I am that our travelling is done, boy will I miss the fun we had in IN. It was beyond my expectations. Just had a terrific time! Now, as you know, we split up the visit. Leaving straight from MI last Sat and going to Goshen. Then staying there until Mon afternoon. Then we went back on Thurs morning and just got home about 30 min ago. I didn't post anything about our first visit, because Mon night after we came home, I came down with strep which threw me in bed for 2 days. But, at least you got to see our awesome MI vacation. I had just enough energy to post about that! Now, I'm a little too tired to post about our IN vacation tonight, but I will in the morning. Just know we're safely back home. That our visit with Drexlers, Schmids, and Trolingers was a lot of fun! And, you'll see all the pictures soon. :-)

But, to those of you hoping for talky blogs with dad on "Conversations with my Father", you'll be disappointed. Didn't get any of those. But, will have new stories to share even if they won't be in my dad's own words. I'll tie him down at the end of the month when they come to visit and make him do some then. We were just too busy and running around too much to get a moment of quiet time for talkies. Sorry Jude. :-( Now to go catch up on all the blogging I missed this past week!

Day One

We had such a fun time on vacation this past week!! The weather was hot when we were at the beach, so it was just perfect for swimming. Everytime we took our brood of 11 out to eat, the waiters we had went above and beyond to make it easy on us and entertain the kids. And, our friends are just so terrific! We couldn't have asked for a better time! We packed a lot into those 3-4 days, so I'm posting a lot of pictures and stuff. And, I'm doing them in order of how it went. We went to mom and dad's straight from our vacation, but I'll post those pictures another time, since we're going back there again on Wed night. Anyway, let's get started. :-) Like I said last week, we were going to St. Joseph, MI. First time any of us had been there. And, we went with our friends, the Thiry's. It was their idea and boy am I glad they asked us to tag along!





We left early on Wed and stopped for breakfast together. The kids were so excited to be together and be off on vacation together. Their energy was infectious! After breakfast we headed on up to MI. First thing we did when we got to the hotel was check in and get our bathing suits on! Here's Pete with a gaggle of kids. We have 3 and they have 4. So, it was quite a crowd!

After we swam at the pool for a while, we headed out for supper and then decided to take a quick trip to Lake Michigan, to scope it out a bit for the next day. We went to Silver Lake Park. Here you can see behind Madie and Noah is the lake. I thought it looked really close. But, it's actually down a huge hill, across a long road, and down a VERY WIDE beach. Our parking here was not a really good idea.

On our way, we had the kids stop at this gazebo, so we could take their picture. Charlie, their 1 yr old, was in his stroller, and Livie decided to duck out right before we took the picture. That's why there's a space between Noah and Jack. By the way, so you know, Jack is their 3 yr old, Tessa (the blonde) is 6, and Emma (with dark hair) is 8. They are all the same ages as our kids with the addition of Charlie.

There was this cool cannon and the kids just loved climbing on it. So, we wanted to line them up for a picture. Livie was still not feeling it, so she wore a bucket on her head. Sigh.

She was much happier sitting on the cannon balls. :-)

Here's Noah, Jack, and Pete on the cannon. Laura (mom) took lots of great pictures this past week too and she always managed to get smiles. When I took them, I'd get this. Thanks, Noah.

We finally made it down to the beach. It was soooo busy! We went at like 8pm and it was still packed like this. You can see the sailboats in this distance.

This was the first time the kids had ever been to a beach. As soon as we got to the sand, they were rolling around in it and just having a ball!

My prim and proper Madie just sat on the sand.

And, Livie just laid down and enjoyed it.

This gives you some perspective on wide the beach was. It was a chore and a half to walk through! I'm used to the shore, where you have boardwalks and short walks to the water. Here's Jayson, Charlie, and Pete watching us all play in the water.

We had not come in our bathing suits. We had come to the lake thinking we would check it out and leave. But, because this was the kids first time to even SEE a beach, let alone play in a lake, they couldn't be held back. So, we tried telling them to just go up to their feet, so their clothes would stay dry, that lasted about 2 1/2 sec. By the time we left, everyone was soaked to their eyeballs!! :-) Heck, even I got in a little deeper than I thought I would. Here are the kids and I.

Here are 6 of the kids playing in the water. They just absolutely loved it! And, it was so fun to watch their excitement. :-)

Jayson took little Charlie up to put his feet in the water. He's not walking yet, so Jayson held him up, so he wouldn't crawl in.

You can see the sun was setting when we were there. Even knowing it was late in the day, didn't stop Noah from splashing it up! Watching him was so cute. He just enjoyed every minute he spent in that water.

All the kids looked for shells and sea glass. Tessa brought me a piece of a coffee lid from McDs, thinking it was sea glass. I nearly died laughing! But, they did find a few little broken pieces of shells. That's what Livie is showing me here.

We finally gathered the troops and walked the very long way back to our car. Then decided, with that beach being so busy and so far away from the parking lot, we would go look at another beach and see what it was like before we went home. We drove down a bit to the Lions Park beach and it was heaven! The parking was right on the beach and very private. We didn't stay or anything. Just stopped long enough to take this beautiful picture of the sunset, then headed back to the hotel for bed. It was after 9 and well past bedtime for the kids. But, we made plans the next day to go back to this beach to swim.