End of 2017 letter

We have had a very cold week here, which was kind of a bummer. We wanted to go skiing, sliding with some friends while the boys had a week off of school, but with the cold weather that did not work out. 

We are hoping to go ice fishing soon, so hopefully it will warm up a bit.

This year really went by fast, we had a wonderful summer camping at the campground and a couple other campgrounds around here. We really enjoyed camping this summer as the boys are older and they can help more. 

Joshs business also really picked up this year. Waters Edge Taxidermy is his business name, pretty proud of him. He does European mounts and fish, for now, he is practicing to do fur-bearing animals. He is busy every day and he may even teach me some of the skinning so I can help since he has gotten so busy. 

I am working at the school where the boys go as a substitute aide, I really enjoy working with kids. It truly is the best job, I really think I should of gone to school to be a teacher. 

The boys are getting older, my oldest still likes building legos, and now moving on to building things with wood. He could be outside for hours building snow forts. My youngest likes to try dude perfect tricks all day. He loves Dude perfect and comes up with the craziest dude perfect trick shots. Like off the piano side shot, lol. He stood on the piano and tried to make a basketball shot (we got him a Dude Perfect basketball hoop for Christmas). He is also really picking up on his reading, so excited about that. I really hope one day I will see both my boys lost in a good chapter book, its coming someday! 

This winter we have all been enjoying puzzles, we went to Grumpy and Grandmas one day and got hooked, haha.

In 2018- we are getting a puppy. Joshs aunt has Shih Tzus, and her dog had pups, I told her we only wanted one if she had a male and her dog had 3 girls and 1 male, wow it was meant to be! We are thinking about naming him Charlie Bear, that was decided as a family. 

Well we hope you all have a wonderful 2018 and that Gods peace will be with you all!

Here is a scripture verse that has been one of my favorites this year-

   

 Enjoy some pics from 2017- 

Josh and I cutting up venison. 

Angel with her pups. Ours hasthe most spots. 

Two love birds, the mommy and daddy to our pup! This is the sweetest picture to me. As soon as Angel was done feeding the pups she came out to the living room and her mate was waiting for her and instantly began licking her face, the sweetest doggy moment ever!

Doing puzzles.

Helping daddy build.

Surprise bday party for Josh!

Lots of kayaking!

Cousins at the campground.

Family pic at campground

Aunt T and her new red bike!

Here is some of Joshs work-

An elk skull Josh had to do for someone. (This was before he finished it)

A European mount he did.

A crappie he did for someone.

Happy new year everyone!!

Snow!

We have snow, I do love snow for Christmas! 

Our beautiful woods behind us and also my friends Mr. and Mrs. Cardinal, love birds. 

Pretty soon we can go cross country skiing and my youngest would say snowboarding of course!!

Visiting pen pals on Halloween

I really appreciate my oldest sons teacher, she has her class every year pick a pen pal from a nursing home and on Halloween they go to visit their pen pal. 

I have always had a passion for visiting people in the nursing home and last year when we homeschooled every month we would go and do crafts at the nursing home. So I was so happy when in public school my oldest still gets to participate in the nursing home somehow.
I even got to ride the bus with him. :)

He was a werewolf this year for Halloween. 

His pen pal was 94 years old and she was a very sweet lady. She talked about when she was younger and how deep the snow would get and that her dad was a Mayor. 

He will continue to write her and we will visit her again in the spring. 

The boys Aunt is having her first baby hopefully this week, we are so excited!! We are praying and anxiously waiting!

Aunt Becky 

End of summer

So we had a wonderful time camping this summer. We went to 2 state parks and the rest of our time camping was spent at the Campground where Joshs grandparents are.

The pictures are the last state park we camped at, Brunet Island, some friends of ours suggested it to us and we loved it. Great fishing, great river and wonderful camp sites. It was so nice to camp right on the river.

Now we have all our camping stuff put away and are ready for fall.

The boys caught alot of Bass.

Kayaking, isn't it beautiful!

 Getting ready to leave.

Saying goodbye

 And then the following week the boys started school.

Daddy took them to their first day!



Im happy in the fall we have such beautiful places to visit.
Rusk county, Blue hills

The chair lift rides at the Blue hills were so fun and beautiful!!

Now  we have to visit the pumpkin patch and have some caramel apples, yum. 

A note on my youngest at school-

Thanks so much for all the lovely posts on FB and emails. It was such a hard couple of weeks for him, thankfully he is doing much better and does not cry anymore. He is trying half days right now and that helps, he does part of the day at school and the rest through the virtual school in our district. 

Breaking my heart

This year we have decided to send our kids to public school again. This was a bit of a hard decision, but at the time I made it I felt that we had to do it this way for this year. The boys and I enjoyed homeschooling and them being home all the time was hard, but we enjoyed our time together. After our homeschool was done this spring I felt like this was something I wanted to keep doing, but maybe try something new, like going through the public school online or Classical Conversations, which I was quite sure we would do one of those choices. Then some things changed that and I decided to send them to public school.

And now two weeks into public school my youngest is breaking my heart, he is wanting me to come to school for lunch and recess and asking why I can't stay longer or be in school all the time, which I am a sub so I will be there sometimes but not all the time. He doesn't like going, he is crying every morning when I drop him off. Saying school is too long and he misses me. 

The teacher has told me he is behind, we never did the math they are teaching now and it is just alot different then homeschool. To be completely honest I know school is nothing like it used to be, but thinking more about it I do think they are expecting too much these days from our kids. 

The struggle is my kids are hard to teach at home, I love teaching and getting curriculum always made me so excited. But the boys would always have a hard time "working hard". They would do some of their work and then give me such a hard time to finish it, I would have to not do so much in a day just so they didn't get too frustrated and not do the work at all. I will say my oldest worked harder than his brother. And so he is doing ok in school right now. 

Its just really hard to see my youngest struggle every morning and cry. :( 

We pretty much decided to keep them in public for this year. Its so hard to know what is right, we have been praying about this and talking to friends.

A visit from Aunt T. summer 2017

My Aunt T. came to visit this summer and she even spent the night. It was a nice time with her. She got plenty of four-wheeler rides, got shown every animal around, and she even got to ride a bike. 

Aunt T. lovin every minute of it!

The boys showing her their frogs and turtles.

Aunt T.s new bike I found her at a local bike shop, it is a 1960s Shwinn and I knew she would love the red color. 

She enjoyed riding around the yard. 

Taking a break with Sadie.

My aunts and I went to Duluth for a day. It was very fun and I enjoyed the time with them. The first stop was in Superior at the Fairlawn  mansion, it was beautiful and neat to see the inside.

This was one of the many rooms in the mansion. 

Aunt T. trying to pet the birds in Duluth, haha. 

And to end with a random Llama from the fair, Josh said he looked so cool he wanted me to take a pic.

Camping and some more camping

Camping, O how we love camping and thankfully we have been doing quite a bit of it this summer.

Heading out to our first trip camping with Joshs family. 

Cousins playing games with great grandma.

My oldest the snake catcher. He must of caught at least 10 snakes that day.

 Our next trip Amnicon Falls.
We enjoyed out time here, but we did like Pattison State park better.

Went on a small trip to Lake superior since we were about 10 minutes away. 

Having a fire, one of our favorites of camping.

Daddy fishing. He didn't catch much....

Continued from Joshs family trip....

My oldest and granny playing trouble, they had such a good game grandma had to go buy her own trouble game. 

Grandparents with grandkids.

The whole camping family. 

Aunt Laurie bought the boys new shirts for camping. 

Fire and smore time!

Daddy making jiffy popcorn, yum!

Our last night before heading home.

KEEP CALM AND CAMP ON!

After we got home I knew the strawberry season was almost done, so the whole family got in the car and went strawberry picking, so much fun. This was the first time daddy could come with. These boys were a great help. 

Having a good time!

More from Amnicon falls. 

Memories were made! <3