Gunnar's first day back at school!!

Gunnar is now in all day 4 year old preschool. This differs from last years all day 3 year old preschool in that now he is 4!! LOL. He is also in the Monkey Room which is fitting for this young man :) His teacher is Mrs. Shumaker, she just moved here from Cincinatti with her husband and 3 boys. She has 15 years of experience teaching children so lets hope she can handle Gman!!!!

Here is just Gunnar and then both the boys outside of United on Gunnar's 1st day back.

I don't have any pictures of Gunnar sitting in his classroom because turd bomber wouldn't sit down or stay still!! Good Luck Mrs. Shumaker!! LOL
I did happen to snap some at open house night so here is Gunnar enjoying his Monkey Room!!

This weekend is Labor Day weekend where we will be heading up to La Farge, Wisconsin to go trail riding with our friends Diane, Chip, Nikki, Pepper and Rak. Should be fun with all of the kiddos!!

First day back to school!!!!

August 24th was Hunter's first day back to school!!! He was so excited to finally get back with all of his school buddies. He made a lot of new friends going to camp every day this summer but it is nice to see the old ones too.

Hunter is in the first grade this year at United Community School and has Mrs. Wissink as his teacher, he is really pumped and so is mommy. We have heard great things about her!!

Here he is standing outside of school on the first day back!!! How exciting!

Here he is outside of his classroom, getting ready to meet Mrs. Wissink.

Hunter showing off his new desk!! I am jealous I want to be in first grade!!! It looks so much better and more fun than my office :)


Hope you enjoyed!! Gunnar starts his first day of 4 year old preschool next wednesday! Until then........

Trail Fun Show

We have been sooo busy trail riding, vacationing and working around the house we haven't had much time to blog :( Sorry!! But here is something we did that was worth taking pictures and blogging about for you.

This weekend our trail club put on a Fun Show at McHose Park in Boone. We had events like, egg in spoon, barrels, poles, monkey in a tree, the shovel race, potato sack races and a boot race. I will share some pictures with you of all of this fun. There is a reason we call it a fun show. The boys are pictured with their babysitter Talyn on her pony Dusty.

Enjoy, we sure did!!!

Hunter waiting on the barrel for the pickup race.

Hunter and Talyn heading down the arena for monkey in a tree.

Hunter being "picked up" for the pick up race (with a little help from dad)

Hunter doing monkey in a tree, waiting for Tal to come back!!

Hunter and Tal on dusty "running" for the win :)

Gunnar on the barrel waiting for the pick up race.

Gunnar doing the pick up race with Tal (and some daddy help)

Gunnar doing monkey in a tree (he might be cheating???)

More monkey in a tree! He is a natural isn't he??

Tal came back for him!

Potato sack and boot races!! Kids had a blast with these too!!!

Mommy doing the obstacle course on Chloe (her new mule she swiped from daddy :) )

Daddy and Thayne doing the shovel race!!!

Until next time!!! Enjoy Labor Day weekend!! We will be riding in La Farge Wisconsin with the family and visiting friends!!

Take care!!

Rolfe Rodeo!!!

This week Hunter got the pleasure of going to Mini Camp!!! I dropped him off Wednesday morning and picked him up on Saturday morning. He got to stay overnight at Camp Hantesa for 3 nights. He stayed in Shady Glade and needless to say he was a wee bit tired on Saturday, but he insisted on going to the Rodeo (mainly because his buddy Hunter D was there).

Anyways Hunter did ok riding but had more fun playing with the kids that were there and doing the boot races. Enjoy the pictures from the rodeo.

Hunter with his buddy Hunter Draeger. I love this picture!!!

Here is Hunter getting ready to go mutton bustin. All decked out in his new duds,thank you to Joel and Carol Wilson. We will use them for both boys!!!

The boys having fun in the truck after Hunter's ride. I think those pigs ate 2 or 3 double cheeseburgers each that afternoon. Rodeo'in must work up an appetite or something :)

Well we have a trail ride next weekend in Stephen's Forest where Hunter will get to ride Buttons (his new mule we are borrowing until he gets up his confidence) Should be fun!! Then mom and dad are off to Eminence again for a 8 day break from parenting!! Yee haw!!!

Trail Riding at Brushy Creek!!

And we are off on our very 1st trail ride with our new horse trailer. This weekend we headed up to Brushy Creek (about 30 min north of our house). We met some friends we hang out with on our vacation in Missouri and some of our trail riding club folks as well.

The boys entertained themselves with the playground equipment, fishing, going to the beach to swim and riding the mules and donkey!

Hunter rode Saturday all by himself, he was also trotting and loping on his donkey and just having an awesome time. He did the water crossings all by himself, we were pretty proud. He even had Gunnar cheering him on all the way. Gunnar rode on Carly with mom and Daddy rode Chloe and we didn't see them much, they socialized while mom and Hunter hung back and had fun of our own. Here is a pic of Hunter on the trail!

Beaming from ear to ear is how he was most of the day!!


All in all the trial run of the new trailer went well. We are looking forward to next weekend!! 4th of July!!! Woo hoo. With that comes Hunter's last ball game of the year. Boo hoo (can you feel how sad I am on this one?? ha ha). And then after the 4th weekend Hunter gets to go to Mini-Camp. I will drop him off Wednesday and pick him up Saturday. He is super pumped!! Until then!!!

IPTV kids day at the ZOO!!!

This weekend brought us a trip to the zoo to see all of the public television friends.

Up early to a 9 am baseball game on Saturday morning, leaves us with a full uninterrupted day!! YEAY!!!

After the game we headed to Des Moines and grabbed a bite to eat at Applebees, then off to the zoo for some fun times.

We hit up the rainforest, checked out the flamingoes and then snuck in a story time with Dan Wardell from IPTV kids club. The boys waited patiently and then got their picture with none other than.......

Yep!! You guessed it, the Cat in the Hat!!! How exciting!!! We then moved on to the dinosaur exhibit they have. Gunnar wanted NOTHING to do with this, he opted to stay outside and dig up bones in the sandbox and run through the dino maze with Baba while Hunter and Mom checked out the dinos and got this sweet pic!!

So Hunter and I decided to go nuts in the gift shop at the dino exhibit. We bought glow in the dark dino rings, a plush T-Rex, we grabbed Gunnar a biting T-rex, and I grabbed a couple of volcanoes that erupt when they are put in water and a dino grows out of them. Awesome!! (they have been pretty excited about watching their dinosaurs grow everyday, they are getting really big!!). Then off to the train we went via the giraffes, tiger, lion and sweet huge catepillar. Check it out!

Well we made it to the train, and didn't even have to stand in line. This was a first. We even got to sit in the boy's favorite spot on the train all the way in the back on the reverse seat! WOW!! Here is an awesome picture of them and their Baba on the train with them!!

After all the excitement of riding on that long train ride (about 5 minutes long) we headed over to the farm part of the zoo and the playground (which is of course the hot spot). We stopped so the boys could get a drink. See pic.

Over at the play ground we played for the rest of our time at the zoo until they closed and kicked us out. Here are some random pics of the boys playing on the equipment. I think this is one of the best aspects of this zoo. Fun times.

We snuck in a peek at the otters on the way out and drove home while everyone crashed out!!

The next day was Father's day. We celebrated at Applebee's (we didn't let dad know we had just eaten there yesterday, it was his choice and we didn't want to ruin it) then ran a few errands, got the horse trailer packed for next weekend and then I got a kidney infection that laid me up for 4 days. Good times and Happy Father's Day to ALL the dads out there!!

Until next weekend!!

FISHING!!!

This weekend was ALL about fishing for fish to go catch fish!! Whew!!

Saturday morning we all piled in the truck and headed off to go..... fishing!! We went to a pond so the boys could catch some fish (what we like to call bait) and get used to reeling in the big ones. Here are a few pics of them and their huge fish!!

So then we ate snacks in the back of the truck, stopped for lunch and took it home, devoured it and headed off to Hunter's baseball game. When the game was over we got out the 4 wheelers and met dad down at the river.

We learned how to set diddy poles and use our fish we caught earlier in the day as bait. The kids LOVED being on the boat!! Had a blast watching us set the poles. By then it was getting late so we hoped on the 4 wheelers and headed home. Talyn (the boys favorite baby sitter) came out and watched the boys over night so we could check the lines at 9,12,3, and 6 in the morning. Needless to say we were ALL tired the next day. We did catch a few catfish and a snapping turtle. We feasted on fried catfish the next night for supper it was Yummo!!!

Until next weekend!!