Friends + Fair + Buffaloes = Fun and Chaos

We are so thankful for the friends and family that God has blessed us with! This past weekend we got to spend time with our dear friends, the Lindemanns. God blessed us when we lived in Iowa City by giving us these friends. They were some of the first people we met when we started attending our church there. We got to hang out the Iowa State Fair (a first for them!) and visit the Wildlife Refuge in Prairie City. This included watching the herd of buffalo cross the road right in front of and behind us. It was pretty cool!

Oh, and Madelyn had her six month birthday while they were here!

Here's our cutie, all dressed up to go to Daddy's 10 year class reunion on her six month birthday!

She's sitting up pretty well these days!

I'm six months old!

This was our poor attempt at a picture of all the kiddos with Madelyn's cake. As you can tell, it didn't go so well! Poor Greta is trying to keep Madelyn under control, Grace has Elias, Elias and Madelyn are crying at each other, and Zeke has watch over the cake! We tried a few more pictures, but it all went downhill from here!

Daddy and Madelyn at the prairie museum. Look at her little sprout on her head!

This is a better picture of four of the five kiddos. Elias was sleeping!

Watching baby chicks hatch at the state fair. They also got to see twin lambs being born. I think they were pretty impressed!

Petting the calves

Greta's showing off the girls' accommodations for the night!

We loved having them visit!

Lake Rathbun and Cereal?

A couple of weeks ago we got to spend the weekend at Lake Rathbun with our friends Dan, Sarah, and Rebecca; Scott; and Andy and Carol. We had great weather (although hot) and l0ts of time on the water. I even got to see my friend Brett, whom I haven't seen in a LONG time, and he just happened to be at Rathbun too!

I should have taken more pictures, but this is one of our family. Notice we have bloomers on Mady's head, since I could not find her hat for the life of me! They're pretty stylish, don't you think?!

We can home from Rathbun and decided it was time to try some cereal for Madelyn.

Look how excited she is! She was all squeals and giggles!

That squealing and giggling quickly turned into this:

Not so excited anymore!

She's a little happier here. We added some avocado into the cereal.

She's our pretty girl, even with cereal/avocado mush all over!

She's doing a little better with the eating every day, but it's a slow process. She's not really sure what she thinks of it, and spits most of it out. She does seem to like bananas, but isn't so sure about peas or avocados or plain cereal.

Catching Up

I'm terrible about keeping up with this thing these days! It seems like we've been very busy, and I'm hoping once the summer is over, things will slow down a bit!

Madelyn got to visit her Great Grandpa and Grandma Van Zee. Here are some pictures of her with them.

Four generations of Van Zees

This is Madelyn with me at our first trip to the swimming pool. She loved it and attracted a lot of attention from other girls at the pool (little girls ages 7 or 8 seemed to just love her!)

Crashed in Daddy's arms

Family

This past weekend we went to my parents to spend some time with the Harms side of the family. My cousin and his wife just had a baby and my aunt from Kansas came to meet the babies. We had a great time!

The whole family

Opa and Oma with Brayden and Madelyn

Aunt Janice and Mady

Parties, Boating, Races

Our computer decided to act up a few weeks ago, so we've been trying to get it to cooperate with us again! We finally have it kind of working, so I figured I better get caught up!

A couple of weeks ago we got to spend the weekend in Iowa City visiting friends. Our good friend Steve finished his PhD, so his family had a party for him that we attended. It was great to see them!

Terryn and I with Elias and Madelyn

Aunt Katie and Madelyn

We also had some friends in Newton over one night, and they have a little girl, Loren, who is just a couple of weeks older than Mady. This is them "playing" together!

Loren and Mady also got to hang out for a while this past week while their daddies played softball. They were a riot! They were baby screaming back and forth to each other, playing with each other's feet, etc. It was so funny!

Mady in her life jacket!

My sister got tickets to one of the races in Newton a few weeks ago, so my sister, brother, and Dad went to the race on Saturday. On Sunday my sister, brother, and I went to the race. It was fun...definitely better than I thought it would be!

Happy 4th of July

We had a great weekend celebrating the 4th of July. Eric had the weekend off, which was a nice treat. I worked in Iowa City on Saturday, so Eric and Madelyn spent some time with Eric's family and got to go to Madelyn's first fireworks.

Sunday we had some friends over for a barbeque and were hoping to see fireworks, but they were rained out.

Monday we spent the day at my parents and had lunch with my family and grandparents.

Our family. Aren't we patriotic?!

Madelyn and Opa

Madelyn and Mommy

Madelyn and Daddy

Isn't she so cute in her dress? Thanks Aunt Amanda!

Touring Newton

Madelyn and I have been taking lots of walks around Newton lately. She really seems to enjoy being outside and it's good to get out of the house and out and about. Here are a couple of recent pictures.

Enjoying the outdoors

Reaching for her giraffe.