Merry Christmas!

Curt pointed out that I haven't updated this since we went to Florida so here's a quick one (sorry no pictures). :-)

1. I decided it's a great thing that my kids are now teenagers and our house has a lot of rooms...After being snowed in for 3 days we all found our happy spots in the house and made it out alive. I really don't know how you moms of younger kids survived, my hats off to you!

2. Winter may have started but my workaholic hubby hasn't figured out that winter is supposed to be his slower time. But then if he'd be home more we'd probably drive each other nuts.

3. 36 days 14 hours 24 minutes until we leave for our cruise with the kids and their friends. Not that we're counting!

4. Life is crazy busy getting ready for our huge church event, Night in Bethlehem, volunteering at the PATTH boutique (my Honduras fundraising gift shop) shopping for presents and oh yeah trying to fit work into that :-) but I still love Christmas and can't wait to spend time with all our families.

5. Merry Christmas to all of you!!!

Clearwater Beach

We went to Clearwater Beach last weekend for Curt's niece's wedding. Stacey and Scott live near Tampa and decided they would get married on a yacht down in Clearwater with just a few friends and family. We stayed right on the beach and had a wonderful time. Curt's brother Dean and his wife Betty, our nephew Marlo and his wife Stef came with us.

We got there Thursday night and went straight to a great restaurant on the pier, Crabby Bills, I highly recommend going if you ever get down there. I started in on my seafood diet, and I was in heaven!

My pictures are backwards but here are some highlights.

Curt and I on the beach at Frenchy's restaurant on Saturday night Friday morning we all met on the beach and enjoyed the 95 degree, 150% humidity weather. I have never felt humidity and heat like this, Iowa summers have nothing on Florida's.

This is before I got fried from being out there 3 hours, ignore my icky white legs! :-) i have a great tan now, too bad it's 60 degrees now here at home!

From left-right: Stacey the bride, Stef Van Wyk, Betty Van Kooten & Me.

On Saturday we went on a boat ride for dolphin encounters and shell finding through the bay. Here is the island we stopped at and picked up some great shells. This isn't just the tip of the island, that's the whole island. :-)

At the reception on the dinner cruise after the wedding. We had a 3 hour cruise around the bay while we ate, danced and enjoyed a wee bit too much champagne, wine etc... :-) Lucky for us the hotel was down the street and within walking distance. :-)

Stacey, the bride, taking pictures in the beach before the wedding at sunset.

view on our beach Friday night right before the wedding and then we walked to the Pier where the yacht was docked.

View from our balcony in our room Friday AM, I think it was 85 degrees already at 8 AM.

Labor Day Weekend

Turkey Roost Cabin and our camper

Family pic in front of the cabin Red Oak Cabin, the main food head quarters for our weekend

Water Wars at Fun Land in Prarie Du Chien

Bumper Cars at Fun Land - Shelley out for blood :-)

Mom racing Go-Karts




Curt & Nate dueling it out

Enjoying the campfire with our local bats

Kate & I in front of the Mississippi

Curt & Nate taking a break on our 2 mile hike through Effiggy Mounds

I had no idea NE Iowa was so beautiful. We headed to Monona (north of Strawberry Point) this past weekend to stay at Natural Gait Cabins. My whole family shared two cabins and we pulled up our camper loaded with food, drink and just a few more sleeping areas. :-)

The weather was awesome and we had a great time going to Effigy Mounds and a lock & dam on Saturday & Prarie Du Chien to an awesome go kart/minature golf place on Sunday, which ended with a concert at the lodge at our cabins by a Western singer, TJ Casey. It was pretty cool sitting outside by a campfire listening to old time Western music.
We had to drive 10 miles down a gravel road to get to the cabins so you woke up to no traffic sounds, horses neighing and beautiful scenery.

It was fun watching all the cousins hanging out and playing and catching up with family.

KC

A couple of pictures from mowing my lawn today that I thought was pretty

ORC's fearless YF leaders minus the Fosters

Our awesome YF minus a few that couldn't come with us

Curt, Shayla & Kate on merry go round at Toot Toots

Royals game from the nosebleed section

Katelyn w/ a few brave souls are on the ride while Curt and a couple of the guys watched from the ground where your stomach actually stayed where it was supposed too

Thunder Hawk, after 5 loops in a row I was glad I was taking the picture

The front row is our group, notice the big kid on the end. The rest of the leaders chickened out.

Being a YF leader is a lot of fun and going on trips with the group is always a bonus! We had the kids work towards 5 points (through attendance, working at Tulip Time, service projects and sponsoring our Compassion child, Juan) all year and if they reached it we'd take them to KC and hit Worlds of Fun and a Royals game.

So last weekend off to KC 6 leaders and 10 kids went. Worlds of Fun all day and the Royals game that night. I now know I'm getting too old to go on all the roller coasters! We broke the Royals from their loosing 10 game streak, a little slow to begin with but it ended up being pretty fun.

Sunday AM we took them to a church in NW KC called "The River". A lot different from ORC so that was good for them to see.

On the way home we stopped in Bethany Missouri at our new favorite YF restaurant, Toot Toots. I highly recommend it, a huge buffet for a low price. A YF leaders dream!

Fun Weekend!!

Katelyn has been in Missouri for the last week and will be until Friday so it's been really quiet around the house. :-) This ended up being the first weekend that we had no concrete plans this summer and turned out being really fun and relaxing!

Friday afternoon Curt called and said his brother Dean had invited us to ride Harleys to Indianola's Bike night that night. It was a bit chilly but SO much fun! I'm thinking after having to borrow our nephew's Harley we're going to have to get one ourselves but if we do that I definitely need to get some Harley Chick garb. :-)

Saturday brought absolutely nothing except eatting our first batch of sweet corn and steaks that we just picked up at the locker. Yummy!!

Jasper and Marion County Fairs are both going on this past weekend so with several YF kids involved in each we decided to head to them Sunday afternoon. It was a beautiful day and fun to see how talented those kids are. I think Thursday we'll head to the Mahaska County Fair and watch the Combine Races/Derby. If you've never seen this I highly recommend it, it is a total hoot!

Competing against Grant on Wii bowling over Jersey Freeze ended our weekend. Too bad I don't bowl that well in real bowling!

Happy 4th!

Just a few images of our 4th of July weekend full of camping, parades & fireworks

Spencer listening to kids having fun with fireworks Sparklers, always a good time

Big kids playing with fireworks, little kids at a safe distance :-)

Camping mugshots

Poor Joe cleaning his Harley while Katelyn supervises

Katelyn's new car we found at the parade!

Grandma walked up for the parade, not bad for 95 years old! I'm not sure what she thought of it all though. :-)

Anna's stash

Grant helping Dad throw candy for Iowatelecom

We finaly got the camper out and headed to Robert Creek West with our new camping buddies, Tom & Sharon Walker, Stan & Carla Vos and Al & Doreen Sneller. Curt used to be Tom's leadman at PPI and Kate is great friends with Joe, we wasn't planning on camping but they had a spot open and we had a great time with them.

After a rainy morning the parade in Pella was fun and turned into a family reunion for my side that went into grilling that night too. Our motto while camping is "go with the flow" and that worked out great for us this weekend.

Just a couple of things...

VBS Bayou, the Otley way

Started with 50 guppies, I'm pretty sure we ended with more. :-)

Indy race at IowaSpeedway

The 2010 Chevy Camaro Katelyn would love for us to buy for her.The car we think she should get instead! :-)

Last weekend found us at the IowaSpeedway Friday & Saturday night and all day Sunday. Chevy had a display there where Kate really thought she deserved the Camaro but we leaned towards the Aveo. Needless to say she wasn't impressed.

The races were really good and we had a lot of fun on Friday & Saturday with Katelyn and her friend Joe and spending Father's Day with Kate & Nate. With the kids getting older doing something as a family is taking more effort but always worth that effort.

Otley had their VBS all week and even though our numbers were down we had a great time. On top of this post are a couple of pictures of the front of our church as a Bayou. We had real fish and I'm proud to say we didn't kill any all week and found homes for all of them on Friday night (except for a couple that ended up in our parking lot. ) :-)

Happy Birthday Nate!

I can't believe it's been 19 years!
It's really weird when I think back to when I was 19, Curt & I were getting married I'm not sure if I ready for Nate yet. :-)
As you know it hasn't been the easiest with Nate growing up but we love him so much and are really proud of who he's becoming. I can't wait to see what god has planned for him.
Here are just a few pics of Nate through the years...