Surprise For Katie!

This evening a bunch of Katie's friends surprised her with a belated birthday party. On her birthday (August 9) she was "stuck" in Pella missing her friends. Tonight, Katie thought she was going to hang out with her friend, Kensey, but was very surprised to find all of these girls up in Kensey's room! Fun times!

Ear Piercing Excitement

Kamryn (with some encouragement from her mom and big sister) decided to take the plunge and get her ears pierced while we were at the mall doing some back to school shopping. She took the quick pain like a champ and has been very diligent about cleaning and caring for them. Here's a look!

Sand, Surf and Even Some Sunshine!

We had a good week settling back into our home. I got some work done in my classroom at school and Kamryn and Troy attended a VBS at a local church. Scott was blessed with a trip back to Visalia to take part in that all important Fantasy Football Draft and also the "Hairy Scott Golf Classic!" He's had a great time and is overwhelmed again by the love of our friends in that area. We are beginning to think more about school, but still have two weeks until we begin.

Yesterday we enjoyed a day by the lake with our friends, The Klavers. We attended an outdoor service at a church in Holland and then hung out for the rest of the day. It was a bit chilly, but the sun did appear toward the end of the day. The kids got lots of boat rides and tried out the knee board and tubes. It was a great day with good friends!

Indianapolis

After touring the midwest we made our way down to Indiana for Brian and Mallory's wedding. We had a great time there seeing dear California friends and Seminary friends. We had fun hanging out and catching up with the Borsts at the hotel. The wedding was beautiful and we are excited to get to experience Brian and Mallory's first year of marriage as we continue through Seminary together. I didn't get great pictures from the wedding, but here are a few.

This is at the reception. Don't have a clue who these people are!
Scott giving marriage advice?!

Trish did a great job leading a game that Mallory and Brian had to play. So fun!

Some of the Visalia crew-They were trying to look tough!

Ah! Panera for breakfast with Borsts. Back to the comforts of city life!!

We have returned home and found our house in great shape! There's lots to do, but we are so thankful to be home and ready to jump into another year!

Lots of Driving

We had some time this week after finishing in Pella so we were able to head up to Northwest Iowa and Southwest Minnesota to see some relatives. Cousins Joy and Dell and Uncle Gord and Aunt Judy graciously hosted us. Thanks so much! It was great to see many family members and also visit with Great Grandpa Rozeboom in the Vets' Home. (Katie even spent an afternoon playing Bingo there!) Here are some of our activities during our time there.

The kids swimming with Joy and the dogs across the pond. (Only later did they show us the pictures of the 37 pound carp that had recently been making its home in this same pond!)
Troy and all the hunting gear.
The kids had tons of fun on the four-wheelers!

Kamryn liked riding with cousin Dell because he would let her steer.

Crazy girls.

We also got to visit with Woudstras one evening. We caught up around the campfire at Joy and Dell's.

Making s'mores in the new firepit.

Troy loved hanging out with Jake and Jordan.

Their beautiful home outside Rock Valley.

The kids with Grandpa at the Veteran's Home in Luverne. It was great to see him!

Troy Masters the High Dive

The Pella pool has been an oasis for us this summer. It is a really great set-up for families. It has everything from the lazy river (me and Scott's favorite) to the kiddie pool with fountains and smaller slides to the diving boards. It's quite a large facility and the family membership is really inexpensive. Anyway, Troy "outgrew" the kiddie pool area after a few days and ventured over to the diving boards. He became a low-board pro and asked if he could go off the high dive. I told him not until the end of the summer. Well, we reached that point and he got to try it and of course loved it! Here are some shots of the daredevil. (Sorry, they are in reverse order!)

Happy Birthday, Katie!

Katie has now officially become a 15 year old! She is having a little different birthday this year as we are quite a ways away from family and friends. She still had many gifts to open this morning and has been enjoying checking facebook for many birthday greetings from family and friends.

This is also our last Sunday in Pella. We had a wonderful potluck and send-off after the morning service. They presented us with a very generous gift and some ladies from the church made special quilts for each of the kids. (They began making these after we arrived and finished all three in 10 weeks time!) We felt very blessed and recieved many words of thanks for Scott's work here this summer...Now off to vacation!

Katie and her birthday gifts.

The kids are displaying their quilts. They were pretty excited about them.

Library Pay-off and Other Excitement

So we have reached our last week in Pella. We have had a good summer, but miss many things about being at home-in our own house with our own stuff and our own friends (you get the picture!). Next week we are going to do some traveling around the midwest-Iowa and Minnesota. We will get to see cousins, aunts, uncles and Great Grandpa. We also hope to catch up with some old friends. Then we will make our way down to Indianapolis to Brian and Mallory's wedding next weekend. We are looking forward to seeing many California and Michigan friends there too. Anyway, we are closing up the Pella chapter and Scott's last internship (!) and are ready to head into another school year and last year of Seminary!

Katie got creative with some sidewalk chalk today. Made for a nice photo op.
Hey! Katie won 25 "Pella" bucks from the library! Pella bucks must be spent in Pella. We spent all morning walking in and out of stores downtown trying to decide how she wanted to spend it. Thankfully they have a pretty nice Christian bookstore that had some things. All the extra time she had to spend reading paid off!
This is how I usually found Troy each morning. He would wake up early and since there were no channels on the tv for him to watch, he got to play Mario Kart.

We will always remember the vegetables in Iowa! Our neighbors are gone for two weeks, so they asked us to keep an eye on their garden and to help ourselves to whatever we wanted. The tomatoes are plentiful right now. The kids enjoy going over and trying to find more each day. We can't always keep up on eating them all though! We were also blessed with many people from the church dropping vegetables from their gardens by our house. Sometimes we even came home and found them (the vegetables) setting on the kitchen counter!

Goofy kids.