Airplane and Car Show

The Kenosha airport held an airplane and car show a few weeks ago.  Jon took the boys along with our neighbors and their 3 year old son Matthew.  I of course had to work :(  Jon said it was really neat.  They got to look at all the airplanes up close and see some cool cars.  They had some airplanes taking off and landing near by.  I guess they also got to walk through the hangars.  Jackson thought it was pretty cool.  Here are my favorites of the pictures Jon took. 

Jackson and Matthew

Jackson looking in with the help of Mike!

Garden Update

Our garden is coming along quite nicely considering the drought conditions we've been having.  We have already gotten 6-7 green peppers, lot's of cherry tomatoes, a zucchini the size of my arm (no joke!), green beans and a tomato.  It's been fun going out there to see the progress and pick our veggies. Jack loves it and he likes the cherry tomatoes the best.  Many are gone by the time we get home!
Here's some updated photos.  I'm going to have tons of tomatoes soon so I'm going to be busy canning salsa shortly.

The pickings from the latest trip to the garden.  This picture does not do that zucchini justice!  It literally is the size of my forearm!  

Lemonade Stand

Lemonade Stand!

Jack has wanted to do a lemonade stand this summer so we put it on our bucket list.  We decided to do a yard sale since we had so much junk to get rid of!  I thought it would be a perfect time to have him do a lemonade stand.  Grandma made the cute little signs for him.  And some how we went from having just a lemonade stand to also involving cookies.  That was clearly Jon's idea in hopes there would be leftovers.  It was also extremely hot so he sold waters as well.  He was quite the salesman!  Every person that came up he said "Would you like to buy a cookie or some lemonade?"   It was so cute!  His cuteness must have won over some people since he made almost $18 and we sold it all for 50 cents!

We also had a pretty good turn out for our yard sale and all in all I'm glad that we did it!  Plus the house feels roomier now with out all that stuff around that we didn't need.  I will most likely do this again next year.

Side note:  Please forgive any misspellings or grammar mistakes.  I'm writing this in a causal setting so I'm assuming no one cares, except of course my husband who pointed out all of my typos!  So here's my disclaimer to everyone, this blog will not be perfect!  I will not proof read since I will have plenty of that to do this fall when I start back up with Grad School.  Thanks for understanding! :)

#4 & #5

First I just want to apologize for taking so long to get my next posts out.  It's been crazy at work lately and I come home so tired that I usually fall asleep right after I put the boys to bed!  We've been keeping very busy lately though with lots of new fun things.  Mostly indoor activities since it's been way to hot to do anything else these days.  Here's our latest bucket list adventures:

#4-Go to the rodeo!

We traveled back home over Father's Day weekend and took Jack to the Stanley Rodeo Days.  It was really exciting.  My sister, Matt, Michael and Carter joined us as well as my dad.  Grandma stayed home with Bentley and got some snuggle time with him.  It was a pretty good rodeo.  I was curious how Jack would do but he really seemed to enjoy it.  He asked a lot of questions and thought the animals were neat.  He also got a kick out of the rodeo clown!

I also forgot to mention, the only thing Jon wanted for Father's Day this year was to go home to the rodeo to get the famous Stanley JC's cheese curds!  They are to die for and we made sure that we got them on numerous occasions!  YUMMM!

#5-Bowling

We've been wanting to take Jack bowling for quite some time.  So I was driving by our bowling alley, which is right down the road, in May and there was a sign that said kids bowl free all summer!  So I thought, well now's the time!  It's actually a great deal.  You pay $25 for 4 adults, and any amount of kids.  Those 4 adults and kids bowl free all summer through September 30!  You can't beat that.  You go one time and it's paid for believe it or not.  Bowling is not cheap!  You just have to pay for shoes but Jon and I have shoes.  Jack doesn't really need any but he gets a kick out of them so we pay the $2.50, and he looks adorable in them!  You get 2 free games everyday.  We have taken him twice so far and it's great because 2 games is just enough.  He's usually getting tired near the end anyway.  If we don't even bowl all the games we don't have to feel bad since we aren't paying.  He really enjoyed it and he can't wait to go again.  Here's some pictures!

He was so proud of his orange ball!

Dad explained the importance of not sticking your hand in the tunnel and to be careful not to get your fingers pinched.

Ready, Set, Roll!

And we wait!  Sometimes he got impatient waiting for his ball to reach the end.

High fiving with Mom for a job well done.

This is what Bentley though of bowling at first!

Then he woke up and was his happy laid back self.

Final scores!  As you can see none of us did that well!  Jon blamed it on the bumpers since he has a pretty wicked curve ball that he couldn't get going since it kept hitting them.  I don't really have an excuse although I did get better the second game and did much better the second time we went.  Maybe by the end of the summer I'll break 150!  Ha!


More to come soon!  Take care,
Caitlen

#3-Attend a Festival

The Kite Festival in Kenosha is one of our favorite things to do at the beginning of summer down by the lake.  Jon has taken Jack the last few years and I've always had to work, but this year I got to go.  It was so neat.  There's professional kite fliers, which I didn't even know existed, and they do kite routines set to music.  It's amazing and awesome at the same time!  Very cool to see.  They also have huge kites that they put into the air but unfortunately this years wind wasn't cut out for it so none of them got off the ground.  The kite send off is neat though.  At 12 noon they have everyone who brought a kite send it in the air.  It's really neat to see so many kites against the great scenery of the beautiful lakeshore.  This event is totally free which is another great plus.  One of the many reasons I love Kenosha, for it's lakeshore, and free festivals!  This year our good friends Brett and Bridget Heimstead joined us and we had so much fun with them.  Here are some pictures from our day.

Us under our new umbrella/tent.  So happy we go this.  We've used it a lot already.  I think we had at least 5 people stop and ask us where we got it!  Apparently it's a hot commodity!

Bentley and Bridget

This was one of the big ones they tried to get up in the air for quite some time before they gave up.  I was disappointed since I had never seen them before.  But there's always next year.

Brett, Bridget and my boys

Wearing  mommy's shades!

Brett and Jack. Cute picture minus the Cubs T-Shirt!  I'm really going to  need to talk with Bridget about her husbands choice in clothing!  :)  J/K, it was really fun to have them along!

Bucket List Item #2....The Library!

Another item on our list was a visit to the library.  We love going to our library.  They always have a lot going on for kids and best of all it's always FREE!  At the beginning of June, (yes I know I'm late getting this posted!), they had a kick off to summer event.  There was arts and crafts and fun activities for the kids.  But best of all, Curious George was there!  Jackson's favorite is still Curious George so we knew for sure that we were going to take the boys.  The day before we were supposed to go I had a schedule change at work so I wasn't able to go so Jon took the boys by himself.  We also had 3 other friends of ours go with their children and I guess everyone had a good time.  Jack was so excited to tell me about meeting Curious George.  Although he kept asking me where the man with the yellow hat was.  He was very concerned that Curious George was there all alone!

Jackson made some art projects there as well.  I believe this was supposed to be a book mark!

He gave George a high five!

I'm sure there will be more fun times at the library this summer!

Caitlen

Garden

This year we decided to try our hand at gardening.  It's been something I've wanted to do for quite some time but we have very little yard space.  A former teacher at Warren that Jon stays in touch with was generous enough to let us use his garden.  He's retired and his wife and him only plant a few tomato plants so they said we could have the rest of the garden.  We've learned a lot from them as well about gardening and what works best.  They've been a great help and we're very fortunate for their advice and garden space.  Jackson is so excited to see everything growing!  We planted tomatoes, cherry tomatoes (Jackson LOVES tomatoes!), peppers, zucchini, green beans, carrots, and Jon's pick, cantaloupe!  So far everything is doing great EXCEPT the cantaloupe.  We have heard it comes in late but Jon is getting sad.  I hope we see some of them vining soon for his sake!  Here are just a few picks of our garden.  We'll keep you posted on our successes and failures!  Should be interesting since we're rookies.

Jackson painted signs that Jon made so we could tell what veggies were in each row.

They turned out so cute and he had fun painting!