Wisconsin Weekend

We enjoyed a great Independence Day weekend with family in the north woods of Wisconsin! It was fun to have everyone together, although it was NUTS having 15 people in a 1 1/2 bathroom house. Plus, there were 4 children under the age of 3, which made it an exciting place to be! There was always someone napping and (nearly) always someone crying!

The big "kids" enjoyed fishing, swimming, catching some sun, taking walks, tubing, and sitting by the fire. Or in Joe's case, playing pyromaniac ;) Regardless, there was a lot to do! It was especially fun to have our nephew, Zack - who lives in Arizona - with us for the weekend. We hadn't seen him since our wedding 2 years ago! Here he is enjoying some bonding time with the fishing worms, which he started to name before sending them to their death =P You'll notice that he has some awesome "sleeves" made from fake tattoos. After spending some time in the sun, he and Cade both had the tattoo shapes tanned onto their skin and the tattoos were all gone!

One afternoon, Jen, DeAnna, and I took the babies for a walk. It is so fun to have them all together. The only thing that could be better is if Roxy and baby Abigail were with us! Noah is loving his little car, which was a birthday present. He spent much of the walk with his head turned in this really uncomfortable looking way so that he could watch the wheels spin. Dylan just sat in a daze, enjoying the view. And Julia sat in exactly the same pose as in this picture until she fell asleep with her little mouth open, drool dribbling out.

One thing that I always love about being up north is actually "living" with my family. We get to see them pretty regularly, but there's nothing like eating 3 meals a day together and hanging out in your PJs to really hang out. It was great to see our oldest nephew, Luke, in action as a big brother. We decided that he has improved with age since Caden was born. He's like Dylan's 3rd parent ;) It was fun to see MaKayla and Noah, who we won't be seeing as often now that they've moved to Appleton, WI. Unfortunately, I didn't get any good pictures of Caden over the weekend, but here are some more pix from the trip: