Catching up

I think that I will just stick to right now...I have way too many things to try and catch up on...I just need to do better with posting.

Makayla turns 6 this year and Donny turns 14. Don and I will celebrate our 18th wedding anniversary (and if you want to get technical we will celebrate 19 years together in May).

We are on a new learning curve right now and that is what brought me back to this. I have a little extra time and would love to get things written down. Yes, I have facebook...but I would love for this to be a journal and I would love to write more down. Not just have it in pictures. I grew up with a mom that wrote in a journal every day and she still has those...it is great to be able to look back and say, this is what happened on this day 10 years ago...not just look at pictures.

So my next posts will start back with things from March. I will start back when this whole COVID-19 shutdown started. When the world stopped doing a lot of things...and I will post our pictures and thoughts from each day....so I have a lot of writing ahead of me. And I think this will be for the best.

We are loving our family time right now and we are loving the memories that we are making. Soon there will be more memories made when summer hits!

Makayla Lynn 5/6/14

IT'S A GIRL!!!!

I never officially made a post for Makayla. So I guess this is it! It will have pictures thru the years just to catch up, as she has been in some of the previous posts already. 

Makayla Lynn Kinney was born May 6, 2014 at 3:08pm. She was 7lbs 14oz. And her big brother is pretty proud to have her here.

And here are a few pictures thru the years:

First trip to the zoo:

To Be Continued...need to save more pictures and I will update this as I save them

Vacation 2018

Summer Vacation 2018

Road trip to Kalahari in Wisconsin

August

We headed out on Monday morning. We were ready for a week of fun! Our good friend, Steve, was going along with us. So this was going to be a great road trip!

Our first stop was in Illinois at the Volo Car museum. What an amazing place to visit. It took around 3 hours to go thru the entire thing. So many neat things to see and interact with. The pictures don't do it justice. It is certainly a place to check out if you have never been there before! Here are just a couple of pictures from there. I have so many pictures, but didn't want to overload with just this. 

The Dukes of Hazzard car!

They had a little area for kids to play...great for our kids 

before getting in the car to drive again.

 We now got on the road to head to Kalahari in Wisconson Dells, WI. It was such a rainy drive and things were flooding. We heard that one town that I believe we drove thru got a crazy amount of rain...like 10 inches or more!!! We had to stop at a Walmart (it was seriously the smallest Walmart I have been in) and we needed to get new wipers for the vehicle. But we got them changed and we were back on the road. We were ready to have a blast at Kalahari!!

And we have arrived at Kalahari!! And it was raining...couldn't use the outdoor water park, but we were ready to swim!!! And that is what we did!!! Three days straight, plus they had an amazing arcade and indoor mini theme park. A ferris wheel, some small rides and the Go-Karts. And we had the unlimited wristband and we put it to good use!! All I can say is if you haven't been to Kalahari, you need to go! It is sooo worth it and you won't want to go to any other indoor water park! We have been numerous times and we are already starting to plan our trip down to Texas when they open their new one!!

Donny and Uncle Steve on the go-karts

The view from our room! The deck was huge!

Thank you Kalahari for another amazing vacation! We cannot wait to come back! 

 And now it is time to check out of the hotel and start heading towards home. But we have a few more things up our sleeve for fun and we cannot wait. Our first stop was Ripley's Believe it or not. Must say, it is a very interesting spot. And the kids enjoyed it. But we were ready to go after about an hour. 

And we are now on the road, heading back to Illinois. We will be staying the night there and then head home in the morning. OR will we? Maybe we have a surprise for the kids. ( and us as this wasn't even planned)

So, we decided to extend our trip by a day or two and drive down the historic Route 66. We had picked up a map and some information about what to see, and decided to check it out! And what a great choice it was!!! We drove south to come north...and drove by so many places to stop and see. Gas stations turned into souvenir stands, the historic Joliet Prison and the Blues Brothers car. Something that none of us will forget!

We had a wonderful vacation and cannot wait to plan our next one. 

Thanks for the memories!

Spring 2018

Spring is coming and that means that we have a little girl getting ready to celebrate her birthday! 

Makayla Lynn is turning 4!! And this year she had an amazing party at Chuck E Cheese!

We invited her dance class and a lot of our friends/family and it turned out amazing! This little horse loving girl got lots of horses to play with!

With Makayla's party in the books, it meant that we had just enough time to get ready for big brothers party. He is turning 12! Hard to believe that.

 Donny had a small party with a few friends from school now that he is in middle school. Kinda tough to invite your entire class when you have 7 classes. This year he decided to go to Airway Lanes and play in the arcade. Afterwards we went to Olive Garden for lunch. These kids had a blast! And I am thankful that Donny has such a great group of friends!

Spring also brought us a birds nest on our porch. This was the first year that we had it and we had to be careful when we opened the door. Mama bird would surprise us sometimes and fly right out of that nest. It was such a neat thing to experience with the kids. 

Another amazing thing that we had the opportunity to do was to check out our neighbors horse. Love that we live in the country and have the space for this. Makayla loves horses and always has. And this was such a great experience for her. She cannot wait to ride the horses again!

 Lastly for spring, our neighbors gifted us their swing set!! And this little girl loves it!! It will for sure get played on for years to come!