June 17 & 18

Of these days, my memory begins to fail. This is what happens when one's husband takes one's camera to the nation's capital, as if anything there could be more interesting! I am very grateful that Mom or Lois' camera was usually handy. On Wednesday, Uncle Rod left for home (photo op!) and Dad and Mom played a mad game of Quiddler. I think this is the day when we spent the afternoon hanging out at Lois'. The kids played, Mom and Lois did crafty sewing stuff for the nursery, and Dana and I worked on our laptaps preparing for Sunday School. I made sure no leftover cheese dip went to waste. I'm pretty sure this is also the day Dana and I dumped my boys on Mom right after supper and went Father's Day shopping all evening. Truly all evening...Meijers is open 24 hours! It was a great deal of fun, and our men were rather spiffily outfitted come Sunday. However, I must note, that of the many pairs of plaid shorts flung upon the breakfast table, Calvin's favorites were the ones I gave Dad. Aaaah!

Thursday...hmm, no idea. I think we spent the day at home. I took the boys briefly to Renita's in the afternoon, and then Thomas and I went to the SE church picnic, which I greatly enjoyed. John went over to Evan's, where I later joined him. Initially, he intended to sleep over, but once I came, he got rather shy. Eventually, two little boys were bawling, one because his cousin wasn't sleeping over and one because he felt so bad he was making his cousin cry. I ended up sleeping on the couch so John would stay. This turned out to be less than successful, with John sneaking down around midnight to make sure I had really stayed. Shortly thereafter a thunderstorm to end all thunderstorms started, keeping my room fully lit for many hours. Then little people started running downstairs...John tried to sleep with me firstand then made so much noise on the leather recliner I made him switch; I finally fell asleep at 5, to wake up at 6 to sneak home so Thomas could jump on me at 6:55. I was SOOOOOOOO tired!

June 16 - Mom Enforces Exercise

I kind of thought sleeping in til noon would be the order once Calvin was gone, but alas, 'twas not to be. Before I was thru my first cup of coffee, Mom had packed up a picnic lunch, and off we went on a nature walk. This is a really cool nature preserve along the Grand River hiden just off...Filmore? We started out tiptoeing through the poison ivy while dodging the mosquitoes in the wooded area along the river. Notice Mom dashing away from a particularly big one. Many touching photos of this leg of our journey cannot be published because someone did not appreciate rear shots of her maternity pants. Then Dana led us along the edge of a grassy pheasant meadow before heading up a steep hill into a high range of trees. Note Lois demonstrating to the proper way to use a walking stick to get up a hill. Annika was not all that impressed with hers and later improvised on the steepest hill. John and Evan jabbered the whole way, and Thomas raced down every hill at breakneck speed which freaked me out a little. He only wiped out on the very last one however. We ended back at the playground near a pond where Mom finally let us eat. It was so much fun!!!!! After that we chilled (literally) in Lois' pool before heading home.

June 15 - Calvin leaves for Washington DC

I have little memory of Monday, but it was a HUGE day for Calvin and the guys. I dropped him off around 1 in the afternoon at Kuip's and you have never seen four guys more ready to go than these four. I was pretty excited for them, and even happy to see Calvin leave, since he had already been there in his head for months and months :). This picture was taken by Calvin's boss' sister Sandy when she picked them up at Reagan Airport. They got to stay at her house and she turned out to be an amazing help to them. As you can see, leaving their wives and children behind was very difficult for them, ha ha ha! I promise to dedicate several posts to their trip, once we get all the other guys' pics and I compile them for Calvin. It was a pretty amazing trip. They pretty much saw everything in DC in just four days!!

June 12 & 13 - Kuip's Graduation

Oops. I thought I was missing something! All of Kuip's graduation photos were in separate files for making CDs to mail! The whole reason we came to MI when we did was so Calvin could go to John Kuiper's graduation from nursing school at Baker College. On Friday night, Calvin, Jay Kalsbeek and Keven Moelker went to the actual graduation...Most of those photos are blurry seas of purple. On Saturday after visiting Grandma Schellenboom, Calvin went with Brad to tour his current humongous engineering project for the City of Muskegan. I met them just in time (literally - I can't count stop lights and nearly ended up in the next town) to attend John's pinning ceremony, which most of John's family attended as well. It's a pretty personal ceremony, where they get pinned by their profs, watch a video showing their experiences and say the nurse's pledge, etc. It was pretty apparent that Kuip was an extremely popular fellow in his class, as well as one of only two guys in the whole program that made it. GO KUIP! Afterwards they had cake in the lobby, and I made small talk with one of his professors only to find out later it was the evil professor who hated male nurses - oops! I am pretty sure I saw Liam (aka mini-John) eat three pieces of cake. After that we went to John and Renita's home for his open house, where Thomas played cars and John fished pretty much the whole night in the pond out back. Renita's parents came down too, so that was neat to see them again!

June 14 - Kuiper Coffee @ Dad & Mom's

On Sunday Mom rolled out an amazing assortment of desserts, including a chocolate and peanut butter cheese cake loaf that was almost illegal, it was soooooo good! We sat in the back while the kids played and a very sprite-like Auntie Dana took pics of all of the kids running around. I'm not sure how this happened, but I have some cuuuute nieces and nephews!!! Check out Oliver! Uncle Rod was staying at Dad and Mom's too (for Synod) so we really enjoyed our time with him. Much coffee was inhaled and Lois and Jason stayed for Sunday dinner (that's Annika smashing the buns). We heard Rev. Richard Smit at SE in the morning, which was fun because he went to school with Calvin. It was the first time ever Calvin wasn't trying to corral me into the van - he was one of the last ones talking! And at night we went to Grace for the first time other and enjoyed hearing Dad for the first time in awhile.

June 13

On Saturday we drove over to Grandma Schellenboom's off of Cottonwood in Jenison. After visiting awhile in her apartment, she took the boys on their annual walk to go feed the goldfish. We found out the black fish on the opposite side are actually a whole lot more fun to feed - they actually thrash the water and swim like lightning to get the bread - John was really giggling. Afterwards, Grandma offered John a ride on her walker and of course, Thomas wanted in also. She zipped them around the flagpole - twice! It is pretty amazing, how healthy and active Grandma is in her early nineties! It was the first visit where it didn't seem so odd that Grandpa wasn't there...

June 11

Our day started off a little shaky when Thomas started throwing up at breakfast. He was down for most of the day, so I stuck close and did a lot of ironing. I never did get to dance down the aisles of Meijers with Mom! In the evening, Jason and Lois threw a pool party at their new house to welcome us to MI. The weather was horrible, but it was wonderful to be together. We are so happy for Jason and Lois, the house is cute and huge, the plot is deep with beautiful trees, and they have a fabulous shop where Jay can spray a lot of his trim jobs. Lois had fun showing me where she had transplanted all her perenials. And Lois and Lynn both made cheese dip...how could it get any better?!!