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

kayaking: our new sport

Josh surprised us with kayaks one day and we absolutely love them. 

Here are a few of our adventures. 

Praise You In This Storm - Casting Crowns

With all that is going on lately whether it is tornado's in our own lives or in our own town, God is here with us. To know that is where we can get our comfort from.

 I wanted to share this song in hopes it will comfort you all who are weary and need encouragement.

Rainbow and Sherman=BFF

Our lovely cat Rainbow and our new hamster Sherman have fast become BFFs. Last night we noticed the cat was sitting by Shermans cage and Sherman was licking her fur, I am not kidding! It was cute, but also kind of strange Rainbow was letting Sherman do this. Not long after my oldest took Sherman out to hold him, after he was done he made sure he shut the cage. Then a little while longer we all went to bed.

This morning I started making breakfast and went over by Shermans cage quick and noticed his door was wide open, O My! Where is the hamster, we frantically looked and looked again in the cage, he was not there. So then we started looking everywhere, under furniture, behind bookshelves, everywhere. There was no sign of him, we thought for a minute, maybe the cat did something to him? After about an hour of searching, it came to me, the cat was playing in our room just after we went to bed and running around and sniffing in our closet, hmm. So I told the boys, go check in my closet. My youngest started looking and wouldn't ya know he yelled, I saw Sherman, I saw him. I thought, no way. Here he was sleeping in the corner of our closet.

So what I think happened, was the cat decided Sherman was being so nice, he let Sherman out to play. Sherman probably followed Rainbow everywhere and ended up in the closet. I think they had a good time playing all night. Now they are both fast asleep.

Ancestry

I have been researching my ancestry on Ancestry.com, it is so interesting when I find clues to my ancestors. So far I found that my great-great grandma and grandpa on my dads side were from Palmero, Sicily, which is so cool. And that most of my other ancestors were from Germany, Russia, Italy and even France. Wow! I believe my great-great grandfather was born in France, I even found a vineyard in France with a last name very similar to my maiden name. Also, my 2nd cousin from my grandma on my moms side emailed me this: James
Alexander Dunn Married Jane de La Cossitt. If you follow her line, which is in my tree, the Cossits came from France and were nobility and lived in a castle.
You can look up the Castle -- Chateau de Brisse. They were Counts, but
I did not find any Kings. 

You are descended from William Bradford, Governor, of Plymouth Colony.
He came over on the Mayflower in 1620. 

Isn't that just neat, she has given me alot of information and I am so thankful she is sharing this with me. 

It has been so fun finding out all this history and even connecting with relatives I didn't know even existed.

There still are some pieces of the puzzle missing on my great grandpas side of the family, like what their names were. I just contacted a relative who may know more about them, so I am hoping to hear back from them.
Now I need to find pictures of these people and some more history about them and that would be great and I feel my research would be complete. My goal is to put all of this together then I can share this with my boys.

Here is a picture of the Chateau de Brissac, my great grandfather X3 wifes great grandfather X5?  lived here. So cool!!!!!!! He was a count during  the reign of King Francis I.

I am still researching so if I find more to share I will!!

Doggie friends

 We all had a stomach bug the week prior to Christmas so it really did not feel like Christmas around here this year. That whole stomach bug threw us off.
The week after Christmas was lots of fun getting together with friends and family.

So let me explain the dog pictures, everywhere I have been going lately there is a dog and I become friends with them. I love meeting new animal friends and I definitely have done plenty of that lately.

 Here is my friends dog, she was a lovely dog and she quickly became my buddy. :)

This dog came out quickly to us while we were ice fishing from one of the houses on land. He knew commands and stayed with us almost the whole time. I pet him a bit and talked to him, not to long and he was following me everywhere. At one point he even laid by my feet while I was fishing. Such a sweetheart.

Family time! 

All the cousins, except two that were napping. We had a great time seeing everyone this year!

My moms birthday was a smaller group this year, but we all enjoyed spending time together. After time at her house, everyone went to Christmas Eve service. It was nice to have family join us. 

This was my dads birthday celebration. It was a wonderful evening and we had breakfast for supper. Josh and I have never made a meal for that many people (17), so it was a good experience. 

Just some Christmas activities at home. Like making sugar cookies and playing the old school Battleship that Aunt T. gave us. We love that game and really did play at least 15 times on Christmas day!

I hope you all had a Merry Christmas and have a wonderful New Year!!

A day of embroidering

My grandma Severson would be proud, I kept saying to myself this past weekend as the boys and I found ourselves inside most of the weekend because of the weather. So I got my grandmas old tin of embroidery thread out (she had hundreds of colors in this tin), and I was so excited when my oldest was actually enjoying this craft. We made 4 embroidery patterns that day, my oldest did two and I did two. It was so fun to see how well he had done. My youngest helped too, but he was not enjoying it as much as my oldest.

As you can see we were busy embroidering that day.

My house has projects of two quilts and embroidering projects all over, it is a busy Christmas sewing/embroidery season. 

My oldest first embroidery pattern, a fish!

My first embroidery pattern!

Working on a gift during school reading time. 

My youngest helped with these tree ornaments.

I have really enjoyed doing embroidery so far and I am so happy my boys have too, It makes me glad to know when they get older they will know how to sew up a hole in their sock. :)

We are working on more patterns, I will show them when we are finished.


The boys and I are especially thankful for daddy's one year of being sober, we celebrated by going out to eat with the people that helped us out through that time. It has been touching to see what God can do. 

We are wishing you a Merry Christmas!!

Hands on activities

 We have been busy doing hands on activities around here, which the boys love. Around Halloween we made homeade root beer with dry ice and the process was pretty neat. The root beer tasted great, but I got the clear root beer extract, oops.... It was still really good.

We also made homemade snowflakes to put on the windows and some of them my oldest cut out without a pattern, pretty creative,

 For math one day I got out the mini marshmallows and toothpicks to create geometrical shapes.

This was fun for the boys, I put whip cream on a baking sheet and had them write sight words that I would say. So they enjoyed eating the whip cream afterwards.

Matching sight words with string. Messy, but fun for awhile. 

I am always looking for hands on activities, because my boys learn more with them most of the time. I got some of these ideas from a you tube channel I watch and the lady also homeschools. I also get alot of my ideas on Pinterest.