España!!!!!

We were SO excited when Spain won the World Cup!!!  It was so fun to watch them play through the tournament.  They played beautifully!

Happy Birthday, Girls!

 The kitties turn 6 this week! They're up to their usual mischief and mayhem...and napping.

Hallway Memories

 For the last 7 years I've been adding tiles along our hallway of family pictures and memories.  We recently had a bunch of repairs done in our home that required painting.  I went on a painting binge.  Once one wall looks nice the rest look dingy.  It's a thing.  It's also hard to stop.  Anyway, I ended up taking down the tiles to paint the hallway.  Before I did that I took one last picture of our memory hallway.

Family Pictures

With Little Man leaving for college I felt a deadline for family pictures.  We haven't had family pictures taken since the week everything shut down for Covid, so it felt long overdue.  Jamie Peterson took our pictures on their land.  It was so beautiful and the mosquitoes really loved us!

Little Guy was not thrilled with having to take pictures, so his outtakes were the most amusing.  When asked to raise his eyebrows he went a bit above and beyond. 

No one will ever accuse him of not having a personality. The last photo is after she asked everyone to show how they felt about family pictures.  Don't worry - I'm sure it'll be a couple more years before they're tortured again.

World's Largest Pocketknife

 We've seen the spoon in Minneapolis, the fork in Springfield, so of course, I had to find the knife.  Technically speaking it's a pocketknife, but I'm 100% counting it toward my cutlery set.  One can argue that it's not fitting in anyone's pocket, but we'll leave that philosophical discussion for another day.  My husband thinks I'm ridiculous for adding 45 more minutes on our already 15 hour drive home to see it, but he's a good sport, so we went anyway.

In the Mountains

After the reunion we headed northeast to West Jefferson, North Carolina to see a dear friend from our time in Ohio.  It is very remote.  The GPS stopped working for a while right until we got to her home.  It is absolutely gorgeous and so serene where she lives.  It's a little slice of quiet heaven.  We went into the most adorable, small town for ice cream.  

It started raining as we drove up to the high point on Mount Jefferson.  It's pretty cool how you can see the weather sweep in through the valley.

We had a wonderful time with Ines & Yaneth.  We watched the World Cup, roasted S-mores, picked wild blackberries along their lane, and had a wonderful time being together.  

The time went by way too quickly!

Stuetz Reunion

 We had a great time exploring the Smokies and watching the World Cup together!  Grandma shared her experiences of her mission in Chile with the grand-kids. We got to celebrate Baby Kent and Grandma's birthday as well. 

All the grand-kids by age.  We're just missing the oldest.  Mel is on a mission in Puerto Rico.

Another reunion in the books!