July 2014

Warning that there are a few more hand pictures to start off July:


He did pretty decent at keeping it wrapped, but there were some challenging times!

The blisters were just huge.

It felt like it looked much worse as it healed!

 It was such a relief to see them dry up, though.  We were slightly nervous about it scarring, but his skin looks great and you can't even tell it happened.  God made our bodies pretty amazing!

Happy boy loves bike rides!

I got this lovely bouquet beside my bed one morning. :)

The kids wore the Thing shirts so we tried for another picture!

Love my boys!

...and my girls. ;)

The Rassi family vacation was a Sunday-Thursday this year, a longer trip in honor of my parents' 40th anniversary.  We went out a bit early and stayed in Kansas City with Brett and Laura for the weekend.

Nora and Joni

Bryce and Max

The girls!

The crazy boys!

We had so much fun playing with water balloons at their house!

The Rassi family vacation was mostly spent here, at this enormous cabin behind Nora.  It was a perfect place!  Pool and lots of space for baseball, scatterball, etc.

Inside it even had a Wii, which Max was thrilled with!  Lots of MarioKart. :)

We drove to a nature preserve that was created by the guy that owns BassPro.  It had beautiful paved trails to walk on.


Max liked the teepee.

Max and Nora were a wee bit nervous about bats in the cave!

Max and Lincoln up on a ledge behind a waterfall.

The girls behind the waterfall...it was a cool little place up there.

:)

Nora is saying, "THUNDER FALLS!"

But I don't think this is a picture of it...I remember it being much taller.

This is the line up along the fence of the 'Glory Hole,' a beautiful crystal clear pool full of enormous rainbow trout.

This is the part of the trail where the Beutel family turned around...when we hit Arkansas! :)

Griffy was a trooper during most of the hike...

...and even got in a little nap!

Our kids are a little young for the organized ball games, so one evening Tirzah made a little dust castle in the parking lot. :D

Aunt Heather drew an amazing dragon on Max's cup!

Some guests who were in a nearby cabin had fireworks one night and offered sparklers to our kids.  Of course they were accepted!!!

We left a day early from the Rassis and took in the Dixie Stampede in Branson with our kids.  You can't tell from this picture, but for about the 45 min. before this, Nora was crying that her stomach hurt and then maybe Max joined in?  I just remember being so nervous that someone was going to puke and we still had 6 hours to drive home!  No one puked, the kids loved the show, Griffin even did good during it, and we all were glad to get home!

And then, we had to deal with hand, foot, and mouth disease...looking back, there are some things about this July that I'm glad are a year and a half ago!!!