40 and loving life

Cruise 2010

2010-02-02T09:09:00.000-08:00

We just got back from an awesome cruise to Key West, Grand Cayman and Jamaica with the kids and their friends Derrick & Ashley.

Our first stop Key West started out cloudy but really warm so we headed off to our excursion Parasailing. The girls got harnessed up and we looked out and saw a huge black cloud wall barrelling down on us. Unfortunately that was as close as we got to parasailing, the kids were really bummed but I have to admit I was OK with it. :-)

After a day at sea full of eating, playing cards and watching shows we docked at Grand Cayman. I LOVE Cayman! It is absolutely beautiful and we spent the day with my favorite activities, snorkeling, swimming w/ sting rays and sunbathing on a white sand beach. it was a bit windy and there was talk of closing Sting Ray city sandbar but our tour guide decided to chance it. Last time we were there we shared the experience with 200 other people this time we were the only boat out there and we only had 10 people on our boat. A little freaky jumping into the middle of the ocean all by yourself but pretty cool not being crowded out by hoards of people. We did have 5-6 foot waves hitting us standing on a sandbar w/ water to our chest but it was a a cool adventure. Then we went snorkeling which was pretty new to the kids but they absolutely loved it. The rest of the day was spent on the beach while the kids rented jet skis, perfect day!

Off to Jamaica...shopping, climbing Dunns Rivers Falls and lunch, a great way to spend our anniversary. We reserved a 3 hour tour and ended up spending almost 6 hours full of different shopping experiences ( markets where the girls got a little intimidated and later the guys being offered drugs to an awesome Harley Davidson store w/ a bar in the middle of it) climbing the falls ( fun but ended up really painful with a hugely banged up knee cap when i tangled with a sharp rock) and ending with a buffet lunch w/ free beer for the boys ( that totally made up for all the shopping :-) )

When we got back to Ft Lauderdale Saturday we drove to Palm Beach and spent the afternoon on an air boat looking for alligators. Curt & Nate felt like Horatio Cane from CSI and we saw tons of alligators up close and personal.

We had a great time and it helped make this never ending winter feel just a little bit shorter. :-)

Lido deck on our ship the Freedom, we got to watch the playoff games on that big screen which was pretty cool.

Group shot at Sting Ray City in Cayman

The boys not too sure about our friendly sting rays.

Happy 21st Anniversary at Dunns Rivers Falls!

Random thoughts

2010-01-07T18:46:00.001-08:00

Here we are snowed in once again and it's only January 7, this is going to be a really LONG winter I'm thinking!

What can we do hmmm.....

1. Clean closets-I know it's not time to spring clean but it might fool your brain into that happy place of imagining it' spring.

2. Make a pile of DVDs that you've been meaning to watch and haven't had the time. I have afeeling by the end of this winter you'll make it through your pile. Some of my top picks so far this winter have been Julie & Julia, The Proposal, MasterPiece Theater Wuthering Heights, Confessions of a Shopoholic & The Ultimate Gift.

3. Check out Smilebox, make some fun greetings for your nephews & nieces w/ pictures you've taken over the year. They've got some fun templates.

4. Re-read a series of books by your favorite author. Any of Nora Roberts are great, Suzanne Brockman and Linda Lael Miller. If you need any come on over and check out my "library"!

5. Try a new recipe for supper or make up your own recipe. It's fun to experiment!

6. Or do what we did and book a cruise and start packing early. God knows you won't be needing your summer clothes in this tundra. It's making us feel better starting to pack making us think it'll be here before we know it!

Stay Warm!!!!

Merry Christmas!

2009-12-17T20:30:00.000-08:00

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

2009-09-29T06:56:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-08T12:09:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-31T13:23:00.000-07:00

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!!

2009-07-20T08:27:00.000-07:00

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!

2009-07-07T08:32:00.001-07:00

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...

2009-06-28T14:05:00.000-07:00

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!

2009-05-30T19:23:00.000-07:00

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...

This weekend so far....

2009-05-24T18:04:00.000-07:00

A few images from our weekend so far...

Katelyn & CJ at Pella's graduation

Life at the VK cat farm (watching for june bugs :-)

I guess I was done reading the Town Crier.

Spencer Owen

We also welcomed 50 veterans from Pella's Legion at church Sunday AM, had a potluck with our WBM mission hosts from Honduras and all our Honduras trip friends, had a weenie roast with the YF group, went to my niece's bridal shower, went to 4 graduations (3 on Saturday, gained 10 llbs I swear!) and we haven't even hit Monday yet!!

What we're up to...

2009-05-19T14:46:00.000-07:00

Sorry it's been awhile but my camera broke and I've been waiting for my new one. I decided to just post a quick "boring just writing" one. :-)
Tulip Time was fun this year. Thursday I just went shopping in the park and ate my way from one end to the other. It was kind of weird without having kids needing to be places but great not really having a schedule.
We tried to get Baby Cook to come by walking a lot but as I'm typing this he is stubbornly still in place. :-) Becky even came and worked in our church stand with Mom and me Friday but that didn't work either.
Saturday our youth group ran our stand so being a leader meant being the first one there and last to leave. I was tired but really did have a lot of fun with the kids(get them out of church and you never know what's going to come out of their mouths) :-) Sandy came and helped in place of Curt who was busy planting and spraying, I had two old youth kids who came and helped which was a lot of fun catching up with them and knowing that they still wanted to hang with us. :-)
Curt's been busy trying to get the rest of our beans in and spraying, if the weather would just decided if it wants to rain or stay dry for 5 minutes that would help. He's not complaining though, he absolutely loves being out on the farm and not being in the factory anymore.
Katelyn is ready for school to be done, a bunch of her friends are seniors and graduate this week (including CJ her boyfriend) so the next two weeks will be long for her. I'm not sure if she realizes she's my slave this summer so maybe schools not so bad. CJ leaves for Georgia June 1 to join the Army so life might be a bit rough around here for a little while.
Graduation parties, Nate's b-day and hopefully some camping are in our near future so pictures will be included in my next post.

Great Weekend!

2009-05-04T17:48:00.000-07:00

What a great weekend!

Saturday Katelyn, Curt and went to the new restaurant Kaldera (Where the old Dr Salamis was). If it stays as good as it was Saturday they're going to do very well. Yummy! I had a sirloin with shrimp & linguine, I highly recommend!

Sunday we played hooky from church and spent the day planting flowers and working on our never ending landscaping. After spending all that money on flowers I think I should just plant bushes but after they're all potted it looks great and I don't regret the money and work.

Off to Mom and Dad's for supper that night. We celebrated Dad's birthday with a BBQ and yummy cake Shelley made.

Happy Birthday Dad!

Saturday Fun

2009-04-18T18:06:00.000-07:00

Our new toy, can't believe it's not green!

The GPS system I'm supposed to be able to figure out for Curt. Told I'm not getting paid enough for that!

View from my "buddy" seat :-)

Katelyn had her final performance for show choir today and I have to say after 3 years of watching these fun performances I'm going to kind of miss it. She decided to focus next year on some other activities so I'm sure we'll still have a lot of things to do. She was glad to see Shelley, Carmen, Madeline, Anna, Sandy, Emma & Grandma all at the performance today. :-)

After Katelyn's show Curt called me to see if I could ride a long with him for awhile. Since I hadn't seen him in the daylight since Sunday and he reassured me I had my own comfy "buddy" seat off to Osky I went.

I can understand why he wants company as we went around the field at a racing speed of 7 MPH, hours of that would totally drive me nuts. :-) My hubby is loving it though. He is getting a bit tired of climbing into bed after midnight , thank goodness for Sunday naps!

My blogger helper, Midge.

For some reason the minute I sit down on the laptop Midge is sitting on top of me and helping me type. It works now but if she ever grows it might get a bit tricky. :-)

Easter

2009-04-13T17:21:00.000-07:00

After a fun day at my Mom's eating our body weight in a yummy lunch, Easter candy and birthday cake for Braden & Katelyn we went home and burned off our native grasses that surround our house. I thought I would point out to Kurtis the correct way to have a grass fire and not have to call the fire department. :-) We did call the police department to tell them we were doing this and then got a call from them an hour later making sure everything was fine because they'd had 40 calls reporting the fire and heard it was incredibly close to the buildings. Not sure what fire they were looking at.

Katelyn made a bargain that if we all helped with this project that we should head to Jersey Freeze for supper. There's nothing better than green apple ice cream covered in caramel for supper! I'd already totally blown my diet for the day so I might as well blow it really good. Back to Triscuits and Healthy Choice Steamers today! :-)

Prom, a wedding, Easter... whew!

2009-04-07T07:36:00.000-07:00

This weekend was a busy one. Katelyn went to her first Prom Saturday night. I told her since she was only a freshman she was going to have to borrow or find a free dress this year. I'm not going to be buying new dresses for the next 4 years!

She got really lucky and got an old dress from a friend that is as tall as Katelyn and Mom only had to take in a little bit at the top so it wouldn't fall down all night since it wa strapless. I should've told her I wouldn't pay for her hair being done though too after I wrote a $62 check. Jeesh, I should've got into hairdressing!

She looked great though and had a lot of fun. Curt and I had a friends wedding at the same time Kate had to get ready and leave so thank goodness Mom lives up the road and played taxi driver, photographer .... for me. Thanks Mom!

Curt and I were off to our wedding where the ring bearer was the grooms hunting dog. A new one for us but pretty cool. The Pastor made a reference in the ceremony about now that (Andy the groom) has trained Chase his dog, he now has to train Carol his bride in the way God wants. he had a point tied to his scripture (just didn't come out right) but you should have heard the gasp by the women in the crowd and the "No he didn't just say that!" comments. needless to say Curt thinks we should always listen to the Pastors and believes that he should start"training" me. I'm thinking after 20 years he has no hope! :-)

Last night we had the Jews for Jesus organization come and present Christ in the Passover for our church.YF was the lucky ones to head up serving 120 people supper and getting the presentation set up which was a huge undertaking I found out half way through prepping for it. if you ever get a chance to go to one of these presenations I highly recommend it, it was really cool and interesting. A lot of work but really worth it.

Not liking the horseradish part of the presentation.

Washing of the hands

Off to set up for a prayer path our church is doing this week now. I really need to learn the word, NO.

Bowling

2009-03-30T07:20:00.001-07:00

On Saturday night Becky organized a family outing of Pizza Ranch and Bowling. We had alot of fun with my extended family, Wayne & Marilyn and their kids. Unfortunately we live in Iowa and got a freak snowstorm so Jennifer's family couldn't come. Not sure what it would've been like with 4 more kids!

You get that many kids together and you know there's going to be noise, fun and more noise!

At the bowling alley somehow Curt ended up on the lane with Madeline, Anna, Jaren, Grant and Bethany. Madeline being the oldest at 9. He's not sure how that worked out except he was being a bah-humbug and not wanting to bowl so....

The girls were on the next lane with the boys on the last with Katelyn because we couldn't possibly be seperated from the boyfriend! :-)

Erica, Lisa's youngest found that she didn't need to bowl because she had the air blower which was way too much fun.

Who won?? Grant or Jaren???

Spring Break

2009-03-24T10:45:00.000-07:00

Katelyn and I finally got around to painting her room over spring break. I absolutely hate painting so fun was not had by all. :-)

It did turn out pretty cool, painting all four walls didn't make it as dark as I was afraid. We did find out that flat black paint is not very fingerprint friendly though. At the end of the week as we were putting on her colored circles and handing pictures we found everywhere we touched left marks. AARGH! If anybody has any solutions, please share!!

Here's a picture of the almost complete room, she needs to add her personal touches yet (like clothes on the floor, a billion more blankets and pillows on her bed etc...) I'm not sure what the white dots are from on the picture, the only thing we can think of is a reflection from her blanket or Katelyn's thoughts were ghostly spirits (she's been watching freaky movies lately) :-)

Curt's New Job

2009-03-22T11:01:00.000-07:00

This last month has been a bunch of new experiences for Curt. First Curt put in his notice at PPI where he has worked since a week after he graduated high school in 1988 with his last day being the day before we left for Honduras. Which was Curt's first mission trip experience besides a local trip to Parkersburg last summer.

We got back from Honduras at 1 AM on Saturday night and Monday AM he started his new job as Farm Manager at VK Farms in Lynnville. Gone are the 4AM alarms (In which I am SO excited!), roach coach (VP Bakery truck for breaks), weekly paychecks (monthly income means better budgeting for us), guarenteed 401K (well that hasn't been so great lately with the stock markets) & managing 40 guys who really don't want to work (he now has two Mexican employees who are great and a part-time guy).

He's already a much happier guy, maybe the sleeping in til 7 has something to do with that, but he just LOVES being out on the farm. He's already been a mechanic, bull-dozed, put in 10,000 ft. of tile and been to his first "farmer" mtg. and free lunch. I told him to watch it or he'll be sitting at the coop playing cards before long!

Here's a picture of the tiling job they worked on...

Working with his brother ( not that we don't love him dearly but he is a Van Kooten!) will have it's challenges I'm sure but with his blood pressure already dropped to a healthy reading and a smile at the end of the day instead of growling and worrying about being dropped down to 34 hours a week I'm sure it'll be worth it.

Honduras pics

2009-03-18T18:11:00.001-07:00

Honduras

2009-03-11T17:05:00.000-07:00

We're back!

Katelyn, Curt and I made it back from our mission trip in honduras Saturday night after 14 hours of traveling. It started at 8:30 AM with a 2 hour bus ride through the mountains to Tegucigalpa, plane rides from 1-8 PM and a 3 hour car ride from Omaha. Add a weeks worth of Land Rover and bumpy bus rides on roads that make my gravel road look awesome and boy does my bum and back hurt!

Let's start at the beginning....

Saturday we landed in Tegucigalpa on the worlds shortest runway. Meeting up with the rest of the group was great and it sounded like they'd had a good time on medical brigades outside of Teguc. Now it was time to head 2 hours east to Guaimaca where we would stay for the week.

Sunday instead of the normal 2 hour church service at the compound we got to travel up the mountain to a river where we were blessed to share 7 baptisms with our new Honduran Christian friends. I know that I've already been baptized and made profession of faith but we were all very moved by Pastor Mingos sermon and wanted to join them in the river. God was surely with us that morning as the sun came through the clouds at the exact moment the first baptism started.

Monday was full of unpacking our 42 suitcases full of medicine, blankets, hats and toys that we brought with us. We were allowed two carry-ons with our clothes and that was it, Katelyn slightly pannicked but found you can get a heck of a lot of clothes jammed in if you have too. :-)

I got to play with the daycare kids in the afternoon and it was great to see old friends from my last trip. Little Diego, Emerson and Melvin were just little tykes last time but are growing up to be heartbreakers.

Tuesday saw all of us off up the mountains on our first brigade. We saw 280 people that day 5 hours. Alot of scabies, allergies and asthma was the main complaints. Everyone came to our "pharmacia" and received vitamins and a gift and whatever prescription they needed. Katelyn worked in the pharmacia all day except for an hour outside where the honduran boys decided she was a bonita chica (cute girl). that made her a bit uncomfortable so off to the pharmacia she went. It was hard to tell them no mas(no more) when they are asking fo more knowing that they own almost nothing and it was really cold in the mountains which is unusual right now. I just wanted to give them all blankets.

On Wednesday Curt & Kate stayed behind and built a much needed fence to keep the daycare kids safe. No more waterlines were hit (ask Kate about that one sometime!) and it went and looks great. I went to a village called Agua Fria way up the mountain, we ended up above the evergreen line up in coffee land. I told Nate that the "road" we were on would be a great dirt bike path. NUTS! These people were so appreciative and we found out that if we don't come to see them the nearest clinic is at the botom of the mountain which if you don't own a car and walk everywhere means hours of traveling. We saw a 90 year old man all the way to a newborn baby with a 14 yr. old mom.

The local school brought it's 50 students to see us to get worm medicine and vitamins. It seems unbelievable that we had to worm people but if you saw there water supply and living quarters you'd understand.

On Thursday we all went to our last village. We only saw 80 people that day but that gave us a chance to play frisbee and ball with the kids. The scenary was breathtaking! That afternoon we worked on our fence again and by the time we were done Dr. Daining and Dr. Dale Vander Broek, nurses and a few others were digging fence post holes and hammering away. That was what was great this past week, we made an awesome team. Whether we were doing medical stuff, construction or hanging out we all got along so well and we made friends for life.

Friday was our free day and we headed to Valley of the Angels to do some awesome shopping and eat at a "steakhouse". Imagine a Honduras Galena Illinois. My goal was to buy a really cool engraved wood rosewood box but after packing found myself out of room. :-( Next year it's mine!

Yes we're hoping to head back next Feb., Katelyn asked already on the way home and Curt found that Doctors are really fun and he does have something in common with them. I loved the medical aspect of this trip, we had a surgery team with us this time too and I would've been able to watch a surgery but things got a bit tense so I passed. I did watch a little bit of a hernia surgery through the window but next time, I'm in there!

Thanks for everyones' support and prayers, they were felt by everyone, we experienced a lot of "God moments" and knowing you were all here praying for us was felt. We'd love to share or pictures and stories with you if you'd like! :-)

Nate & Kate

2009-02-06T14:36:00.000-08:00

Katelyn wanted to know where they were on my blog so I'll give you an update on what they're up to...

Economic hard times has hit Nate lately. Finding himself without a job right at the moment has made him Curt & my slave. I'm kind of liking hard times. :-) Vehicles are being kept clean, all my snow is being shoveled and pretty much anything else I ask gets done by the end of the day.

He's been finding time to ride his 4 wheeler quite a bit and for some reason thought it would be fun to turn a riding lawn mower into a racing vehicle. I think he's been watching CMT's redneck shows a bit too much. I'll let you know when he's become a professional mower racer!

Katelyn

What can I say about Katelyn..

14,000 text msgs, never home, Dutch Diva, lives as if economic times are not hard!

Let me explain. :-)

Her cell phone is constantly attached to her hand, I didn't even know it was physically possible to text that many times in one month but Katelyn has shown me it is. We told her to knock it off and we went over on our talking minutes soooo back to texting she went.

She has embraced high school life, involved in show choir or Dutch Divas (which is really cool and if you can watch a competition some time I recommend it!) sports, concerts and anything else she can get involved in or go to.

Which brings me to spending money, unfortunately being involved requires money which she doesn't have so my checkbook gets opened. Anybody need a babysitter??? :-)

She's a good kid, I'm not seriously complaining! Here she is in her Show Choir costume.

Cruisin

2009-02-06T06:48:00.000-08:00

Curt and I just got back from an awesome cruise with Becky & Dave a couple of weeks ago. It was a little tough leaving 80 degree weather and landing in DM w/ 4 in. of snow and COLD!

This is our 4th cruise and decided to cruise with Holland America on an Eastern Caribbean route this time. Our first port of Grand Turk was awesome! This small island of approx. 6 miles of land was hit by a hurricane last fall but unless you looked closely it was overly evident. Our excursion was swimming w/ sting rays and snorkeling. Becky being 5 months pregnant decided sitting in a lounge chair on the beach close to bathrooms would be the way she would spend the day but as our boat pulled up to our beach her plans went out the window as you can see by this picture of our beach. :-)

San Juan, Puerto Rico was our next stop and we were there from 10 AM-11 PM. Bacardi Rum Distillary was our first stop and it is now the boys' favorite place of all time. Curt discovered his new favorite drink the mojito and Dave LOVES that Becky is pregnant and can't drink. How and why did we discover this you ask....We had to wait an hour for tour and they felt bad for us so instead of two free drinks between the four of us we got 12 free drinks. Bacardi peach rum and coke, Bacardi coco rum and coke, Bacardi raz rum and coke, mojitos you get the idea! By 10 AM the boys were feeling fine. :-)

That afternoon I took the boys shopping while Becky sat w/ her swelling feet up and then we picked her up and went on a horse drawn carraige ride around Old San Juan. It was pretty cool to go around this city that is so full of history and cobblestone streets that date back hundreds of years. We can't even pave roads to last 10 years but these streets last hundreds. HMMM...

On to our next port, St Thomas. If you'd like to buy jewelry this is the place to go! Every other store for blocks is jewelry, the guys ran the other way. :-)

We visited a ocean park and beach here which was not a Sea World by any means but pretty neat. Our taxi ride to the park reminded me of our upcoming trip to Honduras and winding through the large hills or mountains. Our taxi was a F-250 truck with rows of seats in the bed w/ a canopy. Not sure how those drivers got in and out of some of our tight curves and turns but they were amazing. I told our driver that she needs to come back to Iowa and teach drivers ed.

Relaxing on a day at sea followed this whirl wind of ports. We prett much ate, played UNO, ate, played UNO some more, let's see ate again, slept on a lounge chair on the Lido deck and then went to the captain's dinner and ate lobster tail, steak and baked alaska. YUMMMMY

One last port, Half Moon Cay, Holland America's private island. It was a little chilly, 65-70 dgrees and cloudy when we docked and I hate to admit I was whiney about it but gosh darn it I wanted a great tan and this was my last day! By 10 Am it was 85 and sunny and I had found my position... On a lounge chair baking myself for the next 6 hours.:-)